Dinode wrote:

At 2:37 of the dev diary they include a pretty big view of the tech tree. While I'm still disappointed by how civ-like it is, and many of the techs are out of focus, there are still a few we can see and there are a few details I find interesting.

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4. Several of the techs seem to have multiple lines leading towards them, such as Guilds. Hopefully this means that these are not hard and fast "You Must Research Things In This Order" but instead indicates that it merely makes things cheaper to research the earlier stuff first like in ES2, although it may also mean you only need to research one prior tech.
5. Speaking of guilds, the clearer view from 1:48 shows commodity exchange, trade insurance, alliances, reforestation, and spies. Several of those sound like things from earlier games, but trade insurance sounds promising, since it tells me that there's something to insure against. *chuckles evilly* I wonder if reforestation helps you get fame somehow, or if it merely helps you set up renewable tree farms.

6. As I was watching it pan up I could only see 4 techs on the far left of the ancient era, and I don't see any column with more than that. This either means that there's a lot more further down the wall that we don't see, that there are several tech trees, or both. I'm hoping it's both.

As for 4, the arrows: I feel like you would have to unlock the next tech with only one arrow which leaves some techs as "extras," rather than needing to unlock all the techs, because what else would a scientific-focused culture be good for besides unlocking extra techs? That way a technological deficit in say the classical era will leave you with some buildings and units still locked, but won't leave you playing catch-up scientifically in the medieval era.

As for 5, trade insurance: As Ost pointed out in this thread, it looks like the Dutch EU is the fluyt, a cargo ship that was useful for trade specifically because it was designed with trade and not warfare in mind. Unique trader units implies some kind of twist is in store for trade. My guess would be that your trader units are sent out on missions which have some level of danger even in neutral territory (storms, bandits, pirates, privateers, etc.) and from which there is a decent chance they will not return. This as opposed to the civ system where plundering a trade route was an act of war.

As for 6, multiple trees: I feel like this linear layout could possibly just be for the devs to better picture which techs they want. Following the arrow on the top of the screen, it seems like it only rarely branches out from the top of the screen to other techs. This could indicate that the tech tree the users see will look more like a ring kind of like EL, with several categories for each era (one branch for science/ industry, one for military, one for diplomacy/ trade, one for economy/ agriculture) with some techs that overlap between the categories. That way a culture could be ahead in economic techs but behind in military techs, and would have to wait for an overlapping tech to cross back into the military tree but still be able to bypass techs they don't want. That's total speculation though.

Other things I noticed from the screen at 2:37-38: 

The dates. I was wondering when you would need to enter a new era, if it would be driven by techs or something, but based on the dates at the top of the screen (1000, or about the time of the Bronze age collapse after the Bronze Era; 500, or about the time of the fall of Rome after the Classical Era; 1492, or the date of the discovery of the new world after the Medieval Era; 1700, or about the beginning of the Enlightenment after the Renaissance Era) moving to a new era will occur after a set number of turns.

The EUs for the Mongols and the Huns. They are entirely separated from the tech tree, which could mean they don't need techs to be unlocked, or that nomads will have an entirely different set of techs, which would be awesome but seems sorta unlikely.

Funny random fact . At 40-50 seconds, the phrase "Arma dedit: :porrexit: milites venerunt AD prelium" flashes in the gameplay teaser, in Latin. I assu me that its meaning is reduced to: "Weapons are given, the soldiers were invited to go to battle." However, I am very unsure about this translation. Also, I'm scared of the Egyptian Hieroglyphs' from the beginning of the teaser. Because I can't translate them for sure.

Edit: edited for clarity

Beeprog wrote:

At the end of this week's feature focus on terrain, there was a glimpse of the zoomed out map, from an early stage of the game, by the looks.  It answers a question I had about the density and size of the regions.  At first glimpse I thought the region size looked a bit cramped for a city, but counting the size of a few regions the average is around 40 tiles per region or so.  Humankind seems to be embracing the city sprawl, and with the 'soft' region borders I guess sprawl from neighbouring regions will join up frequently, making twin cities (as can be seen at the bottom of the screenshot).  Roll on humongous continent-wide megalopolis!

I hope there will be some mechanics to stop city grouth. Really don't wish to see Coruscant in this game. Ecological problems of this city would be enormous.

Looking forward to see some answers about claiming territory.