I don't believe there exists any comprehensive guide for those two editors.

Anyways, about linking techs and planet improvements. You need to get the TechID of the desired tech so your planet improvements (and other stuff) can determine the tech they need to be unlocked. Nothing else matters, not even the display name. The display name only allows renaming on the surface level (what the player sees) so you don't need to change everything thats supposed to be unlocked by the tech.

For instance, the Yor "Cybernetic Life Support" is a renamed "Advanced Life Support" tech given the name and text to sound more machine like. It otherwise functions like the "Advanced Life Support" tech.

Once you have the TechID, go to the planet improvements editor, select the improvement you wish to edit, and select the "Restrictions" tab. You should see a slot where you can type in a TechID into (should say "tech." above it). You can "Copy n' Paste" the TechID into there. Save, and the tech and planet improvement should now be linked.

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I hope this helps. Let us know if you have any further problems.

So, the message I'm getting from this, is that I should just take the original tech tree and copy the IDs onto a new tree and then eliminate/add/modify the stock one however I want... I shouldn't try and make a totally new tree.
Where do I put the new tree? I've seen a lot of people who've had trouble with that.
And also what process do you go through to edit XML? General Pants' Political Parties mod is a little over powered for me