I brought this up in another thread of mine, but that thread seems to be dying off, so I'll ask the question separately and see if it helps.

I've been trying to "clean up" the techtree.xml file, in an attempt to make it easier to work with when modding, The general premise has been to organize aphabetically by branch, then by tech prerequisites.  I figure that will make it much easier to keep things sorted out while modding the file.

Just one problem, it never works.  Every time I do it, implementing the mod causes me to begin the game with every tech researched, even those that are from other races' trees.  I don't change costs, or anything else in any of the entries other than their "position" in the "list".  I've double-checked to make sure I haven't changed anything within the entries by accident, and all is well.  At first, I thought it was because I'd removed the tag defining the section of the list which was all new for TotA, and so I kept the two sections separated by the tag and organized each by itself.  That didn't help.

I can't imagine the order in which they're listed in the file can actually have anything to do with how it operates in the game, because there ISN'T an order to them currently.  There's no pattern of any kind in their organization inside the file.  The only thing I can think of is that certain "unique" techs can't be "moved" around in the list, but I have no idea what that means.  Would it mean it has to have the techs immediately above and/or below it in the list remain where they are relative to it?  It can't mean its absolute position in the list because adding a new tech without removing one doesn't cause the issue, nor does removing one without replacing it.  Is it just the TotA techs that can't be messed with organizationally?  I haven't tried organizing ONLY the preexisting techs yet.  For now, the trial and error continues with great frustration.  If anyone has an answer, I'd love to hear it ... or if anyone happens to know which techs are unique so that I can try to avoid moving them somehow, that would be great too.

It just doesn't make any kind logical sense at all.  I can't even imagine HOW such a blunder could have even been possible, and I've got a helluvan imagination.