I just thought I'd throw this idea out there. The purpose of this mod, which someone would hopefully pick up and research very thoroughly, would be to expand the tech tree so we can play past the mid 1700's without having invented everything.

It's already really small. Maybe add more in depth detail to what is already in there with some obscure facts in history (the puckle gun, for example, which is already in game).

I'd imagine it going all the way towards the first machine guns and branching off even further than that. It would change gameplay significantly, but then we'd need other mods to allow more units to be handled (more than the current limit of 20 units). Likely each person's 150+ year campaign won't end up like ww2.

Imagine 19th century Europe, with all the political tensions, but exploding so early that there's no chance for something like Trench warfare to develop. Maybe integrate one of those american civil war mods into this. Imagine tanks in ETW!