This actually looks nice -- sort of replaces National Ideas. Will be super fun to mod into fantasy mods like Anbennar someday with different fantasy tech trees :)
I was very disappointed by the choose-one-branch-for-entire-age thing, until I realized that it's just a lesser portion of the available advances that get gated by that choice, not all of the advances in a given age.
With that realization, I think I like the system. Looking forward to see it in action once the game releases!