RTS with only half a tech tree

This ideas been bouncing around in my head for a while, I'm not likely to do anything about it anytime soon, so I thought if post it here and kick it around for a bit. See if anyone has any thoughts on the mechanic.

If you haven't played dominion the central mechanic plays like this. The game comes with twenty five cards. Each game only uses ten cards. All players have equal access to the cards, and the game comes down to who can make the best use of the cards available. Plus a small amount of luck.

My thought was applying this to an RTS. The game comes with a massive tech tree. But in any given round only 20% of the tree is available. Gameplay would focus on choosing the best combo of units available based on the tech tree.

Thoughts?

 

I like the idea. It's kind of like tabletop miniatures games. Each army gets X number of points, and each soldier/squad costs X number of points to deploy.

On a quasi-related note, I've often thought it would be cool to choose my own birds when playing Angry Birds

 

I think this kind of thing could make an awesome mod for an existing RTS or other strategy game.

Planetary Annihilation has something vaguely similar in its campaign mode, in that you don't get access to the whole tech tree. As you go around the galaxy map you can pick up techs, and you only have a handful of slots to hold them in. I presume this is a way to get people to try out combinations they wouldn't otherwise have a go with.

 

Hadn't thought of doing it that way. The mod is something I could actually achieve.