If I make changes to research dependecies, the changes seem to take effect even if I do not start the game anew, but just load a savegame. But can I always rely on it?
For example, I want to make a change that all alien weapons are dependent on researching "Alien weponry", which is dependent on first researching a live engineer. If I make a mistake and find out several months into a game that I locked myself out of some technologies (or the other way around, suppose they are available for research when they are should not be), can I always revert the changes to the rul file, load the game, and see the technology (un)available for research? If not, what is the best way to test the changes to the research tree?