All techs would still ultimately need to be researched, but one could choose which ones they leave for last and never use. If I decided I wanted a mead hall I could choose *not* to spend goods on the earlier techs and get it early enough that it could make an impact. The research order could not be forced. Some of it could be offset by less goods needed to unlock the buildings but it's not a simple balancing act and I think the settlement would ultimately need to be at least a little longer. It's probably too late for that though as significant changes increasing the length of viking settlement runs would meet with much outrage from a population that largely doesn't like the feature to begin with.

This would mean almost half of the settlement's needed goods could be made after all buildings are available. The final quest instead could be 'have 200 of each viking good'. The quest line could not be finished pretty much immediately after the last tech. IF they wanted to fix it (and that's a big if), there's a few things they could do Mead hall is perhaps the worst offender, but it's not like I build Old Willows, or Clan houses ever either. The viking settlement tech system as a whole is a bit of a dud.

Forge of empires beta wiki viking