On disabling research, buildings and units in a script

[Dr.MonaLisa]

That's strange, I remember writing the answer, but it was never sent... Maybe I got interrupted by something.

No, crowns appear automatically after technologies are explored. There's no way to disable this behavior if crowns are enabled in the scenario. However, if you decide to use the 1.5 feature "Disable Crowns System and Leaders", you can follow this guide: viewtopic.php?p=23794#p23794 (other time it's mentioned here: viewtopic.php?p=24751#p24751 ).
Basically, UP1.5 uses a trick to store / read the status of Disabled Crowns System option, at the start of .scn, sav, etc. file. When you edit it to be "LChunkFil5" instead of "LChunkFile", crowns will be disabled.

Your solution with -100 points is interesting. If it works, I would change it to -9999 or something higher, because it's easy to get economic points by just collecting resources.

[Sat42]

That's strange, I remember writing the answer, but it was never sent... Maybe I got interrupted by something.

No, crowns appear automatically after technologies are explored. There's no way to disable this behavior if crowns are enabled in the scenario. However, if you decide to use the 1.5 feature "Disable Crowns System and Leaders", you can follow this guide: viewtopic.php?p=23794#p23794 (other time it's mentioned here: viewtopic.php?p=24751#p24751 ).
Basically, UP1.5 uses a trick to store / read the status of Disabled Crowns System option, at the start of .scn, sav, etc. file. When you edit it to be "LChunkFil5" instead of "LChunkFile", crowns will be disabled.

Your solution with -100 points is interesting. If it works, I would change it to -9999 or something higher, because it's easy to get economic points by just collecting resources.

Understood, thanks for the tip with the 1.5 feature!

I found a work around: some other player gets the crown at the start, and that fits with narrative so all good.

For the rest of my scenario, crowns also only come into play through special scripted events.