@xenoterracide there are lots of ways to influence dependency resolution and encode custom policies the corresponding user manual sections have been revamped for 4.7, I recommend reading them (again if you did already before) I guess you might be interested by https://docs.gradle.org/current/userguide/managing_transitive_dependencies.html and https://docs.gradle.org/current/userguide/customizing_dependency_resolution_behavior.html