Tech Tree (More Techs and More Exclusions)

The first race I always play in a game like this is the tech-oriented race. As the Sophons, I totally dominate everyone else in terms of tech every time. by the time I am researching the last of the second era, there is no tech that someone else has that I do not (thanks Omniscience!). While it feels good to be intellectually superior to all other life out there, it also feels a little too straightforward. Every play-through will have me picking just about the same techs in the same order. I hope the Horatio update has added enough "exclusions" to change this.

I remember playing games like Galactic Civilizations 3 and Sword of The Stars (2) and enjoying the difficult decision of choosing one one of 2-3 available techs, knowing that I would not be able to get the other techs unless I somehow gained them from another race. I also liked the SotS2 dynamic where you were not guaranteed to actually research a tech, but I'll admit that that got annoying after a while.

I suggest more exclusions (and more than a choice between just two techs), exclusion decisions to make on techs that were already chosen from an exclusion (tech A makes tech C and D available to research, tech B makes tech E and F available to research and tech C even gives a choice between tech G or H), more prerequisite techs (or linear progression paths), and more tech in general. I know that will be quite an effort for victory condition balancing purposes, but I feel like 100 techs are just not enough to acheive a great enough of a degree of variance in game-play.

While this may be outside of the vision, I certainly hope the Mod API would allow for this, if only just to allow for a tech-victory only style of endurance game.