So, before entering the ancient era, you basically have "exponentially growing" scouts: each scout unit can collect the endlessly-spawning food pickups on the map; and after only one or two pickups, you can split it into *two* units, which can run around, picking up twice as many food pickups twice as quickly ...

Further, they're picking up +20-influence pickups along the way, so you can easily maintain enough influence generation to continuously drop outposts in pretty much every territory you enter.

My third game on Lucy, I hung around until I had ~20 scouts before selecting a culture (only cost me a couple extra turns; again, exponential growth, oof!); by which time, I *also* had, what, 7 or 8 territories with outposts? Once the other civilizations got booted up, every one of them had "Afraid" / "Much Weaker" diplomacy maluses to me! It's so easy to steamroll basically everybody with this approach.

Just a thought, though you're probably already aware of this. Maybe diminishing returns on food-pickups after 5 or 6 global tribal units; need 30, then 40, then 60, then 80 food for each subsequent unit? Ditto for influence, probably shouldn't be easy to get more than 150 or 200 total influence before even entering the Ancient Era.

Diminishing returns on food pickups is a good solution to that issue I think. You can either make the pickups themselves provide less or the growth stages require more. Another way it could be fixed would be adding food consumption to your tribe past 5 population, though that doesn't translate as well to the player I think.

The outpost problem is also a bit of a big deal. You get influence from hunting as well as the food pickups, so you can plop down quite a few outposts. I think a limit on how many outposts you can place in the Neolithic era, you don't have the infrastructure or sophistication to maintain an empire yet you haven't even founded a city!), and/or requiring new outposts to be adjacent to pre-existing ones will be a potential fix. Additionally finished outposts count as 1 solution so slapping them down can help you leave the Neolithic era quicker as well.

I deliberately transitioned to era 1 as soon as I had four tribes today and have mixed feelings about the outcome. Rushing the tech tree is obviously good, but you lose out on map control. I didn't feel particularly hamstrung economically. Now, Scouts are the worst unit in the game, but they're still powerful enough to impress the AI. They also snowball very well, as you can use them to hunt and loot, even if you don't plan on attacking anyone. But in a way, I imagine this the game is intended to work this way. The problem is that the AI can't keep up with you at any rate. See, in my game today I would still quickly become militarily superior to every AI, despite stopping at four tribes.

Especially, when you pick harapan, all of your neolithic era tribe units suddenly transform into Runner (15 combat strengh, 5 movement speed)

If you can pump some 10+ runners so early game, you can easily dominate your neighbours before they become strong enough.