I completed my first OpenDev scenario and felt that the technology pacing was very weird compared to the era progression. I was playing at the second lowest difficulty and was attempting to play a merchant-focused route. What struck me is that I ended up with many technologies unresearched that would take a turn or two for me to get but that were very old for my current progression. I wonder if tech might feel better if there was osmosis (through direct neighboring and diplomatic / mercantile interaction) between nations that slowly researched techs automatically in the background. This would hopefully allow civilization tech choices to feel more like choosing a specialization that temporarily gives you an edge rather than the way I currently view it, which is as a checklist to complete (though I know this view is not necessarily correct or even the proper way to play the game). This should free players up from researching old but necessary techs and allow them to push more towards the current tier of techs. As a side note, the current phrasing of the "scientist" era star also encourages players to get all the low cost techs. I think it may be more interesting to make the Scientist star require current age techs to push them towards innovation, though obviously the number would need to be much smaller at that point. I am aware there is an osmosis boost event from extra-cultural proximity, but it didn't fire at all for me until the last 30 turns when I captured an enemy city and it often "produced" 0 science when I did activate it.

In the current build there is technological osmosis, it will give you the option to unlock the research paying an upfront sum in gold or to boost your research that turn by x research points.