I'll start with what I really like about this game: the resources. To be more precise, the lack of them.

This takes the idea of "re-playability" one step further than any other game, since every game I need to adapt my decisions to the resources I have around me.

If I start with a lot of gold, I might want the creatures I get from the "diplomacy" tree.

With iron or materials I can spend the resources to provide better stats, and with crystals I develop magical items to cover the lack of materials.

There is only one problem: Regardless of what strategy I choose, there is always one resource I must have - Tech points.

The difference between finding or not finding a library next to you, is either 6 or 30 turns between new technologies, and that's just on the second tier of techs.

It is such a big difference that if I don't start with a library I restart the game, and it will be a bigger problem in multiplayer games, where such unlucky players will not have any chance to survive.

The only way I see, is to narrow the gap between players who start with a library to the ones who don't.

Here are several options.

Most of them mentioned in other threads, but I want to gather up all the ideas for the purpose of gaining techs or reducing the problem I described.

- Buildings:

Either a one-per-culture building that supplies tech points and can be build on a lvl 2 city, or a building like a wizard's tower that is built automatically with the first city, and produces some tech, arcane and maybe gold to the capital.

Personally, I prefer the tower since it's hard to explain such a strong building like a "super library" for a low level city.

- Heroes:

+1 tech heroes will advance with levels to +2 and beyond.

Hero development was mentioned in many threads already, and I don't think anyone will consider this a bad option.

- Sovereign:

All sovereigns start with a constant +3 tech points per turn (more if you take the appropriate talent).

- Quests:

Any other resource type can be found in a quest, so why not tech points?

"You discover an old book from the times before the apocalypse, reading it gives you much knowledge about how the world was in the past (gained 20 points of tech)"