Right now, techs following the initial ones take around 25-30 turns to produce, which drags down the pace of the early game (along with high structure build times, which I think should also be reduced).  However, a boost to early game research, as is, would make early core techs (armor, iron weapons, etc.) very easy to reach, which would run counter to a diverse selection of openings.  It seems to me that the way to get around this would be the addition of more intermediate techs, with varied bonuses(while reducing individual research times).  Some examples:

Civilization:

Crafting: +1 production/tile, leads to Mining

Monuments:  +1 prestige, every enemy champion or sovreign felled allows one city in the kingdom to build a monument adding +10% growth

National Identity:  City prestige from sovreign is (base value)/(0.7*city count)  (rather than (base value)/(city count)) 

War:

Organized Destruction(Yithril only):  Units can pillage resources without spending moves, leads to Learher Armor and basic weapons (the idea is that each faction can have different prerequisites for the same key techs)

Way of the Legion:  Each unit in a group gives 10%+2%/level of its defense to all other units in the group.

Battlefield movement:  Each unit can move one additional space/turn in tactical battles.

Magic:

Divination:  Enables Foreshadowing, which can be cast on quest locations to give a vague idea of what awaits.

Appraisal:  Increases gildar from goodie huts by 50%

Spell sustenance:  Adds the Crystalline Raiment armor, which eliminates spell maintainance for the wearer.

Spatial Attunement:  Shows the location of all mana shards in the world.

These are just a few examples of how to fill out the tech tree - ideally, we'd be seeing at least three times as many techs as we have now for much-reduced individual costs - if you agree that is.  So on that note, what are your thoughts?