VoiceOfUnreason
Deity
- Joined
- Dec 5, 2005
- Messages
- 3,663
You aren't wrong, as of the last time I looked into this. It's possible that one of the patches has changed that behavior, but I suspect that someone would have noticed.
Reviewing the code after 3.17, the logic appears to be the same - you can't pop a tech unless you can research it, you can't research a tech until the "I can has city?" bit has been set, and that bit is set after your culture infuses the tiles surrounding your city plot, which is where the goody code gets triggered.
I can't explain how anyone could pop Hunting by founding the first city - as usual, it would be nice to have a pre-save.
Alternatively, somebody motivated could retry the Techs only good mod, and run the experiment I described previously, to see if the results have changed.