Regarding "Universally Accepted Beauty": Kill everyone who disagrees with you.
I'm curious as to what you mean about different technological advances, though. Can you come up with examples, or are you just saying "it's possible" ... which I have some qualms about, anyway.
It is a bit difficult to imagine without entering the realm of fantasy; that is, airships (as in naval-style ships that fly), teleportation, etc. However, with enough thought, I'm sure we could figure out a totally plausible alternate world.
There are many ways we can make make Civilization-compatible alternate realities. First, keep all the techs, but make the paths less definable. A lot of the prerequisite technologies now aren't really necessary... in fact, they mostly exist to slow down progress. Now if progress could be destroyed in the game, like in actual history, then this would no longer be a problem, and the slow-down techs would be unnecessary.
Second, change the way individual techs are researched. I don't like how each technology is basically an on/off switch. A lot of techs would in reality have several milestones with their own benefits. Not only that, but there are some that can't really be "discovered" or "mastered", since they are always expanding. Mathematics and Medicine are two such techs that come to mind.
I have this idea that could implement both of these changes. It needs a lot of tweaking before it can become a working part of the game, but the basic concept is that the Tech Tree should be replaced with a Tech Cloud. The techs are basically floating around, unconnected, with no discernible paths. The way the Tech Cloud is set up, you begin in the center, where the techs are the most ancient, and travel outward, where they grow increasingly advanced. There are also two types of techs that can be researched: Discoveries/Inventions, which are concrete concepts and ideas, like Alphabet and Railroad; and Knowledge/Studies, which are constantly expanding areas of knowledge, like Mathematics and Physics.
Now what differentiates Discoveries from Knowledge is that Discoveries always provide instant benefits once researched. They usually have several milestones which each provide a set of benefits once reached, which basically make them several techs (by the current definition) in one. Knowledge, on the other hand, has no such milestones, and rarely provides benefits by itself. What it does do, however, is unlock other techs. As you pour research points into Knowledge techs, a circular area expands from the tech. Any locked tech that falls in the area of this circle becomes researchable.
In this way, Knowledge techs have no limits (in fact, you earn Future Tech by continuing to pour research points into Knowledge techs even after all Discovery Techs have been unlocked). It also allows technology to grow in unusual (read: not in strictly Earth-like) ways. When designed, each Knowledge tech would be placed so that, when tapped into, the most relevant Discovery techs it could inspire are placed closest to it. If the player researched all techs in an even fashion, s/he would progress in a very Earth-like fashion. However, when Knowledge techs are disproportionately researched, it ultimately results in the unlocking of techs mostly irrelevant to that field of study.
For example, science techs and political/religious techs might be found on opposite sides of the center. If political techs are left alone, and most of the research is put into science techs, inevitably, one of the Knowledge tech circles will expand far enough that it stretches over the center, to political techs that have not yet been unlocked. Mathematics can unlock Meditation, or Medicine can unlock Divine Right! And this happens because those previously locked techs were never unlocked through more conventional means. It might be seen as merely research spillover, or an unconventional application of an otherwise normal tech. Sometimes it might not even make sense at all, but that only means the game is doing a good job of allowing the player to define his/her own progress.
Whew... that went on for a lot longer than I thought it would. Well, that's the end of my rambling. Discuss... or not.
