Most important technology? (Classical Era)

[ArchGhost]

Currency is the gateway tech that relieves pressure from REX and allows the game to continue on without stagnation into irrelevancy, broadens diplomatic options, and generally makes tech trading more lucrative, so it's easily the best tech in this list.


....But I went with Alpha as most important, because it is most often the way to get to Currency one way or the other (in a trading game, at least). It doesn't necessarily have to be in your possession to still have a massive impact on how you proceed once it starts to pop up.

Voted for Math and Currency. Both are needed in 95% of games, unlike all the other techs, which are situational.
Surprisingly, I'm tho only one who voted for math. It opens up four tier-A techs, so it usually needs to be researched sooner than later in both peacerful or military games. Also good production boost. And HG is also important in lower difficulties

Only worth teching Math yourself if you are indeed going early aggression (for the speed in acquisition), so it gets back-burnered to getting it as a tradeback in most other cases. I actually find it annoying when the AIs won't trade it/are slow getting it (rare) as it will delay Currency, but it's rare in games I play that I'm so desperate that I will plan to self-tech Math outright from the start as my plan to get there. Clearly there is a lot of swing with difficulty, as the AI is not likely to be useful in picking it up in trade below Immortal or so.

 

[sampsa]

Yes. What I meant by "currency is overrated" is that you will get it and it will be good, but it's not the most important thing. In isolation it is not very important for obvious reasons. For me there is no doubt alpha is more important, of course assuming that tech trading is on.