No, you aren't "pigeonholed" into following the legacy paths.

[MutilationWave]

Yeah, especially in the exploration era, I feel I have "failed" if I don't go 4/4 in the legacies. I wouldn't mind if there was a penalty (like maybe instead of the dark ages taking all your points, you have a couple dark age options for each one you fail, but if you unlock them, then you are forced to take one).

If you're getting 4/4 on just about every game I'd say you need to go up a couple difficulty levels.

 

[protocol7]

I've unfortunately run out of difficulty levels.

 

[Melkus]

But there's something to it - the balance of legacies makes a lot more sense when you get under pressure (needed the AI mod to see this, too) and have to choose your focus. (Also: when you don't get settlement limit bonuses - they really should just lower the limit for the player on higher difficulties imo. Let the streamers whine. It's a subtle but very efficient nerf.)

I went for early war and got meaningful resistance - couldn't build all the wonders anymore. The crisis hit harder. Also couldn't go for codices, because I needed the military techs. Etc. It was a struggle to salvage some legacy points.
This compounded in Exploration - I didn't come in with 2000 Gold and saved-up influence for the first time. Then I got declared on early by two "friendly" AIs and needed to get archers out - and I suddenly lacked money to get my ships and settlers out or upgrade to cities. No more "samey" expansion gameplay, I'm behind and the distant land civs are on 12/9 and 9/9 already - oopsie.
Theoretically, you'd also have to protect your treasures (unfortunately, it's way too easy to dominate the seas.)

The system is built for tough choices - they just didn't build the AI to match that (yet, hopefully).

 

[jammerculture]

One of the (many) problems with the legacy paths is how most of them feel tacked-on rather than a part of the whole game experience.

For example, the Great Works in Civ7 really only have one purpose: to make a legacy path slider bar fill up... and then they literally disappear in the next Age. They have small resource yields but these are fairly trivial... once you've made the slider bar fill up there's really no point in trying to acquire more (especially since the ONLY thing Science and Culture does in Civ7 is unlock nodes on the trees, and this becomes pointless at the end of each Age since anything you can unlock with them at that point will be discarded in a few turns).

The Great Work system in Civ6 certainly had its problems, but at least Culture and even Tourism had multiple uses and effects that lasted the whole game.

There are legacy points you can get which give you bonuses based on how many of whatever you got in the past age, so this is not true.