What techs do you usually research first?

[GoodGame]

Totally depends upon your early strategy / overall strategy and the nearby terrain. If coin plots (for research) are scarce, winning the race to the religions isn't likely, except by conquest. If trees are scarce, bronze-working (and chop-rushing) isn't very useful before you have a few developed cities.

My uncreative default strategy is usually to chop rush, unless there's tons of food, so Bronze working is usually a priority. Priesthood/Oracle is usually a priority, and then very little growth techs in favor of setting up the type of Oracle slingshot that I want.

But if I'm going for religions, workers (and Bronzeworking and growth techs) are useless/distracting, so I'll build settlers while researching to Monotheism directly, before I go for any economic/growth techs.

But for an early conquest rush, Archery is a must, and Mining might be a good start (to boost production), assuming at least one worker.

I usually research religions first as i get their wonders from great prophets later in the game to pay for my empire and i usually get at least 4 religions. I play on Noble difficulty and usually play custom continents with 3 continents

 

[Macha]

Like i said i often start too far away from my enemys to make conquest worht the time because i play huge maps with 12 AI

 

[Pe Ell]

Playing huge maps doesn't obsolete warring strats. I play huge marathon games all the time and I still attack like a madman with axes if that is my strat. To avoid maintaince problems you raze all but capitols, wondercities and holy cities. Everthing else burns!

But the key to early research is what strat you ar going for. If you have mysticism it might be worth to get an early religion. BW is definitely high on the priority list, as is AH. If you're financial you'll want pottery quickly, coastal start means fishing and so on.

My usual first is BW since I love playing as Elisabeth. Then it's chop-chop and aim for what is needed to hook up resources and after that directly for pottery-writing-alphabet, I completely neglect religous path and trade for those techs.

 

[Macha]

marathon doesn't have the problem but on normal by the time your army is where you want it, it's obselete

 

[Pe Ell]

Point taken.
What kind of game you'll end up with is largely due to the settings.

 

[Fire.Soul]

Bronze working is a must. When I started playing I also had this attraction to founding religions, but, as pointed out by the other users, I got to the conclusion that getting mining (if not researched yet) + BW is extremely important for the early game. It allows:

• Chopping to rush buildings/units;
• Increased production (mining, that is);
• Axemen, the most powerful early unit;
• Access to copper;
• Leads to Iron Working, perfect for warmongers.

Basically, it grants you loads of production (which leads to expansion, a key feature in all early game strategies) and military power that, if not used for attacks in case you're not particularly fond of aggressive tactics, can always be used as defensive units (although for those purposes archers will do just fine). I always go for this tech.

Then you should aim at taking advantage of the resources around you (researching animal husbandry, fishing+sailing, pottery for economy,etc), not neglecting The Wheel in order to take full advantage of the benefits of each resource.

After that, it's up to you, in the sense that each person, depending on their long-term objective or tech tree preference, should go for whatever they prefer (although CoL is usually a good milestone during the early period).