You can get future tech without ever discovering the following...

- Agriculture
- Hunting
- Fission
- Mass Media
- Refrigeration or Computers (you can skip either one but not both)
- Laser

My question is... seriously? How in the hell can any future society not have these things?

 

Yeah, in my actual games I rarely even research computers (and I only do it to get to top-tier military)... seems kind of silly traveling to the nearest inhabitable solar system without even having computers. Hmm, let me pull out my pen and paper and calculate our trajectory.

 

Use your imagination.

 

Or travel to the next solar system without agriculture.

- Hey, you found a new planet, excellent, can we grow some food there?
- Hmmm... well... Give me a few years to find out how the "growing food" thing works and I'll tell you.

 

Sounds like an excellent idea for a challenge game – research Future Tech 1 without knowledge of any of Agri/Hunt/Fission/MassMedia/Laser and only one of Refrig/Computers. Who’s (not me!) up for a shot at this on Deity?

No huts, no tech trades for banned techs, or Internet allowed. No fair starting as the Zulus, Persians, or anyone else who starts with Agriculture or Hunting. And probably too easy on Archipelago.

Not having Agriculture would make it much harder to whip… and it would make those Calendar resources much more attractive. Not having Hunting means no Archery and thus no Archers, Crossbows, Longbows, Horse Archers… to go with no War Elephants or Spearmen either…

Not having both of Agriculture and Hunting means no Animal Husbandry or Horseback Riding… which means no mounted units.

 

It reminds me of the scene from WALL-E when humans are back to the Earth and learn what is agriculture.

 

perhaps not Deity the axe rush might MAF to desktop every turn
might be good on Monarch

No internet without computers anyway.

The highlands map might be amusing

Axe fest Ahoy!
No holding off on Calendar to pop a few more borders using Stonehenge monuments Changes the early decision path of the Mystically skilled leaders

So we won't be playing as Darius or either Khan and probably not Cathy.
Who do we want to be?

Lets look at the cut list
Agriculture; Hatchetsut Hyuna Capac Luis IXV Mao Zedong Napoleon Quin Shi Huang Roosevelt Washington
Hunting; Alexander Bismarck Catherine Cyrus Ghengis and Kubli Khan Montezuma Peter

Leaving;
Asoka Indian Organized Spiritual Mining Mysticism Fast Worker (0/3/60)
Elizabeth English Financial Philosophical Fishing Mining Redcoat (16/1/110)
Gandhi Indian Industrious Spiritual Mining Mysticism Fast Worker (0/3/60)
Isabella Spanish Expansive Spiritual Fishing Mysticism Conquistador (10/2/90)
Julius Caesar Rome Expansive Organized Fishing Mining Praetorian (8/1/40)
Mansa Musa Mali Financial Spiritual Mining The Wheel Skirmisher (4/1/25)
Saladin Arabian Philosophical Spiritual Mysticism The Wheel Camel Archer (10/2/90)
Tokugawa Japan Aggressive Organized Fishing The Wheel Samurai (8/1/70)
Victoria English Expansive Financial Fishing Mining Redcoat (16/1/110)

1;Rome looks likely to dominate the early game through conquest
2;England looks to be the horse to back to reach the future tech with their financial cottages giving a research edge followed up by a red coated tide.
3,4 & 5; India, Mansa Musa (skirmishers are pretty naff anyway) Tokugawa
6 Isabella

looks like a good challenge!

Thanks to Zhahz for the CivIV leader picker

 

Technology is developed to be used - hunting is useless without something to hunt, agriculture without something to grow.
Real world, I'm on the limestone plains in OZ: in the 19thC western doctors wrote glowing reports of the medical uses of the local grasses. There are some 60+ grasses that apparently had awesome medical properties....and they're all extinct, wiped out by the rabbits etc. If beasties wipe out your possible crops, then you've got a supply of edible beasties but no decent opportunities for agriculture.

On the flip side, it's easy to imagine a society where all the major animals have been killed off to protect the crops. IIRC one theory for how cattle were domesticated is that they kept breaking into walled fields to get at the grain - leaving the humans with a 99% walled field containing cattle rather than grain.

If society goes in a different direction, then you would expect different technologies to develop - frex based on non-Newtonian fluids - that allowed other ways of progressing.

 

This is why I am playing my own mod when all of those are required in one way or another.