Master of Orion II was slightly better in this regard - there were 2-4 technologies in each tech discipline per rank and you could only research one of them (ex

Master of Orion II was slightly better in this regard - there were 2-4 technologies in each tech discipline per rank and you could only research one of them (except for early game tech where everyone would get everything on the list). This meant you could plan your tech strategies ahead of time - barring random breakthroughs and salvage tech - so you could design your empire around the tech tree you were going to pick. The game also completely broke this approach by including a racial attribute that guaranteed you discovery of every technology at each level - "creative". You could stack population growth and the Creative stat and pay for them with minor downgrades in other nonessential characteristics (e.g. ship dodge % or spying effectiveness %). The resulting race would have stupidly advanced ships and the economy to support them very early in the game, which usually leads to a total stomp as you just roll over the local enemies and claim a large chunk of the galaxy map as your own, turtling until the endgame.