The way the tech works tends to make every play-through rather samey unless you really make an effort to mix it up. In MoO1 the randomness of the tech makes for intersting challenges sometimes but also silly walks in the park occasionally when your enemy/-ies cannot counter your offences due to extremly bad luck with their research. Every game not the same as the techs you are allowed to research are never the same even if all other parameters are.

That is the reason why I still play MoO1 once over a while ;)

MoO2, just the planets make a difference, but MoO1, planets and tech make a difference.

I still remember, I played the Psilons and I only had missile base XX in my research tree!!! And also hardly any soy tech at all......That was one of te hardest games ever played (despite being on a moderate level and not even impossible). :-O

In MoO2 the uncreative trait does the same thing, so if you like that play style, play as Klackons or your own custom uncreative race design.

Also, ironically, because the AI tends to freely trade techs between them, it means you will likely be fighting against empires that each seem to possess most of the techs you can't get, which makes the AI feel collectively quite like a "samey" opponent. So you might find games with less AI opponents actually offering less "samey-ness".

Only to certain extend, IMHO it seems to be easier ti get the tech anyway.

In MoO1 it could happen that NO ONE would get early missile tech, rather unlikely in MoO2, correct?

The tech tree in MoO 2 is always the same, only personal choices (either by you or the AI) make a slight difference. But in MoO1 all tech trees are being random, even for the AI. So an important tech might just not be there.

Don't want to bash you ;), but you see that this trait is not really the same?

Sometimes I wish you could manually make changes to the tech tree, having a game without missile bases in the beginning WAS REALLY different ;)

You might see that in MoO2 if you play a pre-warp start. Unlikely, yes. But on post-warp or advanced start, each civ begins with nuke missile tech. I've seen plenty of games where the AI skips merculites for some other tech though.

No, the uncreative trait really does work the same as what is being talked about in MoO1, if I understand your comment correctly. BUT you are right in that the Klackons are the only other uncreative race in the AI roster, and since you can't specifically determine which AI opponent you will fight, it is far more likely you will see many AIs sharing most of their tech with each other, hence they collectively present virtually the same challenge as a creative opponent (ie. they will collectively research and share many/most of their techs).

I have played games where certain techs, like Hydroponic Farm or Tractor Beam simply don't exist, because neither myself nor any of the AIs researched it. But this is rare.

Another thing about AI tech sharing is that the AI only shares tech between civilizations in active contact. So in the early part of the game, if you can drive a wedge between 2 AI civilizations such that they are out of contact with each other, they won't share any techs. Usually by the late-game once hyper-drives and such have been researched (and the AI ioves to research drive tech) range becomes a non-issue, and the AI civs are all in contact with each other.

So if you played a game as an uncreative custom race against a single opponent, and the AI chose Klakons, it is likely you would see an absence-of-tech effect like in MoO1. Or if you played an an uncreative race and started in the middle of the map between several AI races such that they couldn't contact each other easily, you might see an effect more like in MoO1 as well (in the early game). This is also a good reason why early-game Blitz strategies can often work surprisingly well, if you hit an isolated alien civ that is still lacking in some crucial tech.

You can easily do it in 1.50, aswell as set all AI into Uncreatives etc. And tons of other similar stuff.

Sounds like I need to upgrade to 1.5 as well,

Slowly, uncreative, just means the tech is being chosen randomly of the 4 in each tech field. (IIRC) But in MoO1 the WHOLE tech tree is random.

It might look the same way, but really isn't. PLus if you already have one of the 4 techs or even worse for our discussion ;), if you have 3 of the 4, you WILL get the fourth, correct?

The rest I never disputed ;)

But it is mainly about, that in MoO1 it is all random, in MoO2 it isn't all the way. (see above). And I have hardly seen a MoO 2 game where (as you called them) crucial techs were not there. In MoO1 I have seen it quite a bit. Terra-techs, col-techs and the worst defence techs.....no, there was one more, even late game we had only eng 3 tech, so it took ages to move across the map!!!! Till one them finally got one of the quicker ones.....
Thanks for the info, didn't know about this part of 1.50!!!