After seeing Thecw's 4k+ production Earth on this thread (reply #7), I wanted to duplicate the feat. You need the tier 3 Colonization techs. He did it by turn 180. The closest I could get was turn 300 or so. This after expanding to 3/4s of the galaxy through colonization. I found I'd get halfway through a tech age researching the Colonization techs I needed, then I'd have to waste several turns to research a bunch of other techs to get to the next age, then again starting on that age's Colonization techs.
This tech gating has been discussed ad nauseam in other threads; I'm not here to discuss that. What I want to know is, what is the best methodology for making it to the next age with the fewest number of turns? At times it seems specializing a line of techs had diminishing returns. The progress bar barely moved after 10 turns researching a tech in the line I was specializing in. But I'd switch to something like Militarization, which would take only 2 turns, but would advance the progress bar 8 to 10%! Yet this doesn't always work, as if there are some key techs that advance the bar more than others regardless of how much research it took.
Has anyone looked any deeper into this? Or perhaps I'm just imagining these things and progress is really just tied to research cost?