[ColdSteel]

Well, I do think pacing does play a role here. The current tech tree will probably not run out in games with smaller numbers of sectors and races. It's those big games that are a problem.

You could make the research rates variable depending on the number of sectors in the game. Essentially assign a tech "burn rate" that fits the size of the game you configure on startup. That's one approach that I think might work and would be real easy for MM to implement.

Another would be to have some final end game technologies that are just so awesomely powerful that whoever got them would soon crush their opponents. This is essentially what happened in MOO/MOO2. (remember Stellar Converters?)

A final idea would be to introduce the idea of regression. That is, where races could lose areas of technology (due to plagues, virus', alien mind tech devices, mind attacks via enemy intelligence projects, whatever) so that you might have to go back and research an area once again if it got wiped out. By doing this, a races' advances would not be a straight up steady line graph but instead a series of peaks and valleys that more closely mirror the ups and downs of a real civilization. The progress of the human race to date has been a series of these periods of discovery and enlightenment, followed by dark ages where knowledge is lost only to be discovered once more later on.

Something to think about, anyway.