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The strong ones are Free Ballista off of Composite Bow, Onager off of Portcullis, and I think getting either of the horses if you beeline to land consolidation are pretty decent grabs as well.
Outside of that you have some more niche options that still can have value, the free chariot on sovereignty can compliment your early tribal clears - mounted units with rout are grat candidates for generals. An archer off of forestry rewards you for grabbing the tech early which sometimes deviates from other more important stuff. Clerics can spring for a free camel archer early which could be super strong if you're surrounded by horse tribes.
Then each nation has their Unique Unit on a card. The Greek hoplite on Phalanx is a pretty good grab since that's a good direction to tech toward - The Roman UU on steel, imo, isn't too ideal but I don't normally tech steel too quickly.
Currently, the most powerful bonus card you could grab would be the two Crossbows once you hit Hydraulics and I'd say that one is pretty much always worth it.
Longbows are on manor and also a decent grab - the later cards give you two of each so they're usually worth it.
As a new player, it'll take time to get used to navigating the tech tree and learning how to accumulate science well; it took me months to figure it out to be totally honest.
Having axes, spears, and archers to the enemy Swords and Longbows is a really bad spot to be in; especially since swords is the 3rd most expensive unit to acquire in terms of science cost.
Longbows or pikes will usually be what you see first when you're still using strength 5 or 6 units if your enemies are ahead of you; but if you're seeing Swordsmen, Crossbows, Cataphracts, mangonels, or especially polybolos while you only have mid-game units, then you're in trouble.
Those five units I just mentioned cost over 1,000 science more than the longbow or the pike.
As a reference point, it takes 1400 science total in order to build Macemen. Cohorts, which gets you Swordmen (and requires battle line, the macemen tech) requires 4800 science in total to research.
So if you only have Axes and Spears while your enemies have swords, that means they've outpaced you signficantly.
Swordsmen are a devastating unit against a weaker army.
A swordsman is powerful against your lower tier units, but he can't be everywhere. Hopefully, you have some horse units to penetrate enemy lines and sack and pillage in guerrilla warfare.
As for taking the free techs, it's situational. Although the Border Expansion tech is truly irresistable, I'd want that. Free techs that aren't taken are discarded from the deck, but I can't think of a recent game where I've been offered a free tech that I had taken before.
I wonder if the AI's are offered the free stuff or if they only research the actual techs as I see them easily outpace me early on on the harder levels. I guess they also don't benefit/suffer from events.
One thing I'm hating is being placed in the middle of the AI's while they tend to be spread along the edges and don't neighbor as many as humans do. That is just plain boring!
You can easily unlock more lower-level tech vs going straight for cataphracts.
The only exceptions to the above are in the game's settings; starting development will distribute extra techs at the start of the game randomly to each nation according to the setting.
A.I. advantage will give an economic boost according to that setting.
Otherwise, the process is the exact same as what the player does. Prioritization, though, is precisely why you will often see yourself have a larger "techs researched" stat than the computer, even though they get more advanced than you.
If you spend time researching every single bonus card, you'll get a larger number of techs - you'll also move through the tech tree slower.
You can search and find that the AI plays by the same rules the human does, the devs are clear on that. There's many reasons an AI could get ahead of you: they're more cultured, they've got more specialists, they're happier, and so on.
This is not quite true. The AI does not have events. Instead the AI gets some of the bonuses events would give. Since the benefits from events can include research, laws, units (including those not currently researched), etc. I do not know whether the AI can get them.
If you play in no events mode, you'll see the types of bonuses the A.I. gets when you discover ruins, clear tribes, or level up your culture. As stated, though, this compensating for the fact that a player typically gets way more free stuff in a given game than the computer does, and usually more impactful stuff.
If you play the game with no events mode, all players would get the same types of bonuses equally. The main difference between the modes is that the human player gets to interface with all of the 4,000+ events in the game; many of which lend the player a helping hand. Even the "bad" ones are usually just trade-offs.
Thanks for the informative answer Feigro, just trying to figure out how the AI's are getting ahead of me in research. I may have to try the no events mode as I find the events to be too much soap opera nonsense for me when all I want is a strategy game.
Prioritising urban specialists and religious units to push science comes at the opportunity cost of more workers and military. The bonus techs shore up these two things specifically, giving you a dump of resources or a luxury to make up for having less workers, or high tech military units to make you harder to invade. When you're ahead on tech you can afford to grab these since they're cheap, but it also slows down your advantage so it's a choice which depends on the state of the game, and the other techs offered at the time.
They also seem like a safety valve for re-rolling your deck, especially when you have an ambition that requires a specific tech.
In that case I think you might fall in love with no events mode. (NOT no characters mode - which also exists)
No events mode preserves all of the family based character mechanics and designs, so you get archetypes and opinion stuff that influences certain things.. but 98% of all events in the game are shut off. The ones that remain are necessary for completing certain missions or Dynasty specific mechanics.
It's an interesting way to play and feels very much like a "classic" strategy game.
You could take it further and do no-character mode. No character mode removes all of the family abilities, all of the character archetypes, so there are no generals, no governors, none of that stuff.
It's another interesting way to play, but I like having generals. Also, without the bonuses from characters, even though they try to compensate the players in this mode, I find this mode signficantly harder.