" Some players may not like scifi in an otherwise science-based game, as such we will add a cutoff point where the player can choose to not advance to scifi technologies at the cost of not being able to reach Ascension. This will lock the player to essentially the early Space Stage."
Some players may want to dead end. And if you set the AI to only advance so fast or so much farther than the player, it wouldn’t have to be a dead end.
I never said I thought it would be a near future thing. It’s my understanding the idea is that once Thrive has gotten far enough, increases in donations, patrons, volunteers, modders, etc. would allow for going back and adding some of the skipped over features that people want to see. Including some not necessarily about ascending first. Sure, this is a far off possibility, but the argument “That means you don’t get to Ascension first” sounds like “Winning is everything”. Some people like PVP, some exploration and/or questing, and some just like playing pretend. I realize, and mentioned in my post, it would not be easy to program, but some people would like to simply enjoy the early or middle of the game for an extended period of time without the possibility that a god will decide to destroy their planet because it can. And some people would enjoy it more if the AI passed them up, regardless or realistic or unrealistic time scales.
You wouldn’t actually have to do different timescales, it was a suggested possibility if Tribal stage lasting so long bothered people that much.