The 'tech cost multiplier' is not a feature, and even if it were, it is so poorly implemented it's not even anything remotely similar to what we wanted so it'd still be considered broken.

I'm all for steeper tech costs... I charted the costs of Beam Weapons around here somewhere, and applied a simple formula to the costs to comparison with 100 research points.

Suffice it to say, tech costs from Beam Weapon Theory to Phasors were laughably linear (with only the 'end game' weapons, ie: Doom Rays) being far, far more expensive).

Then I charter my own tech costs, with an exponential curve, which is what we want. 5 weeks for Plasma I, then 6 weeks for Plasma II, then another 6 for Plasma III is not my idea, nor ANY sane person's idea of "very slow tech speed". Very Slow is an absolute joke, and no 4x fan should be satisfied at all with the hilariously inept tech speed balancing in the game right now.

Despite it all, however, when I asked why the developers were so silent and refused to address or even TOUCH tech speeds, Frogboy told me to get bent and literally, to "make my own game" if I don't like it.

I guess it's all flavor for what you want by "epic".

My own take on "Epic":

1st, limit the rate of social production upgrades after the first upgrade. I'd still keep the early game upgrades etc... but slowing infrastructure improvement would limit one's ability to over-produce the enemy. Include slowing PQ techs under this.

2nd, allow bigger fleets earlier, so speed up logistics research. Reason: larger epic battles.

3rd, keep the weapon's race more interesting by making advancing from level 1 to 5 harder, and perhaps even add a few stages. But simultaneously make the each weapon type branch, rather than one sequential evolution. E.g. Laser I would allow Plasma I. Plasma I would allow the next one I. Going from Laser I to Plasma I would cost the same as Laser I to Laser II, but going from Laser 1 to say Laser 7 would not be completely linear but a bit skewed to exponentional. So researching only 7 techs, you could get Phasor 1 before you got Laser 7. If this was overpowered though, perhaps the last two weapon types in the series could be straight linear.

4th. On defenses, maybe mirror the weapon's race, but it might be interesting to keep defenses linear as in the default rules. Defenses would be research well after weapons then. If that lended too much an advantage to offensive research and actually made the game faster, then make weapons cost significantly greater than defenses (space, time to research, bc cost).

5th. Don't alter race "flavor" techs. They need those.

6th. Keep ship hull sizes at default speed. But increase cost of miniaturization techs. Reason: more ship types is more "epic' flavor, but miniaturization goes hand in hand with weapons and defense.