I might try to catch up on this discussion later in the week, but I'll just make a few remarks offhand:

* While I have no particular objection to considerations of tactical balance where these can be plausibly incorporated, it would not, personally speaking, be my foremost concern here. Plausibility would.

* Randomness (in. e.g, starting locations) isn't necessarily unfair, as long as your can rely on long-term statistical averages to level the playing field (e.g, being able to migrate long, long distances over a human lifetime to find other places to settle. Bear in mind, most of the planet would be uninhabited at this point, and tech progression negligible, so the drawbacks to long-range exploration should be quite manageable.)

* On the subject of blind research: One point I'd repeat is that ancient civilisations often lacked any well-defined idea of 'the future' or 'progress' or 'scientific curiosity' at all. Choosing 'categories' for tech research is kind of missing the point here- they didn't do tech research, period. (Alpha Centauri did blind research, but as mentioned in the OP, that is the one game in the series where it didn't make much sense. But I digress.)

* What I'd propose here is a more general form of 'blind development', where you only have limited control over what your citizens do in any respect- industrial, commercial, military, cultural, etc- based on how autocratic or consensual your style of government is. (e.g, an aristocratic republic might allow 1/3 of your resources to be spent on government projects, with 1/3 going to popular demands, and 1/3 lost to corruption and waste.) However, since 'necessity is the mother of invention', whatever influence you do have over warfare/industry/trade/politics (or, in the very early game, the geographical features of where you decide to settle,) would tend to spur technological developments in the corresponding arts and sciences. But you actually have to do stuff with tech to make it grow.

* And even if things do turn out badly for your tribe, what about it? In the next era, the player could switch to any other civ you made contact with, and see how they got along thanks to their decisions and environmental inputs. And who knows- in another few centuries, the former might turn out be sitting on top of a billion gallons of oil. ...Won't that be fun!