usually leather-working, to give my early troops more oomph, unless theres a shard within my starting territory - then i open with shard harvesting.  faction dependent of course; although not as much as i would like.  i wish who i played as was a bigger factor in determining my opening.

Shard Harvesting is usually in my top 3.  Then it's a toss up between the Study and the Workshop as far as what I'm thinking I need fairly early.  The Barracks tech also is an early priority, due to the +1 Army Size tech that comes behind it, but that'll depend on how powerful I think my starting units are, and if I 'lucked out' on the goody hut/quest draw in the first few turns.  This is the one time where which race you are can influence your decision to boost army size, and also if you have summoning spells handy.  If your Shard Harvesting creates creatures, again Army Size can be more of a priority.

If I'm undead, well the Tower Of Dominion is highly important.  Otherwise, the first build can vary a bit.  Even so, since I play with Parrotmath's mods, if there's a forest nearby the lumber mill thingie is a priority build, as is the clay pit.  This is also where having a Workshop right off can be rather important, if you are in a low materials yield situation. 

So yeah, I don't have a 'go to' first tech, it really depends on the local situaton at the time and what dropped nearby r.e. goody huts, quests, and such.  I'm preferable to Shards though, although that won't be my first build usually.  I just like to have the tech researched by the time I'm ready to build that first Shard Altar.

Either Restoration or Civics, depending on the faction and what surrounds me. 

Civics: I want to keep unrest low (and thus increase production and research) with the bell tower

Restoration: Boost food with garden (not needed first if there is a fruit grove or wheat nearby)

In my experience, the most efficient way to boost production, gold, and research is just by raising city level. So high food and growth rate really are the best economic investments, though of course infrastructure boosts those advantages.

And along these lines, towns might be the best city specialization, because raw growth can have them pumping out as many troops as a fortress and as much research as a conclave.

To me it depends a lot on the faction, and honestly, what thematic I'm after. And of course on my starting location.

In my current game I play a custom faction with Wanderlust and that are generally speed and combat focused, so I started out with leatherworking to get those nice altarian leathers on my troops (and on my sovereign, who's a warrior), and took merchant as my first building to fund a larger army, followed by two spearmen units and a tower of dominion.

In my last game I played a custom faction focused on summoning (and golems, heh), and started two squares from a fire shard, so teched shard gathering while building a monument (to reach it), following up with civ techs and building the shard shrine when the tech was ready - since I had so good summoned troops I could wait with training units (that circlet that negates mana taxes is insanely good for summoners).

Granted, I'm still a newb and tend to be a bit roleplayey so I don't really pick the optimal choices when designin factions and heroes, but rather what kind of concept I want to play. My current game is a religious mercenary company gone nation, and the last was a magocratic slave empire.

Very limited pool, but it's interesting to see even with the few responses on this thread that there is no clear cut decision.

To summerize, the techs that have been mentioned as early picks are: Leather Working, Shard Harvesting, Civics, Knowledge and Restoration

As you'll all notice, two were not mentioned: Charms, and Training

So, I throw the question out as to whether or not these should be made more competive? and if so, How?

The two ideas I've had are as follows:

For Training: Have the Tower of Dominion require the pre-requisite of the Training tech. *mindblown* I know what some may say: "No way! The Tower of Dominion is too important....or is always the first built...or is needed for Undead". True on all counts, wouldn't that just mean choosing the Training tech first instead? The obvious question that needs to be asked is "Will Training become the clear first pick because the Tower of Dominion is just that important?" Well, I leave that up to discussion and comments...

For Charms: I would really like to see the Monument resource added back into the game. They were really like looking, adding some depth to the strategic map and city views; but also gave the player another avenue in which to expand. Obviously Prestiege is no longer in the game, but what about the following. Require the Charms tech to be needed in order to build Monuments on those 'hill looking' tiles. Change the towers ever so slightly to include a small blue particle effect in the upper tower room. The associated bonus for this structure would now provide +1 Mana per turn to the pool. To rebalance the posibility of having too much mana early game, we address another concern with the Mediation spell. Increase it's mana cost so that it becomes an investment instead of a free-be. Thoughts? comments?

Yeah, I think charms is a possible first tech if you start right next to a crystal with at least 4 materials and you're teching for early trained units...

Basically, if you would normally pick leatherworking but start next to crystals, charms might be an option.

I don't like the idea of the ToD requiring training. First off it doesn't really fit the flavor of the building, secondly it's a bit too harsh on undead, which already have a hard time at the start of the game.

And while Training might be rare as a first pick, I think it might be quite common as a second pick, to get drills third.

If anything where to be done to boost either, my suggestions would be that it's something that will only affect the very early game and soon becomes redundant.

Training: Training costs -5. Note that it says -5, not -5%. This will be useful if you want a bunch of troops early in the game, but late game won't make a dent in your production costs. Dropping your spearmen from 80 to 75 may mean you train them in two rounds instead of 3. Dropping your knights from 220 to 215 won't be noticable.

Charms: When finished with the research, you get 3 crystals. This would be enough to outfit a single squad with one type of magic gear. If starting next to a crystal cove, it means you can immediately train a squad with double magic gear.