I am trying my very best to stay away from Old World as I don’t want it to feel old by the time it hits release. I’m not much of one for early access in general, so the fact I’ve played it at all is testament to my trust in Soren and how awesome it looked (and is) already.
I found you can get to the end game techs, but not in all areas. If you’re willing to let some mid-game techs sit there unresearched, you can beeline something later in the tree. Mind you I was playing as Babylon and was largely avoiding wars for a lot of the game. Also I was on an earlier build so perhaps that’s been rebalanced.