If you learn not to shove your own ideas down everyone's throat by force you'll learn to be a much better person.

Off the top of my head, I remember these two.

A techer won the set before last in tourney:
http://www.earthempires.com/tourney/88/ranks

My buddy Getafix was just shy of the top slot in alliance a couple months ago here:
http://www.earthempires.com/alliance/44/ranks

On team and primary, it could still be viable early and then you could switch to something more profitable. This change would totally nerf this ability.

The tech market on FFA is a joke right now precisely because there are way too few techers and apparently very few people tech started.