Interesting ideas.
From a strategic perspective presumably it is preferable to get 1 tech per turn for 10 turns than it is to get nothing for 9 turns and then get all 10 on the 10th. Because in the former case you could use them sooner. The player is therefore incentivised to concentrate their efforts.
So I think if you want to encourage the player to spread their research effort out you’d need to offer an incentive to do that. For example you could have tech progress = (tech points spent that time period)^0.8 (or to any power less than one which would need balancing). Then the most efficient thing in terms of points is to work on a lot of techs, however strategically if you can make a key breakthrough before a rival that gives you an advantage, and then hopefully those forces would balance.