I'm in the same boat - can't research a tech, I'm just not in a position to do so - not enough resources, rushed an era just recently - I don't even have the military yet, or the map opened... And it takes a WHILE in FoE to actually do thous things. My guild never opens the third map - not many of us are active now, and even if they did I would not be in position to finish it...
So basically it is yet another event I'm skipping... Because of the tech research... Again... The game is clearly designed with slow pace in mind, I just don't understand than WHY do they insist on all of a sudden trying to rush people in to doing things that are not just sub optimal, but ruinous for their city?
I'm not "camping" eras, I move at a reasonable speed, but moving to early means you have difficulties getting the blueprints you want, resources you need... If you are not ready to at least rush to the next army composition than you end up at military disadvantage for quite a while and that leads to all kind of trouble...
I guess I'll just have to ignore events from now on, until I can transition to new era and leave a few less important technologies un researched just so I can do that for an event one day, because natural progress is punished here, not rewarded.