I put the game on fast and had all my workers researching. For my food source I hunted mushrooms like mad. Enough to get the Mushroom award. LOL... I did this with only 8 adults and got to 50,000 points within 3-4 hours. Of course, many of my adults were already at Master level in this area.

In addition, I had my orchard going with 3 trees so that was another source of food. I only used one or two workers to harvest keeping the others getting tech points.

The chief directed the work the full time. I don't know if that increased the speed of gathering tech points but it can't hurt. I was a real task master. Unless they needed a drink or to eat I made them stay at their task.