I played a techer and would have won if I didn't get nuked and lemminged down to the tune of 8-9mil NW. I finished in 3rd anyway. My experience does not support your argument.

However, you do propose a convincing argument for decreasing the max turns available to play. Cashers tend to wait until near the end of the set to play all of their turns and greatly benefit from cheap tech and goods while avoiding the main challenge of playing the game--avoiding getting attacked while growing. The winner of the last set was my ally and did exactly that--he proposed alliances to me early on, played very few turns all set and leeched from the research alliance I foolishly accepted from him (he had purchased just enough tech to make me think he was teching and to benefit from my research), then played all of his turns when he had max turns stored.