Having an additional tech with a similar function to a card saves one card slot, and that is a gain. Card slot is resource.
Some cards you would not include because there are better options and waste one slot, but if they are techs in the building they become viable. Same for permanent upgrade bonuses, etc.
A civ with 5 techs + 25 cards will eventually have a weaker full form than one with 10 techs + 25 cards.
Of course you won’t reach a final stage, that’s why civs have been overstuffed with techs and options since TAD, so you won’t use all of them in most cases. But the same can be said for old civs.
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The big buttons are the unqiue Native civ mechanic and they arent even that good in my opinion, but I play treaty and dont play natives that often.
On top of that Euro civs for example have cards which generally are way better then the native cards making the big buttons balance it out more.
And I still stand with the cards being AoE III version of unique technologies like the ones in AoE II. The natives just have some extra, which in comparisson again is still balanced.
Unique cards aoe3 are comparable to unique techs in aoe2.
In the meantime unique techs also exist in aoe3.
So a civ with only unique cards is not equivalent to a civ with both unique cards and unique techs.
Simple logic.
Depends what you define equivelent to.
They could get it in a later age.
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The upgrades that the advanced market would grant were unlocked at age III, but they do not need to be more powerful than previous upgrades on the market. Might just be +10-15% on hunting/wood/mine gathering. They could also be cheap and quick to investigate.