What the title says, I’m tired of the trope where humans are the least advanced in the universe.
I’d like to read something different where we’re the more advanced ones (not necessarily the most advanced). As an example I quite enjoyed the Ender’s Game sequels and the angle of us being the more advanced ones was quite interesting.
Do you have any recommendations?
The video game X3. Of the races in the game, two of them are human. One is the Argon, descendants of a group of humans flung across the galaxy hundreds of years ago and developed into their own little niche. And then the actual Terrans, who somehow managed to develop technology much more advanced than the Commonwealth (what the collection of Argon, Split, Paranid and Teladi are called, since they mostly all work together peacefully) without even having the ability for warp travel, only making contact with the rest of populated space because of a disaster that linked one of their catapults with the network of ancient gates that have been the primary means of exploration.
While they have better shielding, faster thrusters, and devastating weaponry, they are completely lacking in economy, having control of just a single star system against factions that have control of most of known space. The game’s actual economy ends up reflecting this quite hard, and the terrans are usually bankrupt super quickly unless you mod the game to give them some support.