The bad luck part was obviously your opponent Toolsing right into Machinery. I don't know if melding Sailing would have been prudent or if you'd rather go for the 90 per cent chance that opponent melds another [3]. Other than that, the start was not too bad for you, at least you got to score Prehistory.
Why didn't you Math Encyclopedia? Were you going for the strong [6]s? It's quite lucky that your opponent didn't achieve higher than Exploration before you managed to grab and pound Database. Industrialization was really key here as it teched up without overmelding Maths, and at the same time didn't eat anything below [6] so your opponent had to wade through all the older ages stacks.