Now I know how the other races can build such speciality items like DIp Translators and a whole fleet of colony ships before I even have Impulse drive researched: I'm looking at a screen (espionage) showing the Altarians at -18228 bc. How can their treasury possibly BE so low?
They must have gotten themselves into massive debt, either by buying lots of little things untill they couldn't pay their leases/tributes (it could take a while to get that low, though), or by buying one big thing all at once. How much does it cost to build diplomatic translators from scratch?