I am fooling around with a game where I am allied with the Altarians. A couple of interesting things, in the UP meetings they always vote for you so, you double your power in the UP meetings. In trades the alliance probably helps a little but basically they require the same incentives. This is good and to be expected in the real world. There have been no wars yet but no doubt they will be a faithful ally.

Someone said it did not seem to make a difference what difficulty level you set. The levels are definitely working, perhaps not to your satisfaction but they are working. I set the altarians at the highest level and at early mid-game, they are slightly ahead of me in power, and they are 3x over the others set on normal. They have colonized more planets than me and they would be whipping my ass in research if I couldn't trade with them. In my opinion the AI sets a little too high a value on military techs early in the game, but that's just me. I have no doubt I can catch up and pass them by end game, but at theis point I am glad they are an ally.

Based on a post I read I decided to buy all the survey ships in the galaxy. Amazing, it was all too easy. All of the AI's including the Altarians set at the highest level were happy to sell me their survey ships for 200-250. I am playing on a huge map and I haven't found the Drengin yet so I have been micromanaging 4 survey ships and I have not only recovered their cost many times over but also I have fleets of early edition battle ships totaling 18 cutters, bombers and defenders. This is a pretty nice/bad exploit in my opinion. I certainly won't win the game with this exploit but it helps keep me ahead of the AI militarily early on and allows me to focus on economic research that will eventually win it.