[QuarianRex]

This is a sweet idea. Some thoughts though.

If including the 3 levels of primative (dirt, steam, and space) why not give them all essentially the same tech tree, just starting at different points along it. Artificially capping their tech seems kind of rude. With the proper instruction and training (a.k.a. Trade and Research agreement) even feudal societies (or lower) should be capable of being turned into productive vassal worlds. It should only be a matter of time.

To reflect this just create one tech tree with a nice progression from peasant farms to cities and such, and have each type of primitive start at a dfferent point on the tree. For example, the dirtboys tree would start at 1, the steamers would start at the equivalent of 5, and the spacelads at, say, 10. Each individual tech would start at level 1 but that level would include the appropriate advancements of the full tree up till then.

Hard to teach ewoks how to build an escort? Of course! They start at level 1 and the primatives don't get access to that until level 15 (or whatver) and level 15 is mighty expensive when all you can do is leech off of the knowledge of your betters. It's harder to train cavemen, but not impossible.

As far as giving them "upgrades" such as encanced infantry or plague resistance, I say thee nay! These guys are there for flavour, not a challenge. I don't care how many times a tribesman has to kill his own supper, he won't do squat against a hail of laser-fire. Innate plague resistance? There was a reason why our ancestors had a life expectancy of 35 years. If you want to throw it in then perhaps have level 1 plague res. at the beginning of steam (gotta love penecilin) and level 2 at the begining of space with an extra level or two put higher up in the tree.

Does anyone know if you can trade same-name techs with different racial requirements? Does the game consider them to be two different techs or the same for trading purposes?