Off on a tangent if I may.
This is a perfect example of a point that many people forget during discussions of balance in SEIV. The fact is that most racial traits and techs have strengths and weaknesses that will change in relation to others over the course of a game. Theese advantages can appear unbalancing in a very specific point in the game, but with a long term view, they are not.
I always like to equate SEIV to a giant, highly detailed game of rock, paper, sizzors. I can imagine from the perspective of someone who plays paper, sizzors would seem highly "unbalanced". I mean, no matter how many times I face sizzors, they always cut right through me!
Many people will hit on a particular tech or racial trait and take the view that it is unbalanced and start calling for changes to the game. The fact is in almost every case it turns out they were missing some key point of view that would have allowed them to see the overall balance. Whether it's research cost, or in this case the limited time value of the ancient race attribute.
This is not to say the game is perfect. Of course problems have come up. But the big ones usually get fixed. If they didn't I doubt we would keep playing and caring.
The great modding flexibilty offered by this game allows for almost unlimited tweaking of these "unbalanced" factors. And yet, more often than not when someone decides to take it upon themselves to balance the game through a mod, they find it wasn't as bad as they thought at first, or they even make it worse.
Getting everybody to agree that a particualar acpect is unbalanced is not easy. Getting everybody to agree how it shold be changed to balance it out is almost impossible.
I don't really have a point here, other than this is a better game than even some of us that play it a lot realize.
Geoschmo