[Ed Kolis]

Not sure if this would be practical or even work... but what if you made "high tech" and "low tech" Versions of each race - gave them the same color on the galaxy map and everything, or just assigned all the systems belonging to both to one of them; made them friends with all the same races and with each other; and made duplicates of all the components, so that the high-tech race's components were normal, but the low-tech race's components had all the "increase per level" stuff set to zero, or half that of the high-tech race, if you just want them to advance more slowly?