This is... weird. I don't even know what I did, but suddenly, the Altarians have zero techs. They have their tech tree, but they start with nothing, and they're missing their planetary improvements, they can only build a social matrix. They're missing the "industrial revolution" tech or whatever it is that gives them factories, and I have to manually research 'Hyperfusion' and 'History of Benevolence'

How curious!