Well, they do have approval buildings so the combination of powerful unique buildings & a few empty tiles to be filled with approval buildings and a political capital is quite ok.I did tend to run into financial trouble later on though once I had more of the Thalan research & production buildings (they have considerably higher maintenance costs per MP / TP than the normal factories and labs)I have actually been purchasing Research buildings from other tech races. I find that the exchange rate is a lot better. Sure my research per building is lower, but with some of the bonus buildings you can get, plus star base adjustments, plus some of the civ wide bonuses you can get from other tech trades, I still swamp the rest of the universe in technology.
Actually, the Thalan Research/Production buildings upgrade in efficiency as you research down their tree. They always produce 12 research/production, but their maintenance goes from 15 to 10 to 5. They really do get obscenely efficient in the endgame. (Especially compared to, say, the Yor, who get less and less efficient production-wise down their techtree to the poinr that its usually better NOT to advance those techs)
To me, the most efficient way to use them is to leave lots of tiles empty at the start, (relying on their MASSIVE output for low-level stuff) and fill them up later, as you get more and more efficient.
Using the non-production/research tiles for economy buildings is also good to feed the excessive maintenance early on. This also leaves you rolling in cash as you progress down the tech-tree, which is always nice.
