I had the Torians wanting to trade for my starting techs before I made first contact with them.
This is normal, if weird. I've definitely heard from races before I've met them in my games. I've even heard accounts of races declaring war on the player before first contact, although I've never experienced this personally.
Point 2: If you play a Campaign game and subsequently use an Ally or Team member in a Sandbox game as an opponent, you will need to change their relations.
Are you sure about this? I haven't played the campaign much, but I've never had this happen. Does it also hold for races you're at war with in the campaigns i.e. Drengin and Yor in DL?
Point 4: I seem to remember the AI being willing to talk to you once when you first met them in DL/DA, regardless of how far into the game it was. This is no longer the case in TA, though.
In DL, there is no restriction on when you can talk to AIs. This was first implemented with DA, AFAIK.
Who's initiating the conversations, anyway? You, the AI races, or both? If you're initiating them, can you talk to them without having researched Universal Translator? That would definitely be a bug. Even if you begin in contact with a race you have to research the UT first before you can talk, even if they're set to Ally/Team.
As far as the Metaverse goes, I don't use it, so no help there.