Maybe I am blind
but I can not find where to define the tech level for the beginning of the game

The screen where you choose your race. There's a pulldown menu with the different tech levels.

hmm...
the only pull down menus I have are galaxy size, galaxy shape, star density planet density and number of minor races.
what am I missing?

Can you post a screenshot?

Oh, have you managed to get the game working then? I just replied to your download problem thread. Anyways, as .Iceman said, there's a button on the game selection screen. If you don't see it, you may have an old copy of the game, but seeing as the last update was released 8 months ago, that's highly unlikely.

If it helps, here's an animation. If your screen looks any different to below, then you've got an old game version.

ooooh.... pretty animation. I'm surprised the selected race isn't the Romulans .

I chose Federation on purpose as Federation is the default; its the screen that dilk is most likely to see and recognise.

It wasn't that hard to make. I just used a screen recorder program to record my selection making as an .avi file. I then converted it into a .gif animation, deleted a few hundred excess frames, cropped it, and optimised the image. (It went from 3mb to 100kb) All I had to do then was upload it to Imageshack and post it. It didn't even take 3 mins to do.