Ascribing limited-lifespan human motivations to potentially infinite lifespan non-human intelligence is the core mistake here though. You look at running an em

Ascribing limited-lifespan human motivations to potentially infinite lifespan non-human intelligence is the core mistake here though. You look at running an empire with hundreds of years of message delay as pointless, they may view it as totally necessary. After all - if from your subjective opinion you blink and you're in another star system (hundreds of years later), then are you even worried about that time difference, or are you worried about whether they're still flying the right flags when you get there? (you can imagine a similar arrangement of times working out for social relationships over such timespans - duration might not much matter if everyone sort of agrees they'll wake up for X amount of subjective time before meeting up again in person).