According to Stardock's strategy guide for beginners, after we select a race (say humans) we're supposed to use up the remaining points. This suggests that the race defaults are not balanced.
This seems the obvious deduction since some races have -2 ability points left over (e.g. the Korx) which means they've used up MORE than 10 points. Others like the Iconians have as many as 6 points leftover.
The problem is adjusting the ability points would lead to special abilities like miniaturization and loyalty +100 disappearing. Which seems to suggest that the game actually meant us to play the races AS THEY ARE without any tweaking (except for maybe political parties).
What is the official Stardock position? Have the races be pre-balanced already or do we need to adjust their points?
P.S. On a related point, the races descriptions in the "Select Other Civs" screen is a bit strange. The races summary ability descriptions don't match their real abilities. For instance the Iconians are described as "Weak in Research" even though they have by default +20 Research, the highest among all the races.
