The races aren't as unbalanced as you might think. Sure some race seems to have a huge bonus in one category, but as you will find out playing on, it's not THAT big of an advantage. It just takes a little getting used to...

As for political parties, yes, that's just the default for you to select (so change it to the one you want). The AI will select their own as well. You can see their government if you spend some time spying on them, it's not always federalist.

ive found that most of the racial pics can be hugly negated (or boosted) based on your galaxy starting conditions. without giving away to much of the game, its safe to say that what you pic (with the exceptions of a very few) as racial bonusus are more in the naure of just that, bonusus, there is no wrong choice, you cant be hurt by picking or NOT picking any given ability. its just that some are more valuable than others in a general kind of way.

just as a for instiance, you can choose to take a racial bonus for an increase in ship speed. nice edge for the starting games, but pretty much usless when hyperwarp III is here and you can cross even huge galaxys in 2 or 3 turns. now a racial moral improvment pic is solid gold, you can never have too much moral at ANY stage of the game. but even then if you get a start with 1-2 or even 3 moral SB tiles then your racial bonus is again pretty much negated, since a bonus of 20% to something that is allready at max is wasted.

when i choose my pics, i go for things that are allways going to benifit me the most, for the whole game, on any kind of a galaxy starting position. the fun is in learning what those pics are that best fit your playing style.

but again i stress not to really worry about them too much, they wont make or break your game even if you know nothing about what they are and what they do. they are used more for the micro managers to get every last erg out of a play style than anything that will hurt newbies.

alot of how the AI ends up is really in how hard you set their AI intelligence. the higher you set it the better they are at taking advantage of their pics, as well as other in game factors , IE building the right improvments on bonus planet tiles and such. i play on normal AI and its really a crap shoot as to who or even IF anyone dominates, you can bet that the drengi/yor allways end up with a pisser of a millitary, and the torians (who ALLWAYS race to planet invasion) can generaly grab alot of planets early till they either loose the tech monopoly, or i just give it away.

but in all seriousness, dumbing down the AI (atleast once you have learned the basics) is imo a bad move, it really cripples them. and makes for mostly really lopsided games. play a few times on normal or better and it really does make the game more fun.

i think that all the talk about how 'awsome' the AI is, tends to put some people in the wrong frame of mind about it. in this game its been my experiance that unlike alot of other games, the lables are just right, if you use normal you get a basicaly normal game, if you dumb it down you can really get some DUMB enemys. in the really dumb setting you basicaly playing a solo game and the hardest part is to stop the AI from bumping into you and denting your hulls as they wander about in laa laa land.

if your playing the game and having troubles with the AI really being unballanced or seeming like it, then check your AI settings, i had issues with it for a while then i cranked it up from less than normal to normal or better and it was a MUCH improved game.

have you tried making a custom race? If you do you will see that race bonuses and starting techs are distributed by a "points" system. Each race has the same number of points. You may have seen the yor, with ships two times faster than yours at the beginning. That is because instead of maybe stellar coreography, they chose hyperdrive or whatever.

heh change the AI setting to higher than 'normal' and give it a run.

as for the stock humans, the story line is that it was us humans that had the brains to build the first hyperdrive, and since we are a 'child' race in compairson to the other races we have a large diplo advantage since there are no thousand year grudges attached to us.

truly though i havent seen any of the races 'advantages' last much beyond the first 100-200 turns or so depending on how fast you set the research speed. i play at really slow to actualy make the research spent, and EVERY upgrade, mean something. but you can allways research anything that you may need to compeat and exceed the AI.

i set my humans up with 20 economy 20 moral and 20 research bonusus i think (only use those 3 pics anyhow, with it weighted to research) and i seldom have trouble. most games i dont even have to run trade routs to make money, and i can take the lead in tecs with little trouble specialy if i grab a tec SB resource. usualy im getting a stream of offers to trade AIs second best weapons tecs for interstellar goverments

the only time i get into trouble, and have actualy lost games was getting the war declaration because i ignored weapons research to focus on empire building tecs. the AI smells blood like a pack of hungry sharks if you dont build ANY war ships. i have to smile some times when i have no fleet and the drengi and yor are hostile only to see them turn neutral again in 10 turns when ive churned out a small fleet of fighters. so ive learned to spend a few turns doing missle research and just make some crap missle 'defenders' . thats usualy enough to give me room to get my empire set up the way i like it.