"Major bug" turned out to be a bit of confusion.... doh (still a minor bug).

I don't know which version of the game you run

but with 1.1 final (1.10.27)
I don't have this problem
when I reset a race (altarians for example)
some abilities are left over but they can be reset by changing the setting of the corresponding ability
(for example they have luck 30 after reset : I check the box luck(+25) then uncheck => gone)

if you still have problems I might suggest deleting
"My Documents\My Games\GalCiv2\*.raceconfig" (without the quotes, and backup them if you wish before)

You do know that you get abilities from technologies, right?
And since you start with some technologies, you will get some ability-bonuses at turn 1.

For example Altarians, they start with among others Xeno Communications and Xeno Engineering.
Xeno Communications gives +5 Diplomacy and Xeno Engineering gives +10 Social Production.
Mystery solved.

I feel stupid but I also feel 100% better someone finally looked at it. Yep, it was the technologies. All those bonuses are from the techs.

Wanna know what threw me off though? Every time I load a custom race, it tries to give me a +20% Social and +10% Military and +10% Research bonus for free, bringing me down to -5 Racial Ability points. I makes it look like the game is trying to give "free bonuses". I bet this behavior is related to the starting techs too, since they match up.

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If you want the easy way to see the default abilities and techs, just open the RaceConfig.XML file.

I have seen this on custom as well and haven't received any replies from devs (at least not that I have seen). The "bonuses" that I get is Deplomacy + 10%, Soc Production +10% and Mil Production +10% with -4 Points.

SWEET! Yes, this is definitely a bug, but it is minor and there is a simple workaround. I was just able to get my Social up to +200%, my miltary up to +100% and my research up to +100%.

Here is the bug: Create a custom race, and don't forget to choose starting techs. Whatever bonuses your starting techs give you will be added to your race when you save it. So, if you have the three starting Diplo techs (which give a total of +20% Diplomacy), then your race will be saved with an extra 20% diplomacy. This effect occurs every time you save the race. So, if you save and reload the race 5 times, you will give your race a +100% to diplomacy.

Here is the workaround: Whenever you load your custom race to play with it, be aware of those extra free bonuses and get rid of them before you play.

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