Upon clicking the "new game" button, one is taken to a Set-up page where one can select different variations of AI opponents: Random, Aggresive, Economy etc.

I think it would be fun to have similar options for your own race. Perhaps there could be a certain bonus offset with a corresponding penalty in a different area?

Say, when playing Advent, you could select an option that would give your race a bonus to shields but a pentalty in economy or Perception?  Perhaps you could select a Tech Branch you would like your race to have a bonus in and the corresponding penalty would be randomly applied to a differant Tech Branch?  There's lots of ways something like this could be designed. 

I think most players would enjoy having an assortment of differing bonus/penalty options for each race even if the bonuses and penalties only affected the cost of researching certain Tech Tree Branches.

Has anyone else thought of other ways to add more strategic variety to the existing races?