Changing starting AbilityBonus and TechTree/Research Points.

The easiest way is to modify your raceconfig file in the My Docs\Games\GalCiv2 folder.

Notepad works fine for this.

You can look in the TechTree.xml file (located in C:\Program Files\Stardock\TotalGaming\GalCiv2\Data\English) for the correct names of the techs as well as their requirements, if any. (Notepad or Wordpad also work fine for this, too)

the "customization points" dont work, I changed them from 0 to 100, ingame happens absolutely nothing. I keep my 10 points all the time

changings the abilities result in nothing too (at least at my side). example: the custom race have 25 soldiering 25 loyalty and 6 logistics. Lets say you edit planet quality to 10 and start the game, now you have population growth 10, but only 7 customization points left.

On the other hand, you could set soldiering to 0 (thats actualy 1 point) and set population growth to 10 (1 point too). actualy you should be good with this, but you will not. Well, I have had just 9 customization point left on race selection.

So this seems to be somehow hardcoded. But I havent tested it with 1.2, so maybe it is working now. Btw, you could edit antything and start the game, you could end up with -100 customization points, but make sure you dont hit the "clear" or "reset" button

you're right, the customization points don't work the way they're suppposed to for the human player (edit: they don't work the way one might they would for a human player. for all i know it's intentional). i'm not sure, but i think they might be there to balance the AI.

the files you want are raceconfig.xml and techtree.xml. the originals are in GalCiv2/data/English (or whatever language youi're playing). copy them into galciv2/mods/data and edit them to your heart's content!

if you're planning to rebalance players or techs, you might also find these files useful:
customplanets.xml (home systems. i modded this just so the other races had more interesting extra planets).
GC2Types.xml (stats for all the functional ship comps)

you don't have to edit them in the mods folder. i just think it's a lot easier (assuming you're using 1.2b).

note, when you edit the values in raceconfig.xml, the only way to get "free" bonuses (like the terran ones to diplomacy and trade) is to give bonus values that are not identical to values you can buy. in other words, you can pay custom points to get a 10, 20 or 30 percent HP bonus. if you write a 25 bonus into the raceconfig file, it won't cost you any custom points (once you hit "clear" in the bottom of the race setup screen in the game).