Ability to change race without completely starting over

I'd love the ability to change my race without having to completely start over.  An ability to try other races within my own faction would be great feature to have.  The current reset is simply too drastic.  Starting over completely from scratch is too much of a loss of time invested into the game.  I can see switching factions requiring a complete reset, but being able to stay within my faction and paying some sort of penalty being a great feature.

I would accept losing all of my units and have to start them over from level 1, but if my building levels and research would remain I would simply have to invest the time to level up my units again to get back to where I was before.

Things like CPs and fame wouldn't need to be adjusted as only units are being impacted. so the overall level of changes to the game might not be too significant.