The Unfallen/Affinity

An ancient race who have lived simple, harmonious lives for millennia, the Unfallen seek peace with the other races of the galaxy.

About
Gameplay
**Affinity**
Ships
Quests
Tutorials

## Affinity

### Traits

 Guardians
 Harmonious II
 Mutual Understanding I
 Off-World Agribusiness
 Planetary Landscaping

### Unique Mechanics

#### Guardians

These are a special population type only accessible via curiosity exploration. They're described in detail in the Population Traits section.

#### Celestial Vines

The Unfallen completely replace the normal colonization mechanic.

In order to colonize planets, they need to create a special entity viewable on the galactic map, called a Celestial Vine. Starting from their home system, these "vines" are able to extend to nearby systems; this works by performing a special action to "add" a new system to the network of vines; once it's added, if any nearby systems are in range, a "vine" will extend out to them from every nearby system that's also vined.

Once a system has been vined, you can instantly colonize a planet (that you have the colonization tech for) on it immediately and without any cost. You don't need to have a ship in orbit to do this last colonization step, and it costs no resources (critically; unlike other factions, you do not consume your ship). It instantly turns from an outpost into a full colony, so you neither have to take the food hit for a developing outpost, nor do you have to wait.

##### Vineships

Vining is accomplished via special vineships. You move these guys into a star node you'd like to vine, you start the vining process (a unique button similar to probe exploration), and if they manage to continue doing it for the required number of turns, the system will be vined (once vined, it stays vined, but if you're interrupted at any point, or stop at any point, your % progress will rapidly decay, being lost in roughly half the time it took to build up). It is worth mentioning again (since ship consumption is so universal of a mechanic for colonization) that at no point in the process are your vineships "used up/consumed" - this is one of the benefits of playing Unfallen.

**Stacking multiple copies of vineships, in a single fleet, divides the time taken to vine.** On normal speed the default is 20 turns, two vineships drops that to 10, 3 drop it to 5, etc. A large group of them can vine in one turn, but it always takes at least one turn. Note that they must be in the same fleet for this effect to take place. Note that a fleet in the midst of vining can pause, add more members, and immediately resume vining without losing progress.

##### Vine Benefits

Vines provide a number of buffs - a system that has been vined will receive bonus  (TODO: document exactly what you get). Vines also accelerate movement of both civilian and military ships - by about double. This applies not only to movement on starlanes, but also to off-starlane travel (i.e. "Warp"/"Free Movement"), as long as it's tracing the path of a vine.

##### Vining Special Nodes

The Unfallen cannot merely vine nodes with planets in them, but also "special nodes" like Nebulas, Black Holes, and Asteroid Fields; upon doing so, the resource bonuses of the node are applied only to your home system, not to the closest system.

##### Influence and Territory

Celestials Vines also replace the normal mechanic of having a large circle around your systems indicating "owned territory". Instead, systems which are vined are considered within your influence circle, and systems which aren't, are outside it. This means that a vined system is susceptible to "pacific conversion" once the Unfallen have the technology to do that.

##### Minor Faction Assimilation

In order to assimilate a minor faction, the Unfallen must first vine their system. The Unfallen can interact with them and spend influence on them beforehand, but cannot complete the assimilation step by either quest or buyout. (Most likely this is a check-and-balance against the Unfallen's staggering  growth, since they would otherwise grab almost every minor they encountered long before any other factions would have a chance).

##### Fixed Colonization Speed

As a sort of side-effect, not directly related to the celestial vines mechanic, but thematically related, the Unfallen don't consume  to colonize planets on a system they already inhabit, i.e., one where they already inhabit a single planet, and are trying to expand to other planets in the system by queuing a build command in the system management UI.

Instead of consuming , it just consumes a fixed number of turns (like a luxury-based "System Development Upgrade"). Fertile worlds consume 1 turn, non-fertile/non-sterile worlds consume 2, sterile worlds consume 3, and gas planets consume 4.

For brand-new systems with no population, this is a powerful asset because planets that would take other factions perhaps 15 turns to colonize on a new system take only 2 or 3 for the Unfallen. This becomes slightly counter-productive if a system is highly populated and has high , but often will only cost "a turn more than usual" in the worst-case, and ends up costing "several turns less" in most cases.

### Population Traits

By having the "Guardians" trait, the Unfallen effectively have two primary populations.

#### Unfallen

 20 Unfallen Population
 50 Unfallen Population

#### Guardians

Unlike your primary population, Guardians will never grow "naturally" via , nor starve. They can be created by moving an exploration ship over a planet that has a "Guardian" curiosity, and exploring the curiosity. You can't explore it via a system project, like regular curiosities, for some reason.

Guardians can be explored on planets which are not colonized, and the result is very inconsistent; sometimes I've explored one, colonized the planet, and received a Guardian; other times I've done it, and once I colonized the planet, there was no Guardian. I'm not sure if there's an internal mechanic governing it (like a hidden "colonize in X turns or it's gone" rule, or if it's different for "creating an outpost and letting it turn into a colony" versus "colonizing another planet in an already-colonized system". If anyone has more information on this, please fill us in. Right now I'm not inclined to chance it in regular gameplay, so I only bother revealing Guardians when I've fully colonized the planet.

Guardians seem to spawn on specifically Boreal, Forest, Jungle, Monsoon, Terran, and Toxic planets (confirmed in-game).

**Guardians are immobile.** They cannot be moved between planets or systems; they're stuck on the planet they were spawned on, forever.

Guardians create their own extra, dedicated population slot on the planet. They don't "use up" a population slot that's already present. If the guardian is destroyed, this population slot is lost. (Note that if a planet exceeds 14 pop slots, the max allowed by the game, this stops creating an additional slot, and the Guardian will be in contention for one of those 14 slots).

Guardians can be deliberately removed via a special "Guardian Sacrifice" system action that takes a whopping 5 turns on normal speed. It gives +20  for a modest chunk of time (10 turns?), and ... there's no reason you'd ever want to do this. It consumes a very large amount of time in your production queue, the  boost is pretty mediocre, and you lose the massive bonus you get from having a Guardian. This mechanic most likely exists not for the Unfallen themselves per se, but for other factions, since some factions like Horatio might actually develop higher-yield population units than Guardians and also have enough pop slots to overcome the normally free slot it creates for itself. Other factions have a slightly altered version of this ability which takes twice(?) as long.

Guardians can be revealed "onto" other empires when you're playing Unfallen, even if they're not. They receive the Guardian instead of you. Friendly AI factions will even have unique text responses for this, usually expressing their delight. This empire will receive the  benefits/maluses based on your relationship. Remember that even factions which are not Unfallen have a slightly altered version of the "Guardian Sacrifice" ability, to destroy the Guardian (it takes them many more turns than the Unfallen version, to discourage them from doing it), so beware of using this as an -reducing weapon because your opponent may (if pressed) choose to destroy it.

In very rare cases, you can receive Guardians when you are playing a **non**-custom faction other than Unfallen; there's a very rare curiosity that will reveal all curiosities in a system, including the hidden "Guardian" ones you're not allowed to interact with as that faction. This is incredibly niche, but it's fun if it happens.

 10 Guardians Population
 20 Guardians Population

**Note:** I believe the way the "if owner is enemy/friend of" trait works is based on whether the faction has the Guardians **trait**, not whether it has Guardian populations. It definitely self-applies even if you've contacted no one yet, at the beginning of the game. You'll have at least one guardian on Koyasil, so this gives a massive boost to  right at the start of the game.

**Honor Bound:** If you're playing as an "Honor Bound" faction (i.e., Hissho), the +5  is replaced with +10 , and the 10 Guardian collection bonus becomes +10% .

##### Guardian Guides

There's a population quest you can get, for collecting Unfallen pops, which can potentially convert one of them into a special variant of a Guardian. It cannot reproduce, so you only ever get one (and thus, it has no collection bonus). It has the same political alignment as a regular Guardian.

The flat bonuses from it are 300 damage to attackers, +10 , and 30 for the  modifiers instead of 20. If you're "Honor Bound", this is +20  instead of the .

##### Precept for Peace and Prosperity

As Harmony and good will pervade planets and systems that contain Guardian populations, political actions that promote peaceful relations become easier to enact. This law codifies Guardian ideas of harmonious connections when handling xenodiplomacy.

 Upkeep

**Notes:** You have to achieve 20 Guardian population across your empire to unlock this.

Strategically, the nice thing about this law is that although it eats up a law slot, in practice, it doesn't. You rarely need to enact diplomatic deals, but they're quite expensive when you do; so when you need one, turn this law on, enact the deal, and then turn it off.

Note also that this affects minor faction interaction costs, including the luxury-resource cost of their special actions.

#### Political Traits

##### Unfallen

 Anti-Industrialists
 Hedonistic

##### Guardians

 Anti-Militarists
 Hedonistic