Factions/Caylion Plutocracy

Caylion need very little (other than ships), and thus give you no direction. They will support you well with any goals you choose. Recommended for players who are comfortable choosing a path for themselves without landmarks.

The Caylion are a good starter faction for new players since their early strategy is pretty linear and late game they'll have enough resources to do anything they want.

## Background

The Caylion had perfection. Oh, certainly their society was a chaotic mess; with a Dunbar's number of about twenty it was dominated by a few gregarious celebrities. But everything physically within their reach was under their tight control - and their reach extended to orbit. Factories hovered overhead as teleoperated drones tended to the oceans-made-farms. Their moons were slowly dismantled for raw resources to supply luxuries to their vast population. The Caylion had the kind of perfect safety that could only be imagined by a species rooted to the ground - unable to flee from danger.

Caylion are "trees" in the sense that they are rooted to the ground and rely on photosynthesis. This has several consequences:

Thinking requires a significant amount of energy, and photosynthesis is an inefficient method of gathering energy. The Caylion home world orbits a blue-white star that emits substantial amounts of energy, particularly in the form of UV light.

Since Caylion cannot move, their infrastructure does instead. They have perfected antigravity technology so they use hovering drones and factories. Their inability to move also leads them to think in terms of circles, distinguishing between what is within their reach and what is beyond it.

As they cannot flee, Caylion lack a traditional fight or flight response. Instead, they have a fight or curl-up-into-a-ball-and-lose-a-few-limbs response. Natural disasters are profoundly terrifying to them, surpassing human experiences. Consequently, their society highly values safety above all else.

### Language

Caylion text is swirly and curved, and arranged in a stair-step hexagonal pattern. The glyphs mimic their sign language (Caylion are deaf and do not vocalize).

### Picture

The Caylion profile depictions a bright blue sky due to the high amount of UV light emitted by their home sun. It also shows their red coloration which allows them to capture more light in the high end of the spectrum. Their hover drones and factions are displayed in the background.

### The Confluence

The Caylion are giving up their safety. In order to compete with the motile aliens, they've had to reach beyond their own sky, to spread beyond any concepts of protection or sanity. Now Caylion are volunteering for the trauma of uprooting themselves to visit other worlds. New colonies are being seeded with children and maintained by machines. The Caylion fear what may become of their fracturing society. but they must press on to have a place in the galactic community.

## Gameplay Information

* Their colony bids are halved.
* Planets they colonize have doubled production.

### Seedling Tokens

When a Caylion player takes a colony from the colony bid track, they put a x2 "seedling token" on it. The economic converter on colonies with a seedling token may be run twice each Economy Phase. Both uses of the converter are still simultaneous with all other converters.

The converter that flips the colony is unaffected (its cost is not doubled). The seedling token stays on a colony that is flipped, doubling the new converter.

If a colony with a seedling token is traded, the seedling token stays on the colony.

If a colony with a seedling token is discarded under the colony deck, the seedling token is removed from play.

If another player trades a colony to the Caylion, do not put a seedling token on it. The colony that the Caylion starts with does have a seedling token.

### Halved Colonization Bids

Caylion bids for colonies are halved, without rounding. A bid of 1 ship is worth ½, which is below the lowest possible minimum bid. Thus, it can't be used to pick up a card.

Odd numbers of ships grant fractional bids, which can be used to avoid tying another player.

Bids for research teams are not halved.

### Upgrading the Caylion Economy

Some starting Caylion cards have upgrade converters that produce a victory point and a yellow resource. Since these converters are run during the Trade Phase, the yellow they produce may immediately be traded away.

### Advice

Caylion colonies are extremely valuable and extremely expensive. They will want to bid five ships on colonies every turn for the first three turns to ensure that they don't delay colonization. To do this, they'll need to trade for ships from other players.

They should be willing to trade their colonies to other players - a good deal in the early game is three times what it produces. An excellent trade is for the Caylion to offer one of their colonies in exchange for a jungle colony and some resources. They can spend the jungle colony to upgrade one of their starting cards.

A Caylion player should never upgrade their starting cards with worlds they colonized - the colonies were far too expensive for them to spend in such a minor way. Instead, they should trade for jungle colonies from other players.

Caylion players should upgrade any colonies with seedling tokens as quickly as possible. If they have a choice during the Colony Bid, they should focus on getting colonies that all produce the same type of resource once upgraded. This will make inventing technologies that cost that resource very easy.

1. ↑ Sidereal Confluence Rulebook pp. 3
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 https://boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/SiderealConfluenceCaylionBackground