Evolutions

Evolutions are a new asymmetric space culture tree added to the game as part of the Evolving Empires expansion. You **must own Evolving Empires to have access** to Evolutions.

This new space culture tree sits to the right of the existing space culture trees and provides every race, including all 6 of the base game races and the 2 races introduced in Natural Law, with their own unique set of unlockable asymmetric powers.

Each Evolution set is designed to bring about significant game-altering changes that go beyond what traditional space culture perks have to offer. While these are always highly beneficial, each evolution tree also contains perks which introduce unique challenges you will have to overcome.

Each Evolution perk is unlocked as part of a space culture level-up. This means you’ll be forced to make tough decisions about whether to use your hard earned level-up to select your favorite traditional Adventure, Wealth, or perk, potentially unlocking an early game bonus or the chance to build a wonder, or to unlock your next evolution perk.

## Enabling Evolutions

In order to enable Evolutions to appear in your game, you must check the box to enable them during game setup.

## Evolution Unlocks

Each Evolution tree is comprised of 5 perks spread across two mutually exclusive paths.

The first tier perk (in the topmost position) will always be available to unlock and actually must be unlocked before proceeding further down the tree. Once a second tier perk is selected, your path is then locked in and you will be unable to unlock the two perks on the other side of the tree in that particular game.

In order to move further down the tree, you must continue to unlock space culture perks until the required number have been unlocked. Prior Evolution perks count towards this requirement.

* Tier 1 - Requires 1 prior space culture perk be unlocked.
* Tier 2 - Requires 4 prior space culture perks be unlocked, including the Tier 1 perk.
* Tier 3 - Requires 7 prior space culture perks be unlocked, including the Tier 1 and Tier 2 perks.

## Custom Races and Race Affinity

Each race in the game has its own race affinity named after them. Each evolution set is tied to one of these race affinity sets.

If you create a custom race, you can mix and match any abilities or appearances with any Evolution set by changing that custom race's affinity. So, if for instance you want to look like Humans while using your preferred set of racial ability modifiers and the Moltar Evolution set, you can do so by changing the affinity.

## Randomizing Evolutions

While it is recommended that your first experience with the Evolutions be with their standard paths, it is possible to randomize all space culture perks in the game, including Evolution perks.

When Evolution perks are randomized, the Tier 2 and Tier 3 perks within a specific Evolution set will be shuffled and could appear in either position on either side of the Evolution tree. This can allow two perks to be available that would normally be on mutually exclusive paths. Note that Tier 1 perks are always kept in the Tier 1 position.

To randomize Evolutions, you must ensure Evolutions are enabled. You must then also enable "Random Culture Perks" and select either "Evolutions" (only Evolutions) or "All" (all culture perks, including Evolutions) from the drop-down to randomize.

## Evolution Sets

* Human
* Draguul
* Moltar
* Sulak
* Kaek
* Nova
* Cerixx (requires Natural Law)
* Palacean (requires Natural Law)