Unfallen vine/guardian mechanics?

[Ole' Swifty]

Anyone have any idea all the in's and outs of the unfallen?

Do guardians give happiness to every other player that is connected to vines? only peace/allys? Only on those systems? ect.

[Wintermute]

Guardians give global happiness bonus to your entire empire.

Vines are just prettier (an more broken) influence zone.

[JustNoLuck]

Some important things about them which aren't really mentioned in the help text:

-Once they're created, vines connect to every vined system within a certain range, *regardless* of whether they have a space lane connecting them or not.

-Guardians give you +5 happiness on your entire empire for each system that has a guardian in it (if a system has multiple guardians it still only gives +5).

-After you vine up an allied territory, you can search it for guardians. Using probes to put guardians in allied turf gives you the same global +5 happiness benefit you get from your own territories (in addition to the benefits the ally gets).

Gameplay wise, I'm getting success by going for a crazy settlement explosion using lots of early vine ships and Question-ships kitted with double probe modules. Once you get your guardian happiness base going, you can easily expand past the disapproval limit. I'm at 14 systems in my current game with -60 expansion disapproval and +65 guardian approval bonus. Every single one of my planets is ecstatic (you can also probably make something work with those -happiness laws)

Edit: One thing that screwed me over and I don't think was explained by help text: When you try to assimilate a minor faction using diplomacy, you have to vine their system BEFORE you can ask them to join you. So when you're praising a minor faction, you usually want to try and time your vine construction so it finishes around the same time when you'll be able to ask them to join you.

[Astasia]

Friendly vines double your movespeed and increase food in systems by 10%.

Guardians also add 20 influence generation to the system they are in.

I don't know how the mechanics effect enemies or allies of the unfallen. I refuse to play against them because it seems like a bad time.

Originally posted by JustNoLuck:

(if a system has multiple guardians it still only gives +5).

Not true, I think the issue you noticed is that the guardian you start with at the beginning of the game doesn't provide any global happiness, so if you find a second guardian in that system right away it will say you are only getting +5 instead of the +10 you expect. However you can have like 4 or 5 guardians in a system all adding to global happiness.

[HolyMole]

Originally posted by JustNoLuck:

-Once they're created, vines connect to every vined system within a certain range, *regardless* of whether they have a space lane connecting them or not.

o . O ! Thanks, I thought there should be more to it. Just played first short game with them and guess I had a bad start.

[JustNoLuck]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Not true, I think the issue you noticed is that the guardian you start with at the beginning of the game doesn't provide any global happiness, so if you find a second guardian in that system right away it will say you are only getting +5 instead of the +10 you expect. However you can have like 4 or 5 guardians in a system all adding to global happiness.

Totally correct, I reloaded an old save to doublecheck and sure enough waking up 2 guardians in the same system gave me a total of +10 happiness. Which makes this mechanic seem even stronger, jeez

Also I was wrong about need to vine allied territories before searching them for guardians. You can find them without vines so long as you're at peace.

[radbass2]

Originally posted by JustNoLuck:

Originally posted by Astasia:

Not true, I think the issue you noticed is that the guardian you start with at the beginning of the game doesn't provide any global happiness, so if you find a second guardian in that system right away it will say you are only getting +5 instead of the +10 you expect. However you can have like 4 or 5 guardians in a system all adding to global happiness.

Totally correct, I reloaded an old save to doublecheck and sure enough waking up 2 guardians in the same system gave me a total of +10 happiness. Which makes this mechanic seem even stronger, jeez

Also I was wrong about need to vine allied territories before searching them for guardians. You can find them without vines so long as you're at peace.

Still not quite there. You can activate guardians at ANY TIME. They are present regardless of ownership or diplomatic status. They are even there if noone owns the system.

[radbass2]

Originally posted by Astasia:

I don't know how the mechanics effect enemies or allies of the unfallen. I refuse to play against them because it seems like a bad time.

It's horrible. The vines are totally permanent even after conquering a planet. To remove them you have to eliminate the entire faction. This is made extra messed up by the fact that the vines completely override normal spheres of influence. Meaning that if your world has vines, it is 100% in the Unfallen faction's territory, regardless of the strength of your circle of influence. Vines also 100% steal bonus nodes like black holes and asteroids.

Also, the Cravers and Unfallen are the only factions with any ability to remove Guardian pop.

(on a totally unrelated note, in normal play I don't understand why anyone would use the pits to sacrifice minor pop as Cravers. Once your planets deplete, high concentrations of enslaved population are the only way to keep you economy from grinding to a halt)


TL:DR the only NOT horrible part about the Unfallen AI is that their leader voice has a scottish accent.

[Serikos]

ok so from what ive experienced:

The unfallen use "vineships" to extend a vine to a nearby system, once the vine has grown there it envelopes the system and it can then be colonised, essentially your empire is like a giant mess of string from one system to the next, but this is not limited to just the space lanes, so it can grow into a bit of a web.

If someone takes over one of your system they will also destroy any attached vines so you lose control of that system completely. The main disadvantage seems to be how vulnerable your vine ships are to being stopped as you dont seem to get a normal control area like other races do meaning you can easily be vulnerable for a long time in neutral areas where they can attack you.

Guardians are effectively extra populations you can awaken, apparantly they will impair enemies progress if they take over the system they are in. also they will get a political group in your empire.

and finally i think the vines had a crippling flaw in that if they get cut off from your heart(homeworld), you will lose all the systems on the other side of the chain... basically half your empire could go up in flames if you dont guard the critical locations properly

[meiam]

Unfallen mechanic are pretty broken right now (like a lot of mechanics) guardian pretty much allow you to ignore happiness and early game they give you very nice boost. The vine system also allow you to colonize much faster than other civ.