The white-furred Uhibu struggled for centuries to find prosperity on their frigid homeworld. Warm years were few and far in between, and the Uhibu were forced to cooperate with one another, whether everybody wanted to or not. Their society is built to favor the community's needs first and foremost, and they believe in every citizen being put to optimal use based on their skillset. Those who do not wish to do the work assigned to them are... convinced. The community must always be ready to weather the next storm.

Born from famine and frost, they have grown into a solemn and hardworking people with an expertise in the realm of getting people to work together in moments of crisis, and little tolerance for free-wheeling thinkers. They view science as a poor substitute for planning and hard work, and as a concept, war bewilders them - why kill your enemies when you can make them work your fields and greenhouses?

Special Actions:

• Heads Down: The community needs all hands on deck; dissenters are to be silenced or reeducated. The Uhibu can spend Influence to lock their own systems’ approval rating to 50% and penalize scientific production for a fixed number of turns, in exchange for a bonus to food, industry, and resource production, and a reduction of blockade effects if applicable.

• Staged Tours: How beautiful our Potemkin villages are! The Uhibu can enact a special diplomatic action on other empires that clears all negative reactions and reputations, temporarily prevents more from being applied by that empire, increases the cost of declaring war, and provides a slight bonus to the Uhibu's diplomatic pressure against the target. After the policy expires, so does the ruse, and the target empire becomes immune to this diplomatic option for a number of turns afterwards, as well as enjoying a slight diplomatic pressure bonus against the Uhibu in return.

Bonuses and Traits:

• Frigid Homeworld: Begins the game on a Tundra planet, and able to colonize all Cold planets (Arctic, Tundra, Boreal).

• Special Visas: Uhibu propaganda is slightly more effective, and leeches from all systems, even those that have closed their borders.

• Arctic Agriculture: Bonus food and population cap on Cold and Frozen planets.

• Out of Many, One: Bonus food and influence generated for every non-Uhibu faction represented in a system’s population

• Project Management: Bonus industry for members of the Uhibu’s Alliance, increasing based on number of members.

• Technophobia: Overall science penalty.

• Just Want to be Friends: Overall increase to war exhaustion.

• Sticks & Stones: Overall increase to cost of combat modules.

The Uhibu are all about building large and diverse populations and alliances, generating influence from their diverse populations, and leveraging that influence in times of sudden and immediate crisis to help stabilize and protect the community. They should reward the player for trying to branch out and have borders with many other factions to draw new kinds of population from, as well as building up influence stockpiles and then dropping large amounts of influence on their systems and into diplomacy all at once in order to stabilize crisis situations, such as diplomatic tensions, sieges, special events, and so on.

I look forward to seeing whose ideas come out ahead! :D

Nice idea, pretty original to play what amounts to space soviets. Maybe a bit of a lack on the theme of pacifist diplomats? Most of your traits seem focused inwards as opposed to interacting with other empires, at least from my understanding.