Biography: This race of highly powerful telepaths was engineered by the Virtual Endless as a way to keep slave races servile and obedient. With their powers of mind control, entire races that were engineered or conquered were made to monomaniacally serve the Endless' will. Now that they are masterless, their natural tendency for psychic domination has taken on more subtle overtones. Physically frail and few in number, they rely on other races for protection and labour. However, without the enhanced methods of the Endless to help them dominate lesser races, their powers are not as effective as they once were. Now, the Path of Unity insinuate themselves into galactic and planetary politics, using their powers to sway elections, foment insurrections and topple empires from within. 

Affinity: 

Domination: The Path of Unity can spend Influence in order to convert the psychological traits/political ideology of a population unit on any planet they control. If the planet's entire population holds a unified political belief, that planet's approval level is locked at max.

Faction Traits:

-Increased influence gain

-Very low manpower generation. Path faction members are exceptionally weak at ground defense

-Presence of a Path faction population creates diplomatic pressure for all factions in neighbouring planets.

-Political propaganda is significantly more powerful

-Combat ships are overall weak in both offense and defense

Gameplay style: The faction's entire gameplay revolves around setting up single-party planets and reaping the FIDSI benefits that unified belief causes. To this end, they have the ability to manually convert the political beliefs of their population, and their propaganda lets them quickly poach population units of a specific belief. The increased diplomatic pressure also allows them to more aggressively pursue diplomatic arrangements with other empires to make up for their overall military weakness.

I'm worried that they may simply become "food" for other more warmongering races who want to stop paying for the demands of the enhanced diplomatic pressure, because they are weak both offensively and defensively. Ways to counter this disadvantage for militarily weak factions have lead to things such as: privateer minor faction armies for the Roving Clans, the Drakkens being able to force peace, Sophons having access to advanced technology, the Horatio having more heroes to lead their fleets, or in my submission, they have stronger defenses and the diplomatic demands exact less of a toll on other factions. Do you have a counter in mind for you faction?

Great overall though. A good theme that would fit well into the Endless Space Galaxy.