Long time Endless player, first time poster, inspired by swapping ES2 hype with some of my students...

I love playing non-violent factions in ES and EL, and I sometimes modify them to fit my ideal of diplomatic pacifists: The Jedi. Rather than make a race of saber-wielding monks, what if you could play as The Force? And if you'll pardon the Star Wars prequels reference... What if you could play as the midichlorians?

The Dichtyon should be powerful allies for whatever victory you're attempting to achieve - but don't expect them to stick around if it's conquest you're after. They have a strong incentive to maintain galactic peace and, with the help of their allies, expunge unrepentant warmongers like the cancers that they are. Want to take the Dichtyon down? Simple: sow chaos and death across the galaxy... if you can.

Faction Mechanics:

1. Deep Understanding - The Dichtyon are adept at viewing problems holistically and finding novel solutions. Whatever it is you’re trying to do, they can help. 

   • Empires at peace with the Dichtyon receive bonuses to approval, influence per turn, and hero xp gain rate. These bonuses double for an alliance.

   • The Dichtyon receive these bonuses as well, which can stack.

2. Hypersensitive - The Dichtyon view all life as one and all violence as self-violence. War is akin to cutting off one’s own limb - horrible, brutal, but sometimes necessary in dire straits.

   • The Dichtyon receive penalties to approval, influence per turn, and hero xp gain rate for every war status that exists between any two known empires. 

   • +20% on defenses, -20% on weapon damage

3. Calming Presence - The Dichtyon's neighbors are often left to question their free will. Have they always desired peace so much? That can't be a bad thing, right?

   • Foreign systems within the influence radius of a Dichtyon system show a persistent trend toward Pacifist politics

   • Political Ideology: Pacifists

4. Full Belly, Open Heart - Population Bonus

   • Dichtyon population produces a bonus to food and influence

Background:

The Dichtyon home planet is a moist world hospitable to the growth of slime mold. At one point in the planet’s past, its native slime evolved to balance its consumption against the growth of other organic matter, limiting and controlling its own growth even as it solidified its position on top of the ecosystem. After the passage of eons, the slime’s effortless ability to slide between uni- and multi-cellular forms grew into a shadowy consciousness. Now, that consciousness has grown into a deeply intelligent and disturbingly wise planet-spanning entity which is simultaneously singlular and plural in its existence: The Dichtyon. Dichtyon memory points clearly in one direction: ever closer union with the galaxy surrounding it. Working toward this goal with zealous fervor, The Dichtyon have begun amassing spores - amorphous mounds of slime with effective, but limited intelligence - to further explore their environs. Chance encounters with exceptional individuals have greatly expanded its communication abilities. These emissaries, augmented through a disassembly and reassembly on a cellular level, venture out into the cosmos to spread the word: Peace and understanding are the only goal. The future must be won. The future must be ONE.

Leadership: Any given cluster of Dichtyon is only as intelligent as it is large and planet-sized colonies leverage their distributed processing advantage by collecting perspectives into separate nodes of aggregation.

• Hardened Husk - Tasked with the creation of all permanently shaped objects, the Husk thinks primarily in terms of production and defense.
• Probing Pod - Reaching and observing, the Pod manages not only the acquisition of knowledge, but also the application of that knowledge toward fostering life.
• Central Cluster - Traditionally the largest of the nodes. More concerted thought is necessary to navigate peacefully toward an uncertain future with other empires.

I like the concept here. Cool stuff. And I like how you put emphasis on heroes, something I don't remember seeing here yet. Would be really fun to have super strong peace-loving Dichtyon heroes roaming the Endless galaxy making judgements on the more evil-inclined empires. Great idea!  
You got my vote!