Fine I don't have that much game time so I guess I'll shut up but I think you're not seeing the Unfallen the right way.  They do drop off after a while but then aren't they supposed to excel at a passive play? Them having a too strong early games just makes them super hard to take on during the mid game and if you nerf their mid game then they really lose a lot of their indentity.

Also, although I have played with it yet, remember that you do have forced peace early on that you can combine with reduce diplomatic costs to try and kep people off your back. Or hell do militarise early game and stop other players colonies yourself. Sure they're no as good at it as the cravers or the vodyani but they aren't particuliarly worst than the other races.

 They were broken as hell before the nerf and now they are still fearsome. A competent Unfallen player can deploy 48-60 Cp worth of ships with T3 components by turn 55-60 on normal speed. Good luck dealing with them as HE, Vodyani or Horacio. None of above stand a chanse against Unfallen. 

And after Unfallen vine enough asteroids/neigtron stars he became nearly unstopable. Vining special objects should be nerfed further.

In response,

AI Diplomatic pacts were easy enough before! They just costed you resources which was balanced as it was. My issue is with the incentive. Also as someone who enjoys ES2 multiplayer as well as singleplayer, in-game diplomacy is not really relevent beyond FIDSI bonuses as human opponents will decieve you. 

As for growth, yes they are still very high and can grow a system faster than any race apart from the cravers early game, but the point was that they are supposed to be strong very early to support their pacifist agenda and playstyle and discourage races who are predominantely mid-game or late-game oriented from free bullying them early on.

Cravers can bully anybody early, unfallen included, but thats the point of playing cravers. 

Removing the early game strengths of the unfallen puts their early game on par with (or IMO even less than) the other races without compensating their mid or late game with some kind of buff. 

Yes I am perfectly aware that stacking vineships decreases vining duration, but vine ships are STILL extremely vulnerable (more than colonizers as summerized), They take longer to build and magnitudes moreso if you hope to defend them adequately AND are still reliant on starlanes and thus you cannot cherry pick systems like other races can. 

I appreciate we do not want the unfallen to be overpowered, but the point of early game races like Cravers (Military) and Unfallen (Pacifist) is that they are strong early and drop off later in the game. I'm not saying don't nerf the unfallen, I'm saying the nerfs thay made ruin the Unfallen and the areas they were strong at and fun to play for. Why play a race that is now sub-par early and also sub-par late? 

PS. for some insight I have 247 hours played, many of which has been with 8+ multiplayer. 

If you find the ability to more easily make diplomatic pacts as the Unfallen useless I think you're playing them wrong. Also they are drowning in food so how are having any problem with population? And not to be a total dick but you do realise that you can use more than one vineship to divide by 2 for each the colonisation time? I not sure if that helps for the first colony but after than it should never take you more than 10 or 5 turns to colonise an other system.

The way I heard it Unfallen were one of the most powerfull factions already so a slightly slower start shouldn't be a problem for them.