So despite being everyone's favorite reverse treehuggers, the Unfallen have easily the worst time interacting with Minor Factions. They can't even offer to help until they can get a vineship over to do the fan dance for sixteen whole turns at normal speed. Even a faction adjacent to your homeworld can be snapped up by another Empire via praise if you get to 100 relation and therefore can't praise further. Even Vodyani, who can't even technically assimilate minor factions, have a way to stake their claim on their flock. But if your vegetation is vegetating its way to a system and suddenly another empire overtakes you on the friendliness bar, you're out of luck. Something needs to change to make this nonsense less frustrating, and I've got a few thoughts:

1. Just leave the Praise option alone. If I can't, for whatever reason, assimilate a minor Faction, don't replace the praise option with a greyed out assimilate. Let me keep singing their praises until the cows come home.

2. Let Unfallen Assist and Assimilate minor factions, but have them remain independant but locked to them until the vines make their way downtown.

3. Let Unfallen Assist and Assimilate minor factions so long as they're within one system of their Celestial Vines, and have them attract the vines like Vineships. I'm partial to having these rules also apply to systems the Unfallen Occupy, because as-is the fastest way for the peace-loving tree people to obtain territory is to steal it from other people, instantly planting vines, which is... weird.

I'd happily take any one of these three, but my lord one of them needs to happen because the number of games where I've sat around, twiddling my thumbs as my vineship slowly hugs a friendly minor faction at 110 relation, only for the damn Lumeris to sneak in, grease a few palms, and yoink my new friends out from under me is absurd.

I think that #3 is how it works already, though it's been a while since I've played Unfallen.

#1 and #2 are good ideas which should be implemented. Are there any Ideas floating around that describe your proposed changes?

Finally, you always have the option of conquering the minor faction's system. It's effective in that you snag the assimilation trait,  and probably desireable compared to losing out to a rival empire even though you instantly raze the system. Of course this would require you to have the influence and fleet power necessary for war.

It doesn't DIRECTLY address the issue, but are you making sure to have fleets of vineships merged together?  Having multiple vineships working at once adds their vining speed, cutting the time in half for every ship in the fleet.

I honestly found Unfallen completely unplayable until someone pointed this out and I felt dumb for not thinking of it...

Considering that taking over an enemy system lets you spread your vines instantly, you should be able to assimilate a minor civ as soon as they are within range of your network.  Otherwise, it's faster and easier to simply conquer minor civs as the Unfallen...

For the record the Vodyani "brainwash" option does not actually prevent the Minor Faction from being assimilated by someone else, it just makes the threshhold for them being able to do that much harder.

Valadeus wrote:

For the record the Vodyani "brainwash" option does not actually prevent the Minor Faction from being assimilated by someone else, it just makes the threshhold for them being able to do that much harder.

Which is a rational thing to do, but this 1 turn "reverse brainwash"followed by swift, if not "the-same-turn assimilation is imho overexploited by AI. It has happened to me out-of-nowhere with Riftborn synchronizing their actions with Sophons.
I guess a 5 turn, let's say, "cannot be assimilated by a faction" delay could be implemented.
Also I like this Vodyani vassalage instead of full blown assimilation  - I deeply regret all factions cannot go 2-way - with firstmaking someone their vassal and then optionally assimilating them or even "freeing them" or your own planets. This could prevent influence maluses or thrwo your enemy to attack those fresh "free colonies".

Damn, I like those ideas a lot. Sadly they wont be implemented, I guess.

Valadeus wrote:

For the record the Vodyani "brainwash" option does not actually prevent the Minor Faction from being assimilated by someone else, it just makes the threshhold for them being able to do that much harder.

Are you sure about that? Because that would mean two empires could have the same Minor Faction Trait, which I don't think is actually... possible. It's certainly not something I've ever seen in any of the times I've played as or against the Vodyani. Like, other empires can declare war against the minor faction and take the system, sure, but that's not really the same thing.

I'm 100% positive, I've had converted factions sniped more than once. 

That seems like a bug.

That is a bug. A recurring bug which people assume to be by-design because nothing in the game says otherwise, nor are there any updated GDD's explaining how it's supposed to work.

The Brainwash action is supposed to permanently lock down a minor faction, preventing it from being taken except through invasion. Pretty much every update breaks it.

Anywho, back on topic, I think Minor Faction diplomacy needs a major rework. The idea that we have a meter to fill, but the game lets us go past that meter which messes with our ability to gain relations to take over the system, is absurd. The fact that the mechanic vanishes in the early game is also pretty silly, as just having the diplomacy continue to exist after assimilation would add a ton of depth to how we approach our own and other peoples empires by dealing with a few of their major systems as unique diplomatic entities.