Religion is an interesting aspect of any civilization, and it would be interesting to see in Stellaris as well. Organized religion would require your empire to be spiritualist and then maybe either a dedicated tradition tree or an ascension perk to unlock a full blown Galactic Cult. You could even have a new federation type built upon that, kinda like the Covenant from the Halo series.
I'm mostly brainstorming options here, so the specifics of my idea will be rather vague and unrefined.
Mechanically it would look something like if the Religion in Civ 5 had a child with Megacorporations and their branch offices. Religion would only affect spiritualist pops, so every single spiritualist pop would be a blank slate that can embody any of the religions, and there would be proximity based pressure that is affected by things like open/closed borders, trade agreements, federations and such. You'd have your founder beliefs that give the founder a benefit based on the number of pops in the Galaxy following this religion, you'd have religious "branch offices", lets call them "ministries", where you'd be able to construct your religions specific temple building on the planet, or allow the owner of the planet to construct a temple concentrated on that specific religion on their planet. All it would take are spiritualist pops on the planet. A temple that is concentrated to a religion would give religious pressure, spiritualist attraction, AND would increase the happiness of spiritualist pops who follow the same religion. It would give priest jobs for the owner of the planet, and also some sort of bonus to the owner of the religion.
Other empires could either choose to pick a state religion, ban religion altogether or allow a freedom of religion, which could cause unrest issues if there are a lot of pops belonging to opposing faiths. Joining a Religion could work similarly to joining a federation, and would provide for an additional supernational organization to be part of. If a religious war is then declared against some other empire, there might be incentives to join that war if you're following that faith. Just think of all the fun you could have with declaring space crusades.
Then there could be things like stance on synthetics and the shroud; there could be religions that see the shroud as some sort of sacred realm, while others see it as essentially a hell-realm that is infested with demons. Some religions might think synthetics are our chance to get closer to divinity while others see bionics as an abomination to be destroyed. Stances warfare and such. Perhaps in extreme cases, spiritualist pops with a religion could be counted as having a second ethic; warlike religions would make spiritualist pops who have adopted the religion also count as militarists, while followers of pacifistic religions would also count as pacifists. There could be xenophile religions and maybe XENOPHOBE religions, where you have to adopt a race into the faith for them to be considered having soul and worthy individuals; xenos who have not been sanctified would be considered less than sentient while sanctified species would be considered to be part of the faith, maybe with layers of hierarchy included.
Just some thoughts. I'd really like to see religions in the game in some form or another, and having some sort of super-spiritualist tradition tree to unlock the feature in the same manner as diplomacy unlocks forming a federation.
I'm mostly brainstorming options here, so the specifics of my idea will be rather vague and unrefined.
Mechanically it would look something like if the Religion in Civ 5 had a child with Megacorporations and their branch offices. Religion would only affect spiritualist pops, so every single spiritualist pop would be a blank slate that can embody any of the religions, and there would be proximity based pressure that is affected by things like open/closed borders, trade agreements, federations and such. You'd have your founder beliefs that give the founder a benefit based on the number of pops in the Galaxy following this religion, you'd have religious "branch offices", lets call them "ministries", where you'd be able to construct your religions specific temple building on the planet, or allow the owner of the planet to construct a temple concentrated on that specific religion on their planet. All it would take are spiritualist pops on the planet. A temple that is concentrated to a religion would give religious pressure, spiritualist attraction, AND would increase the happiness of spiritualist pops who follow the same religion. It would give priest jobs for the owner of the planet, and also some sort of bonus to the owner of the religion.
Other empires could either choose to pick a state religion, ban religion altogether or allow a freedom of religion, which could cause unrest issues if there are a lot of pops belonging to opposing faiths. Joining a Religion could work similarly to joining a federation, and would provide for an additional supernational organization to be part of. If a religious war is then declared against some other empire, there might be incentives to join that war if you're following that faith. Just think of all the fun you could have with declaring space crusades.
Then there could be things like stance on synthetics and the shroud; there could be religions that see the shroud as some sort of sacred realm, while others see it as essentially a hell-realm that is infested with demons. Some religions might think synthetics are our chance to get closer to divinity while others see bionics as an abomination to be destroyed. Stances warfare and such. Perhaps in extreme cases, spiritualist pops with a religion could be counted as having a second ethic; warlike religions would make spiritualist pops who have adopted the religion also count as militarists, while followers of pacifistic religions would also count as pacifists. There could be xenophile religions and maybe XENOPHOBE religions, where you have to adopt a race into the faith for them to be considered having soul and worthy individuals; xenos who have not been sanctified would be considered less than sentient while sanctified species would be considered to be part of the faith, maybe with layers of hierarchy included.
Just some thoughts. I'd really like to see religions in the game in some form or another, and having some sort of super-spiritualist tradition tree to unlock the feature in the same manner as diplomacy unlocks forming a federation.
- 4
.png){kind=avatar}
