Title is a lie, I'm actually more of a xenophile/militarist/materialist, but lets get on with it.
Note that this is assumed that the player is playing vs. AI on a high difficulty. MP is a bit of a different beast.
https://www.tierlists.com/list/stellaris-origins
Top tier:
Hegemon: Easily the most dominant origin. This gets you two fully-powered AI allies to bend to your will in early conquest. Utilize them to conquer at least 3-4 enemy homeworlds so that you have ~150 pop while everyone else has 40, then kick one out of the federation to conquer them, and repeat. Now you have probably 240 pops before everyone else has 50, and you've cleaned out your quadrant of the galaxy. You hardly need to expend resources building a fleet to conquer like a madman even on Grand Admiral difficulty. To top it off, 2 traditions ain't a bad starting bonus. Picking up Open Markets immediately really helps balance resources and convert food to energy.
High Tier:
Scion: Sometimes you get a free 7k power fleet in the first 10 years. Sometimes you get basically nothing and its like playing without an origin. You do get a guaranteed support fleet if you are losing in a war with > 80 exhaustion while your enemy has <60 exhaustion though. But it goes away after the war is over. Too random for my tastes.
Shattered Ring: If you want to play a tall science game this is certainly the best. At the same time, tall has no benefits at all with the current balance of sprawl vs. bureaucrats, but its still decent.
Void Dwellers: The best early game start on science and alloy production. Utilize this to conquer immediately or get migration treaties to colonies like a normal empire while being well ahead of the game. Bonus trick/exploit: you can just genemod to a different habitability like its no big deal and keep your production bonuses on land.
Common Ground: Basically Hegemon but worse because Galactic Unions are worse. If you want to play a more friendly and cooperative game where you don't boss around the AIs before kicking them out and eating them up, it works just as well.
Mid Tier:
Prosperous Unification: The default to which the rest of the Origins will be compared. If they are substantially worse than Prosperous Unification, they belong in low tier. Pay attention to the fact that the homeworld gets an additional +15% happiness, +25% amenities and +10% resources from jobs modifier that is not listed in the origin description.
Syncretic Evolution: Always going to be a decent pick, more trait optimization is a good thing. Min-Maxed properly you should be able to keep up with Prosperous Unification and eventually surpass it.
Post Apocalyptic: This is definitely weaker than Prosperous Unification but still has a tangible benefit of +10 leader years and letting you colonize a world type that no one else could.
Low Tier:
Life Seeded: So you get a Gaia world which gives +10% resource production and +10% happiness, but you gave up PU's +15% happiness, +10% resources, +25% amenities, +4 starting pops, and ability to colonize anything else. So you gain nothing aside from a slightly bigger homeworld that you won't fill for decades.
Mechanist: By the time you catch up to Prosperous Unification in pops the Prosperous Unification will have robots and be way ahead in overall production. Just bad.
Calamitous Birth: I'm hoping this is a bug that is eventually fixed, but the Massive Crater only appears on your homeworld, not every planet you smack your colonists in to. As it is this Origin essentially gives you slightly cheaper colonization in return for permanently affecting the habitability of worlds you colonize. If Massive Craters would appear on those worlds and give all colonies effectively +6 colony size and +25% pop growth it would be absolutely amazing and high tier.
Resource Consolidation: An unlisted benefit is that this gives a nice big fat resource deposit on your home world. Unfortunately a large portion of this deposit is Food. But if you go Determined Assimilator, the only ME that can choose this origin and use food, your pops get hammered by the much worse habitability. Sort of a catch-22 here.
Galactic Doorstep: By the time you can use a gateway, you'll have found a gateway to use, and gateway construction comes soon after gateway operation.
Tree of Life: A much weaker start than Prosperous unification, and you need to pay way more per colony ship. Its fairly rare that you'll actually run out of agricultural districts in your empire. Minor pop growth speed bonus isn't worth the opportunity cost.
On the Shoulders of Giants: The tech you get from this is fairly inconsequential and takes a LONG time to get. You're better off with a more powerful start and getting it yourself.
Remnants: Does this give anything of value? Haven't played a full game so if there's an event chain or something please tell me, but I don't see this doing much. If there was a really powerful artifact or something I'd be interested to hear about it. Otherwise just make an ecumenopolis when one is available. It's not like you'll get it earlier by taking this origin.
Lost Colony: I see this sort of like Hegemon/Common Ground: An Origin that gives you nothing but spawns AIs who might help you. Unfortunately, the key point here is *might* help you. It seems that they spawn fairly close but hyperlanes can still make the path to finding them long. Once you've found them, there's no guarantee that their ethics are at all compatible towards yours. The only potential usage I see is as a Fanatic Purifier spawning an offshoot of your race to potentially do diplomacy with.
Doomsday Tier:
Doomsday: It's Doomsday.
Obviously, I haven't had the chance to play a full game with all of these. If there are any powerful or at least interesting late-game events or implications to one of these origins, please do share.
Note that this is assumed that the player is playing vs. AI on a high difficulty. MP is a bit of a different beast.
https://www.tierlists.com/list/stellaris-origins
Top tier:
Hegemon: Easily the most dominant origin. This gets you two fully-powered AI allies to bend to your will in early conquest. Utilize them to conquer at least 3-4 enemy homeworlds so that you have ~150 pop while everyone else has 40, then kick one out of the federation to conquer them, and repeat. Now you have probably 240 pops before everyone else has 50, and you've cleaned out your quadrant of the galaxy. You hardly need to expend resources building a fleet to conquer like a madman even on Grand Admiral difficulty. To top it off, 2 traditions ain't a bad starting bonus. Picking up Open Markets immediately really helps balance resources and convert food to energy.
High Tier:
Scion: Sometimes you get a free 7k power fleet in the first 10 years. Sometimes you get basically nothing and its like playing without an origin. You do get a guaranteed support fleet if you are losing in a war with > 80 exhaustion while your enemy has <60 exhaustion though. But it goes away after the war is over. Too random for my tastes.
Shattered Ring: If you want to play a tall science game this is certainly the best. At the same time, tall has no benefits at all with the current balance of sprawl vs. bureaucrats, but its still decent.
Void Dwellers: The best early game start on science and alloy production. Utilize this to conquer immediately or get migration treaties to colonies like a normal empire while being well ahead of the game. Bonus trick/exploit: you can just genemod to a different habitability like its no big deal and keep your production bonuses on land.
Common Ground: Basically Hegemon but worse because Galactic Unions are worse. If you want to play a more friendly and cooperative game where you don't boss around the AIs before kicking them out and eating them up, it works just as well.
Mid Tier:
Prosperous Unification: The default to which the rest of the Origins will be compared. If they are substantially worse than Prosperous Unification, they belong in low tier. Pay attention to the fact that the homeworld gets an additional +15% happiness, +25% amenities and +10% resources from jobs modifier that is not listed in the origin description.
Syncretic Evolution: Always going to be a decent pick, more trait optimization is a good thing. Min-Maxed properly you should be able to keep up with Prosperous Unification and eventually surpass it.
Post Apocalyptic: This is definitely weaker than Prosperous Unification but still has a tangible benefit of +10 leader years and letting you colonize a world type that no one else could.
Low Tier:
Life Seeded: So you get a Gaia world which gives +10% resource production and +10% happiness, but you gave up PU's +15% happiness, +10% resources, +25% amenities, +4 starting pops, and ability to colonize anything else. So you gain nothing aside from a slightly bigger homeworld that you won't fill for decades.
Mechanist: By the time you catch up to Prosperous Unification in pops the Prosperous Unification will have robots and be way ahead in overall production. Just bad.
Calamitous Birth: I'm hoping this is a bug that is eventually fixed, but the Massive Crater only appears on your homeworld, not every planet you smack your colonists in to. As it is this Origin essentially gives you slightly cheaper colonization in return for permanently affecting the habitability of worlds you colonize. If Massive Craters would appear on those worlds and give all colonies effectively +6 colony size and +25% pop growth it would be absolutely amazing and high tier.
Resource Consolidation: An unlisted benefit is that this gives a nice big fat resource deposit on your home world. Unfortunately a large portion of this deposit is Food. But if you go Determined Assimilator, the only ME that can choose this origin and use food, your pops get hammered by the much worse habitability. Sort of a catch-22 here.
Galactic Doorstep: By the time you can use a gateway, you'll have found a gateway to use, and gateway construction comes soon after gateway operation.
Tree of Life: A much weaker start than Prosperous unification, and you need to pay way more per colony ship. Its fairly rare that you'll actually run out of agricultural districts in your empire. Minor pop growth speed bonus isn't worth the opportunity cost.
On the Shoulders of Giants: The tech you get from this is fairly inconsequential and takes a LONG time to get. You're better off with a more powerful start and getting it yourself.
Remnants: Does this give anything of value? Haven't played a full game so if there's an event chain or something please tell me, but I don't see this doing much. If there was a really powerful artifact or something I'd be interested to hear about it. Otherwise just make an ecumenopolis when one is available. It's not like you'll get it earlier by taking this origin.
Lost Colony: I see this sort of like Hegemon/Common Ground: An Origin that gives you nothing but spawns AIs who might help you. Unfortunately, the key point here is *might* help you. It seems that they spawn fairly close but hyperlanes can still make the path to finding them long. Once you've found them, there's no guarantee that their ethics are at all compatible towards yours. The only potential usage I see is as a Fanatic Purifier spawning an offshoot of your race to potentially do diplomacy with.
Doomsday Tier:
Doomsday: It's Doomsday.
Obviously, I haven't had the chance to play a full game with all of these. If there are any powerful or at least interesting late-game events or implications to one of these origins, please do share.
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