Throughout history, humanity has been a profoundly religious species that sought to explain the vast unknown through stories of higher powers.
Only recently did most of society turn toward the secular and materialistic.
As we open our wings and fly toward the stars, our old religious tendencies will likely resurface.
Vanilla Stellaris gives players the option to play as a Spiritualist species, but doesn’t really go deep into our religion or its tenets.
If you also think religion could be an important part of space colonization, the following mods will allow you to bring the word of God to the intergalactic masses.
The best solution to a problem is often the simplest one – and, in this case, that’s Humanity Emblems.
Along with countless emblems and crests that hold some significance for humans – such as the radioactive sign and Canada’s maple leaf – this mod includes a wealth of religious symbology ready to become the emblem for your Spiritualist community.
You’ll find the Jewish Star of David, the Christian Cross, the Islamic Crescent and Star, and many, many others.
The mod includes 170 flag emblems – and around half of them have some sort of spiritual significance.
The only “religious” traditions available in vanilla Stellaris are the Harmony and Synchronicity trees, and in reality, they’re only vaguely spiritual.
Expanded Stellaris Traditions expands the available tradition list from 13 to a staggering 57 with 44 all-new development trees that’ll let you develop your culture exactly how you want to.
Among these, there are two that can really expand your religious playstyle.
Faith helps you create unity and stability throughout the empire and launch more successful crusades with the help of religion. On the other hand, Proselytism helps expand your ethics across the stars and increases happiness and unity among pious believers.
Rather than follow a traditional religion, you could choose to play a cultist civilization worshipping Old Gods with the Lovecraft Mythos mod.
This add-on lets you create a nation of Fanatic Spiritualists guided by the mysterious machinations of Nyarlathotep, Yog-Sothoth, Shub-Niggurath, and other Lovecraftian horrors, including the famous Cthulhu.
Each has its own playstyle based on the nature of these different cosmic entities, and it’ll provide the background for a very interesting (and sinister) playthrough.
While there have been countless autochtonous approaches to spiritualism around the world, most attitudes toward the immaterial can be categorized under one of the following:
Animism
Monotheism
Polytheism
Pantheism
Secularism
Atheism
Materialism
Belief in a God-King
The Cosmic Religion Reborn mod expands these into outer space, with each of your citizens practicing some form of one of these belief systems.
Much like in real life, your population will slowly but surely shift their beliefs as they come in contact with other cultures.
The majority religion in your territory will become that of your empire, which mainly affects your friendship with other interstellar empires.
If you want religious systems and competition between different belief systems to be even more impactful in your playthrough, Pantheons of the Void is the way to go.
Like our previous entry, this mod introduces “generalized” belief systems, including Animism, Atheism, and Polytheism, to name a few.
At the start of the game, you can choose one of these to be your de-facto state religion – but it’ll change as other beliefs seep into your empire.
As “heresy” (non-majority religion) grows on your planets, “Preachers” will start popping up, abandoning their work posts to proselytize while still consuming resources.
You can choose either a dogmatic or flexible approach to deal with these new faiths. This will open the doors to different strategies to deal with religion, such as levying religious taxes or spreading your beliefs beyond your borders through missionaries.
Nelson Chitty is a Venezuelan expat living in Argentina. He’s a writer and translator passionate about history and foreign cultures. His ideal weekend is spent between leisurely playing games of Civilization VI and looking for the next seinen anime to marathon.
