Ok, I understand some game philosophies of some parties or political views in game, and the ties with playstyle and research:

• Ecologist: Colonize planets, all planets to full population (expansion victory). Food improvements
• Industrialist: Improve all systems, faster buildings (wonder victory). Industrial improvements
• Pacifist: Stay happy, get rich (economic victory). Happiness and commerce improvements
• Militarist: destroy them all (cravers conquest victory). Build ships and destruction.
• Scientific: Explore and research (scientific victory). Science improvements

All the laws tend to converge to adapt an archetype of ES1, and are coherent to an intuitive myriad of senate laws. For example, militaristic population makes easier the building of ships, gives bonus to having ships orbiting planets and gives rewards for doing battles.

But then we have religion:

• Religious: Ah... recruit religious heroes? (some victory). Build influence improvements.

The last victory condition in ES1 is diplomatic, and it would make sense to correlate this victory with the religious political party, since the diplomatic currency is influence, which improvements increase religious power in the empire. But the laws are weird and really can't understand the logic behind them: take hostile action in cold war (non-diplomatic), get more manpower from food (non-diplomatic), get money (you guess it). Even more confusing to me is the chosen race to represent this "gameplay": the Vodyani.

The Vodyani are like a minicraver faction since you are forced to get into conflicts with others to survive, the lore expects you to pretty much destroy intelligent life in the universe. So why would you want influence? Why would your senate want more bonus manpower since you are capped in arks? why the money?. Even more, Vodyani heroes have the weirdest skills, like food bonus on systems, for a race that don't use food pretty much to grow. Why would you want gigantic influence areas to "capture" systems by your "culture" if you can't even capture systems that way? One of the most useful research for influence is complete useless to the faction that represent influence gameplay by political choice, I think.

I mean certain changes would make sense to me:

• Vodyani ships can leech any system in their influence radius regardless of diplomatic status (ideological conversion)
• Vodyani have bonus influence radius since they are limited in expansion power normally
• Influence should be used to coin essence instead of dust, or have an impact (ideological proliferation/manipulation)
• Brainwashing minor faction should be useful (by been able to used to leech, even with penalties, or by blocking other factions to assimilate them)
• Vodyani heroes give bonus FIDSI but not per population (lower population per system normally for that race), like a flat amount or a percentage
• Vodyani heroes should prioritize influence and not have any impact in food
• Religion laws should focus on internal manipulation by using religion pressure to temporally boost FIDSI using influence as coinage (temporal laws) or giving effect relating relation with minor factions, treaties, and other diplomatic actions.
• Religion laws should have focus on external manipulation by lowering costs to interact with other factions or make it more difficult for other factions to have negative diplomatic impact on them (happiness malus, more influence costs to declare war, leech of influence by interacting with them)

That are just suggestions, but the spirit and TL;DR of this post is that currently for me, religion and their gameplay, applied initially to the religious faction of the game is non-intuitive, seems somewhat random mechanic wise (lore wise is very understandable), don't have a recognizable victory condition or gameplay style and rarely interacts with improvements and buildings that support such political ideology. Or I might be wrong, and would be happy to read some explanation to the current status of this game aspect.

Another reason to have large influence is to stop colonization, since you can't colonize inside another empires influence. Also high influence is very helpful as the Vodyani as improvements stay with the ark and not the planets combined with the era III tech that allows capture by influence. All you have to do is move your arks wait a few turns for your influence to capture a system(s) and ground pound those that will take to long. I also believe that there will be an influence victory condition known as Diplomatic Victory.

Edit: Almost forgot the best part of religious government, being able to invade during a cold war.

And the malady of identical tech trees rears it's head again. In essence, the asimilation of systems via influence should not exist for vodyani. Instead, idoctrinating a system of another species translates into convincing the people to give themselves up for the ascension of the vodyani, becoming willing sacrifices for essence. The owner of the system looses control of it and it becomes an independent minor civ basicaly that exists only to grow pops for the vodiany to harvest.

Alternatively you can select to asimilate them all instantly, decolonizing and getting a massive amount of essence. This should also be what happens when you take over a system via invasion (round up pops, turn them into juice) with a later era tech permiting the ability to convert conquered systems.

The religious faction btw is not ment for the diplomatic victory, nor are the vodyani. Religious in essence are the jack of all trades, religious fervour can be channeled in all aspects of society and evolution, and the vodyani can just as well adapt their play style. Especialy when you are a crusading bunch who think all life is inferior ... sure you can try to be sneaky and pretend in front of the impure ... or you can purify them and drink the purified essence from a cocktail glass.

As for the minor faction point: the greatest sin right now is this: as vodyani you influence sink a minor faction and brainwash them, only for the sophons/lumeris next door to come over and click the asiminalte option, thus stealing your system and wasting your influence. This should not happen. Once Vodyani brainwash the pop, maybe spawn an independent ark overseeing that minor faction (a mini ark basicaly) that harvests and periodicaly delivers essence to your empire. If another faction wants that minor, they will have to get rid of your brainwashing/harvesting ark. Which naturaly means you can react to it and kick the inferior impure scums in the teeth.

XDAvenger93 wrote:

The religious faction btw is not ment for the diplomatic victory, nor are the vodyani. Religious in essence are the jack of all trades, religious fervour can be channeled in all aspects of society and evolution, and the vodyani can just as well adapt their play style. 

This is the core of the issue for me, currently the religious laws, the improvements that increase such support and the gamplay are not really aligned to give a clear idea of how religion can be play to it fullest. And the Vodyani suffers a weird identity image for that IMHO

I'd like to support the suggestion about Vodyani spending influence to brainwash minor factions, as well as the first recommendation about allowing Vodyani to harvest the essence of any population within their influence borders, regardless of diplomatic status.

It would be REALLY NICE if we could spend influence to force a minor faction's diplomatic state to never go higher than neutral with another main faction. Perhaps if there were a modest support Religious law that allows for certain types of minor faction diplomacy without the relevant tech?

(Or is the above already implemented? I've never seen anything like that, I'll have to check it out in my next game...)