So... As someone who's favorite faction is the cultists in Endless Legend, would I love to see the cultists expanded upon and "moved up" in the world.
With other words, the cultists becoming a faction in an Endless space 3 game (assuming such a thing ever becomes reality).

So... I thought I would see if I could write up a concept for Cultists and how they could work, with heavy inspiration from their EL counterpart.

First, I would imagine that Cultists would operate under a dictatorship, with religious political leaning. (obviously)

the cultists would operate out of a single solar system. In return for this (obvious) weakness would this single system be hyper productive. Increased multipliers for industry, science and dust.
(I would also argue that they should have easy access to a citadel, to prevent someone from just blowing them up with an obliterator)

Due to this restricted use of a single system, would the Cultists come with two features

1: They have a special ability of sorts to extremely easily convert and turn minor-factions and even pirate holdings. Turning them from neutral to "cults".
They aren't officially new systems for them, but just like the minor factions in EL, would they spawn ships on the regular and provide extra resources on their nodes.

2: Furthermore, do the cultists have access to a form of "colonization" ship. However, it creates "Cultists holdouts". Essentially, it creates a small floating space station around a system, producing its own sphere of influence and so on. The holdouts have two functions.

If their influence is stronger than another faction that the sphere interacts with, they will drain population from said faction into the holdout. (Upgrading its defenses doing so)

But also, it would create what would be called a "pilgrimage" path. Essentially, in an even pace, will small ships be sent out from the holdout, and travel back to the main system. On the way, does these pilgrims collect small amounts of resources, both luxury and strategic.
So, if you have set up a holdout 5 systems away, will the pilgrim ship travel from each of those planets, pick up a small number of resources from each before delivering it to the main system, giving you the resources for your works.

I imagine that Cultists would mostly be focused on a conquest or supremacy Victory, with their influence from their holdouts giving control dependent on how many pops is in said holdouts.

This was my general idea, obviously it is just theoretical and would require polishing, balancing and so on... but I thought it could be fun to just... put my idea for a cultist ES3 faction on the table.
Please do give feedback :3