religion for endless space 2

Many strategy games have mechanics which allow you to create religions, Civilization for example. I was playing ES2 recently and wondered why there was no systems for religions when there is a religious party (which is influenced by research and what not) and the vodyani which are obviously part of some religion or other based on the fact they call themselves "The church".

Religion could be used to increase your influence production, influence could then be used to... influence how quickly your religion spreads through the population of a system. When a population is contested by two or more religions the player with more influence would win and would also be able to convert population that had already embraced another players religion, provided that player possessed less influence. 

[addition] I considered it some more and thought it might be cool if in the religion creation screen you got to pick one of the wedges from the political wheel, I.e pacifism, science, military, etcetera. This would set the political views of the religion and increase converted populations opinion of that political view.This would allow you to effectively influence the political landscape of both yours and other empires. This could be useful if for example your religion was pacifist and you spread it to an empire that was acting aggressively toward you, this would raze the pacifist population in their government leading to lower approval if they were not represented in their government.

Perhaps it could be spread in one of two ways, either by building some sort of evangelical/missionary ship and sending it to the desired system or by using hacking (or some spiritual mechanic that is functionally similar) to convert one population. It would then slowly spread if not challenged by another religion or a high scientific political view in said system.

In conclusion a religions winning condition could also be added for amassing a certain amount of influence, spreading the religion to a percentage of inhabited systems or all of the capitals (one of the three).