Just managed my first run as the 'ascensionites' (xenophobe/pacifist/spiritualist + inward perfection+ agrarian idyll) to full ascension. Surely I was far away from min/maxing everything, so I reached full ascension after 150 years.Now this is not my usual playstyle (prefer some sort egalitarian federation play), and I am a little bit clueless now which path to choose. If you were min/maxing things further, you may save some 50 years or so by going for galactic force projection to keep a war-deterring fleet power. But I kept staying on top of the fleet race, in the end using 8 planets with fully upgraded spaceports, an avatar plus as few defensive pacts as possible to save influence for the loads and loads of outposts...- You can stay on top of tech and fleet race very easily since your are extremely efficient. However there is a risk to unbalance things when developing new colonies too early/too late.- Your border expansion is hilarious and agrarian idyll may give you gigantic growth rates during the process- Using enlightenment of primitives and the domination tree may give you plenty of benefits without having to annex vassals.- After your period of isolationist growth, you may finally stage an extremely aggressive style of colonization and expansion (your tech is already starting to rival falling empires, at best some materialists may stay in touch with you).- Once you reached ascension, you have full control of reworking your unity production which isn't buried for ages in sectors.- If you miss monitoring diplomacy and fleet race, you may find yourself in a very bad position soon- You just have to rely on internal growth, there is no rapid growth via multiple species and migration treaties- You really need to go for terraforming techs- You will be in constant struggle for influence. Democracy for mandates seems mandatory, venerable traits help, also parliamentary system, so keep your factions happy- What to do next? Can you/should you shift your ethics? It's risky as you cannot lose spiritual, but pacifism and xenophobia both will hinder you from absorbing more pops you will need now. Vassalizing will help though.- The shroud is a 'bitch'- You really need to work on a Dyson sphere or find and repair one and urgently need to get your hands on zro. All these are things that will hinder your investments into fleet power for that moment.After all, I think it is a lot of fun playing this way. Shame there is no use for the giant unity production you built. I am still not totally certain my usual egalitarian style with a slightly slower ascension isn't superior (after all you do not need all perks at a time), but this was something new to me. However, I also think this build has strong pros and cons and it will take a lot of time after hunting for ascension until you can start something else.