What's your favorite way to play Stellaris?

Personally I really like playing as a somewhat-isolationistic, hyper advanced empire, a sort of sleeping giant that largely leaves you alone but WILL wipe you out and/or enslave you if you piss me off.

I usually do this by retreating into the L-Cluster as quickly as possible and abandoning my originál homeworld, then turtling there and just researching, I often also pair this with the Cosmogenesis to quickly advance and become stronger than everyone else and then just... Chill. I don't finish Cosmogenesis though as that would end the game, I just chill there for all eternity, dealing with any crisis that comes my way, after all what's the point of living in a dead galaxy?

I enjoy being what is essentially a fallen empire.

This one time the xenophobic fallen empire decided to wage war against me.

My policy is that everybody gets two freebies. The first time you attack me, I'll merely humiliate you. The second time you attack - I will punish you by using the devolving beam on one of your colonies. The third time you attack - your species is deemed unfit for coexistence and so every planet is hit with the devolving beam. After the entire species has been reduced back to primitive animals, the species is re-uplifted and reeducated to better fit the empire's vision of an ideal species fit for coexistence.

Yeah tbh the power trips this game gives me are just insane XD