Fuck me, Stellaris is good.
I started a couple times - my current run I just went through the portraits and saw a very Cardassian looking guy. All right then! Militaristic, materialist, authoritarian sounds about right for their ethics. Species attributes were not as obvious to me, so I went with traditional, adaptive and decadent. I love being able to make a species and roleplay them.
We found some indigenous subterranean civilization on one of our new colony worlds? Exterminate those hobos. That's our real estate! Compromise my ass. Some primitive, renaissance level civilization discovered on a habitable planet? Yeah, we could not interfere and build an observation post or whatever it is the Confederation does in those cases. But we haven't got no prime directive around here baby. Drop the army in and welcome the newest members of our mining workforce into the Cardassian Union! I'll set species rights to chattel slavery real quick, OK? If you prove yourself I may upgrade you to battle thralls at some point! Once you get over the culture shock and all that of course. You'll be fine.
This game certainly cost me some sleep over the last week. So... hard... to... stop...
"I'll just wait for that research to finish and upgrade my destroyers, then I'll go to bed. Ohhh, better torpedoes is the next option? It's only a couple months, so I'll wait until that is finished, and THEN stop."
Repeat until oh shit, I REALLY need to go to sleep.
Loving it!