I haven't played a longer session of Stellaris in quite a while, but I think I'm back. It's really quite fun, and the current version of the game feels very polished, coming from someone who has been playing Stellaris since 2016 (I "only" have 660 hours in it).
I've actually never finished a full game of Stellaris. I usually play max-size galaxies, so that might have something to do with it, but I run out of steam after 15-20 hours. This time, though, I want to try to stick it out until the end, either winning or dying trying.
I know some people dread micromanagement, but I love juggling different resources and maximizing my economy in this game. It also helps that I actually enjoy warfare most of the time in Stellaris, which I can't say for all Paradox games.
I usually play some degree of Spiritualists or Xenophiles, but with the last DLC being focused on machines, I had to bring some robots. So, I'm playing as Fanatic Militarist/Authoritarian bots. It's going pretty well—I have 3 vassals/tributaries, and I'm the strongest force in the Galactic Community.
I want to give Fanatic Pacifists a try sometime and play a very diplomacy-focused game with lots of envoys
That's definitely a strong contributing factor imo. For as many games of it I've started the only one I actually stuck with all the way to the end was one minimum size galaxy fanatic purifier run with a species of adorable butterflies. Any bigger than that and eventually it just hits a point where not only is trying to stay on top of planets a chore but it stops feeling like there's even a point to it since I've snowballed to such a point that I can just brute force whatever's left while slowly waiting for that to finish.
I did have one particularly long running game with an empath tree of life spider hivemind that wound up as the permanent head of a huge federation that also became the sole galactic community security council member and made war impossible, putting the galaxy in stasis with nothing left to do but run out the clock since even the crisis couldn't put a dent in it. That game I played extremely tall (after getting penned in by my loyal allies/federation and some fallen empires) and just relied on barbaric despoliation to capture pops (for livestock) from whoever my federation declared war on to keep my economy growing. I did eventually abandon it once it became a waiting game, though.