So recently I had an MP game with zenith that cause a few players to become banished ascendencies aka Lost Empires.

As you know, with lost empires, you lose a bunch of the bonuses from being an ascended empire, such as a quarter sized fleet cap of 500 (that cannot be increased), loss of your 3 super-strong civics, and you get shot right back to (nearly) the beginning, only keeping your capital.

While you can colonize and conquer others as a Lost Empire, its extremely difficult to keep up with the ascended empires that still remain. Perhaps your a lost empire because war came at a poor time (e.g you were helping deal with a crisis, you were trying to deal with an ascended hive mind, you were doing a LEX event that wiped your fleet, such as Nihara's Psionic wards or a progenitor superweapon, or even worst case scenario, you were trying to fight the end!), now your stuck with 2 useless civics and a third that may or may not be useful depending on what your ethos is.

I think that lost empires should get a single chance to come back to the galactic stage, but at a cost. Perhaps it might be a special project, to recover archives of your time while being an ascendency, or an ascension perk, where you unite your people to become an Ascendency again.

Either way, what I feel should happen is that instead of becoming an ascendency again, you become an Awakened Empire, akin to the vanilla FEs awakening. This could come with its own dramas, for example an Awakened Ascendency could be outraged that you ignored their agreements on your banishment, and choose to annihilate you for good, or another fallen empire might be angered that you awoke after some long-forgotten last crusade, allowing for a new War in Heaven.

The risks of ascending this time, is that instead of being able to be banished, you are able to use the Total Annihilation wargoal on Ascendencies, allowing you to wipe them out for good as a sweet form of revenge. On the other hand, the Ascendencies would be able to call for a wargoal of Total Annihilation against you, to prevent you from awakening ever again, as you would be wiped out if you lost. Besides, they tried to put you down once, theyre not going to show that mercy the second time.

Finally, there could be some way for a Lost Empire to awaken as a Guardian of the Galaxy if a late crisis occurs. In which case, your able to awaken and make federations and all again, but of course, there is the usual consequences. The ascendencies might feel your intervention is either unneeded, or unjust, seen as an attempt to become a powerhouse again.

Any way about it, it would allow Lost Empires a second and final chance to compete with their ascended rivals once more, and can allow empires to settle grudges once and for all.

If anyone has suggestions, let me know, and I hope this is considered for the mod!