I am very tempted to say, that if you only reach the third and fourth ascension perk in the beginning of the late game stage, you are doing things terribly wrong - but of course, that would be very wrong of me, because you are presumably playing in a way that entertains you, and that is what matters in the end. If you want fast ascension as anybody other that TotS, stop skimping on unity! That one single origin has a strong ascension advantage is in no way an argument in favour of moving the perk back from 3 to 2. So my suggestion is changing the requirement for picking an ascension perk form 2 to 1, which would make other ascension paths much more closer to Psionic Ascension in terms of balance and would fix the issue of game tempo, while maintaining a great change to the random element of the ascension paths The current change, besides removing the random element, is detrimental to the ascension paths balance and game tempo. Before the current change, a player could focus on ascension and then start building ecumenopolis to make their economy better consecutively, wherease now thet are forced to choose between picking an ascension and ecumenopolis. Moreover, the requirement of 2 ascesnion perks ruins the game tempo, because an ascension, which was supposed to be a mid-game thing, now are accessible only in the beginning of the late-game stage. This presents a grave issue in the game balance, making any other ascension paths dramatically less viable options to build your empire on and rush to. Origins that were supposed to be a quick way to get to other ascensions (Overtuned for Genetic, Mechanists for Cybernetic/Synthetic) don't have the ability to skip 2 ascension perks. However, only Psionic ascension provides an ability to skip all of that and pick the tradition right from the starts with the Teachers Of The Shroud Empire origin. Currently, to pick an ascension path perk, you have to pick 2 other ascension perks before that.

With the new change to ascension paths, that's supposed to eliminate random element to them, picking any other ascension other than Psionic has becomen dramatically less optimal.

Ascension board game balance