Modify your race to be deviants and strong (or better very strong - it has bigger Militarism attraction).

Rival and/or insult at least one of your neighbours (strictly speaking, you need a neighbor who is hostile, domineering or a rival).

You don't need to actually fight it, you just need to be in a war.

Start a liberation war against someone.

If you are Egalitarian, use 'Encourage political thought' edict.

IP is the biggest single malus to Militarism.

Drop Inward Perfection via government reform.

These steps will help (in order of importance):

You can spawn Militarist faction as non-fanatic Pacifist, but it will require significant influence investment (which you should easily afford late game, especially with Will To Power ambition).

if you are Xenophobe, Pacifist and Authoritarian, you can embrace Xenophobe while Authoritarian > Pacifist to become Authoritarian and F.

if you are Xenophobe, Pacifist and Authoritarian, you can embrace Authoritarian while Xenophobe > Pacifist to become F.

Xenophobe and Spiritualist (or whatever you embrace). Xenophobe and Pacifist, you can embrace Spiritualist (or Materialist/Authoritarian/Egalitarian) faction while Xenophobia has bigger attraction than Pacifism, and you become F.

Being non-fanatic pacifist, embrace a faction which is not pacifist and whose ethics is not fanatic, ensuring that pacifism has less attraction than your other ethics.

At the end of the event chain you flip from Pacifist to Militarist (or from Militarist to Pacifist). You can cheese this rare event by sending science ships in and out a black hole system - chance of happening is 0.5% every time a ship enters a black hole system, so eventually you do get it.

Go Psionic, get your Chosen one, wait for Chosen One event, agree to make him God-Emperor and become Authoritarian+Spiritualist ( example).

There's this guide on IP strategy from a dev team member.Īs for 'awakening', you can go various ways:

Deus vult meme origin