OK, just trying it out again after about a year away. I've got the full Founder's edition, so all packs, DLC, etc. I'm playing on the default resource/event/whatever settings for galaxy creation.
I'm finding one thing that's a bug, and another that's more of a tunable that needs to be fixed:
BUG: Events aren't generating Ideology or having any effects for at least 20 or so turns. I haven't found exactly what triggers them to start working, but the first couple of events don't actually work. I select any of the options, and it happily totally ignores my choice. No ideology are accumulated (the ideology menu remains greyed out), and no actual consequences happen.
Best bet here is that it suddenly starts working after I settle my 2nd world, where I get a "settlement choice". But that's not 100% verified. All I know for sure is that they're broken for the initial part of the game.
TUNABLE CHANGE NEEDED: the number of "special" things per planet is way too high. That is, a combination of the Arable Land special tiles and the various artifacts/resources, etc. often occupy a substantial portion of the planet. For instance, I've played multiple games where my home planet has 50% of the tiles (6 out of 12) occupied by Arable Land, the Colony Capital, or Special Artifacts. That's far too many, and makes building out the planet impossible in any meaningful way - that is, you basically just have to ignore adjacencies, which is one of the biggest fun things of the game.
There really needs to be two limits here:
1. For Planets of initial quality 8 or less, no more than 2 tiles should be of any reserved type (excluding the Colony Capital). For 9-13, no more than 3, and for 14+, no more than 4.
2. For 12 or less quality planet, only a single Artifact/Special Resource should be located there. On 13+, a max of 2.
[Edit:]
After further testing, the bug is nondeterministic. It regularly (bordering on always) crops up, and I can't tell what causes it to go away and allow Ideology to start accumulating. I'm even getting Events that do things like Grant A Ship, which gives me the ship, but not the Ideology. So, in short, for times before the 20th turn, I regularly get Events that don't work properly. They don't ever grant the Ideology, and sometimes give the other action, but not always. I don't have a good feel for what causes the Events to start working properly - I can't tell if it's time played, planets colonized, anomalies surveyed, or anything else I might do.