Maybe there can be a game play setting that we can disable ideology, tech, and unit updates so we can end the turn. That way you wouldn't be forced to do actions you wish to delay. I would like this option.

DARCA.

Agreed there needs to be penalties for pursuing multiple ideologies at once. Otherwise your people will be getting very mixed messages from their leader. 

It also means if your high up one tree making some out of character decisions for a quick benefit has some real cost.

I don't think that they will have a mixed message from their leader, you know, people (and maybe aliens) are a mixed bag of good, evil and neutral things and you cope with that every day without having a mixed feelings (most of the time, of course) because you let it go (is not the big deal, anyway). One thing you can do with that mixture of ideologies is gaining titles in the same way as Dungeon Siege 1,e.g., 70% in benevolent and Malice (don't remember the actual name) category you can have the "extreme politician" title. 

In a sense, pragmatism, benevolence and malice is in the eye of the beholder. You can have a bunch of slaves because of your race policy and you can do benevolent things like giving slaves better food and medicine so they can last longer. In that regard your people see you as a benevolent ruler because you improved the production from slaves in a "benevolent" way, although the end is not "benevolent" in the eyes of some other civilizations. The thing in galciv2 (and maybe 3) is that the good/evil label was given by other civilizations. In that regard it would be really confusion letting other civilization label you as a "benevolent". Just for the sake of an example, a slave driven civilization is malevolent in the eyes of a non-salve driven civilization. But, on contrary, for a slave driven civilization making your people work is idiotic and malevolent (you have slaves for that, don't you?). So? Who is going to label your ideology? You can follow your path of benevolence and having slaves or you can make your own people work and being labeled malevolent by other civilization that uses slaves...

I like the mixing up of different ideologies and its a really neat mechanic. However I'm mainly concerned if its developer intent that you are 'forced' to spend points in a specific tree. You may be a malevolent warlord and suddenly get a random event/anomaly that gives you benevolence  points and you end up being forced to unlock it.

THANK GOD!!!!! even though I still dislike your idea, but seeing you open a post like that warms my heart.

 I want to do parts of each ideology besides pragmatic, but that should affect how I am viewed since I am mostly one ideology. If I research all ideologies it should be a accomplishment not a penalty. If you are advanced enough to be everything then all races should respect that. Maybe make it a victory condition: finish all ideology trees. How about that!

DARCA.

What concerns me right now is the system doesn't scale well. It would appear that you can hit the highest tiers pretty easily. And that's only going to get worse when we have larger and larger galaxies and more planets pumping out ideology points

Civ5 had a mechanic by which larger empires were penalized for the next culture "tier" for each new city. Though I'm not sure if that mechanic makes sense here.

I don't know how they view it but I give my opinion on it here https://forums.galciv3.com/452800/page/1/#3456915 its the last post i made on the forum. (not many people saw this because it was late when I posted it. I my understanding of the in game definition of all ideologies.

DARCA.

Initially yes, but once you hit the first tier you can pursue ideology through the buildings they unlock which grant flat and/or per turn ideology points.

But again this is a problem if we are

1) Saying that bootstrapping is goign to be random

2) Extremely large galaxy sizes would appear to allow for 'infinite' production of all 3 ideologies

If the solution to #2 is to scale up the points required, then you run into the problem of the randomness not allowing you to even get to teh boostrapping processes because you missed out on anomalies or some specific planet event. The only functional way scaling with galaxy sizes would work would be if all ideology buildings were available 'by default'. Then it makes sense to be able to scale upwards.

By taking action into the galaxy, we get the chance to commit ourselves to the ideologies. Until then, it makes no sense to develop any building that allows to pursue ideology points (imho). No matter the galaxy size, planet distribution/presence and anomalies distribution/presence, we are going to get many chances along the game to earn some ideology points. And while in smaller maps the ideology won't go very far, in larger maps we can expect to develop it quite a lot.

As it works right now, you only get one ideology choice in each tree at rank 1. And all of them unlock an ideology building to get more points. Those buidlings are your non random (non interactive) way to commit your civilization into one ideology. Although at this point and alpha build, you can cheat and farm points to unlock all the rank 1 ideologies and get access to all the ideology buildings. Then farm the points of the idelogy you need (one ideology at a time).

The cost of each ideology rank may vary with time but I suppose that we are supposed to focus on one idelogy but we are given the chance to spread if we want to do so... just that it shouldn't be easy, specially the longer you wait for it. Not sure if that's the idea or if it'll change with time.

And I don't think you can miss the very first rank 1 of your first ideology. Events may be random, planets (that give you the event) are not. I must assume that the very first rank will be cheap enough that you can unlock it easily (maybe even the second unlock?). certainly, there is a lot to test/check about this topic. Poor developers.