Working as intended. If you play on very large maps with tight clusters you would be able to get 'all' Ideology perks. Personally I am fine with this as long as the AI can and will take advantage of it as well.

One thing I notice is your initial choice is what determines your 'ideological' choice in regards to AI at first.

I agree.

I had hoped it would be more of  a long term investment.

Making choices whether it be colony events, UP voting, invasion events or what ever would push you in a certain direction.

Imagine an 'ethics sphere' like the production sphere. 3 point representing the 3 ideologies.

Choices you make would move you 'ethic pointer' towards one of the points, the further you move the more you unlock.

You would have to work hard to reverse the direction.

Just my thoughts.

edit: ninja'd

I mostly go for practical and beneficent, so I can't comment on malevolent, but the Missionary building and Preparedness Centers only give you ideology points when you finish building them, not every turn as before. So they help some, but not as much as before. Or are there some other buildings deeper into the ideology trees that give you points every turn? 

I disagree.  I enjoy thinking of what perks I want to enhance my play and working my way to them.  I may boost evil early in the game to get the border bonus and home planet production bonus, and switch to good to get the research and influence perks, switching to pragmatic to get those fighter escorts... that's fun IMHOP.

^^^ This. More players choices equal more fun. Rather than lock out the other trees, I would be ok with a higher cost based on distance to initial pick. 

For example, I start out with Benevolent, and go down that path for 4 pics. However I realize I want some pragmatic perks as well, rather than say no, how bout a slightly (1.25) higher cost for Pragmatic and a 'higher cost for Malevolent (1.5 or even 2.0)?

Still allows you to get cross tree perks but at a higher cost than your initial tree? 

I personally like how it is now and would not touch it but I bet Moddders like MarvinKosh can tweak the tree costs a bit. 

That's what it did in Beta 3 and I didn't like that at all.

Locking a player out, or penalizing for picking other tree's perks, is no fun and leads to the feeling that you have to chose X ideology when colonizing a new world or getting a mega-event.  It takes the choice out of the choice system.  If you're Pragmatic, and you don't choose the Pragmatic option, then those points are useless.  Instead, you can choose the choice you feel best fits your civ, whether for event-specific bonuses or ideology or role-playing.

I like role-playing.  When I'm the Yor, I'm malevolent with a bit of pragmatic.  Sometimes my actions are mistaken as being benevolent -for example, there's no way a Yor would ever want to bond with an organic being, even if it heightened intellect - and I take advantage of those misconceptions.  And despite being sometimes pragmatic, there's no way I would pass up the opportunity to destroy sentient plants, even if we don't actually need the good soil.

Krynn I'm more benevolent, but they have a malevolent streak too.  "Alien Culture Trash" is a good example of that. That religious fervor sometimes manifests in a mean way - and when I play them, their society reflects that - both through events and ideology bonuses.  Krynn would be my argument against a system where being Benevolent made Malevolence cost more than Pragmatic.  I feel like Pragmatism doesn't suit them - but they aren't above Aggression, Motivation, or Awe.

A system that penalized you for picking other traits, or worse, didn't allow it at all, would be less fun.  We just need to make sure the AI can take advantage of that, too.

Limiting players to one tree, any way you go about it, is limiting to gameplay and strategy options.  Right now, if I want a "Chaotic Neutral" style civ, I can make that.  If I want to pick and choose - both for individual worlds and overall ideology - what best suits my strategy, I can do that.  The big thing to me is the ability to shape a civilization to create a unique personality.  Diplomatic with an appetite for war. (pragmatic, malevolent) Militant isolationists who take care of their own, but are aggressive to outsiders. (benevolent/malevolent/vigilant)  Dedicated Pacifists. (benevolent/pragmatic)  Masters of manipulation (affinity, prominence, traders, negotiators, awe, motivation) Crusaders, Paranoid, Hyper-capitalists, amoral, passive, I can think of so many ways to craft a civilization.

Otherwise, it's simply Good/Neutral/Evil and that is boring. A system which pushes or forces us in one direction is a system to which I am vehemently opposed.  It makes for linear strategies and predictable opponents. There's no personality. I would welcome more options, rather than fewer - more flexibility, not less.

The most effective way of dealing with any problems is to:

A)Let AI use ideology strategically (or in interesting, goal-oriented ways), and

B)Give the galaxy creation option to make ideology cost more (or less) overall.  This way, if we create a galaxy with a whole bunch of planets, we can raise the cost to make it take longer to earn traits.

What I want is a game that is fun, not dictionary definitions.  I don't care how "Ideology" is defined, I care how it works in the game.  Besides, the examples of mixing and matching in my post adhere to ideological principles, just not the way the game defines them.

It's all about fun.  Not dictionaries. Dictionaries are boring.  Flexibility is fun.

An ideology should be just that...a major direction that your race progresses in as a civilization.  The idead that your whole civilization can jump around between being good and evil just to scoop up bonuses is pretty silly and immersion breaking.  I stand by my idea that progressing down one path should lock out the others.  Or at least make changing Ideologies a major undertaking.  

The Stardock team.  They create the universe the game is set in.  I suspect the details about what ideology goes where will be tweaked, but I still think you shouldn't be able to bounce around all three trees as you wish.

I think increasing a cost to go up one tree if you are far up another is certainly a reasonable choice and helps address the "immersion" complaints. It also helps address concerns about maxing out a tree or three on very large maps. But I am against "locking" out a tree since it can show that empires aren't One Note Ponies but are instead varied and complex.

And if one wants to play as a solo ideology for RP purposes, nothing is stopping someone from doing that.

Getting back to the ease of getting ideology on very large maps, I would also support having the option to set ideology growth/speed like we are able to set the speed of tech research.  If the tech research speed can be set to "very slow", for instance, the ideology upgrade could be set to "very steep".

OTOH, I do think some of the ease of growing in ideology might be a bit of an illusion.  We don't have minor races in the game yet.  And at the moment on a base game we are restricted to six total major races (including the player).  On an Immense map, it should probably have at least eight to ten majors (including the player) and a dozen or more minors.  With more factions gobbling up planets, it should become harder to easily gobble up ideology.  The cake would get sliced up in more pieces, in other words.

And on that famously mooted 100+ faction game it might be very hard to go up in ideaology simply by grabbing planets.

That being said, I could still support being able to set a larger ideology cost as an option if it seems like I am sprinting it up too easily in my games. 

I think the way it is currently set up is that whatever ideology trait you unlock first is the one other factions think you have when it comes to diplomacy.  So there is still some gameplay effect for the one you initially choose.

I know that currently I am getting bonuses and minuses for having same/opposite ideologies on the Diplo Screen.