Yes, if you run out of planets to colonize (choices to make) and you have picked one of the point generating buildings, it pretty much locks you out of the other ideologies except for galactic events.

I haven't figured out how you move forward with ideologies after colonizing is over. Is there any way to generate points other than the buildings?

Oh I don't know about smaller maps.  I always play the biggest map possible.  I prefer epic level long campaigns.

Paul has mentioned that possibility several times in devstreams (along with possibly having invasion ideological choices).  I figure it is still in internal testing at the moment.

If you are playing with normal or more galactic events, I now see that you are frequently (every 15-20 turns) offered ideology choices. I haven't seen any anomaly events that affect ideology yet. The ideology system seems to work as intended with normal tp abundant settings

When I made the above post I had been playing a string of games with rare galactic events, (I hate game breaking events, but it seems there are none in GCIII), and rare habitable planets. In spite of the busy work required the game is a lot more fun with lots of colonies. 

Ideology doesn't work at all with rare settings. It seems to just just peter out by mid-game on a large map and even sooner on a smaller map. You only have 5-10 habitable planets in your area. You run out of colonizing choices and rare galactic events are not sufficient to keep it going. Even if you get the buildings that give you 5 points, it is not enough to make it work. 

I really hope they have many game unbalancing 'mega'-events like in GC2.  Those could really spice up late game.

The way Id fix this would be

Picking pramactic as secondary ideology tree would result in -1 per approval per point spent.

Picking an opposite ideology would result in -2 approval per point spent.

This is logical being that a growth in opposing ideologies  increases discontent.  

Pragmactic is less of a negative approval hit being that devouts and zealots dont approve but some dont mind.

This way you have the freedom to have all trees but you sacrifice planet tiles for approval.  I think this would add value to approval buildings as a bonus.

 If they decided to implement this you could add a super ability removing the negative approval hit from multiple ideologies.

No where in the original constitution were such laws stated or implemented.  http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html 

Even right after the revolutionary war many were opposed to slavery and took several steps to try to stop it politically/diplomatically.  It wasn't till the Dred Scott decision that a law blatantly singled out people of color by the supreme court.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford  

After this happened, momumental ideologies clashed in an epic war where 700,000 Americans died due to differing ideologies.

 Hence why I would like a - approval for having different traits from each ideology tree.

 Your incorrect about Thomas Jefferson.  He was highly opposed to slavery and really the notion of minorities didn't even exist in the sense you stated at the time. http://www.monticello.org/site/plantation-and-slavery/thomas-jefferson-and-slavery

 The idea of minorities has been used as a wedge tool to create division among Americans and countries around the world.  Simply treating someone different based of size, class, skin, etc is truly apalling.  There is only one race ALTAR...  I mean HUMAN

Considering this it would make for some cool mega event such as a civil war within your own faction if you say maxed out both benevolent / manevolent (as a trigger)

I just don't get it.

The devs have time and expense in the choices that take you down an ideology path. Are those of you that want penalty points for splitting ideology points saying that reading the choices is a waste of time and your choice of ideology should be made at the first planet colonized and following that just click on the same ideology at each opportunity. No need to read the choices involved. Enjoy the pretty pictures but don't bother with reading the text. If your first choice was benevolent you are stuck with it for the balance of the game.

I am not sure how many are for or against the penalties but I doubt the devs want them. I'll live with it no matter how it falls out. It will save me a lot of angst over whether the population should be allowed to hop around on those marsupials or not.

In my current immense game I am well into the pragmatic and the benevolent ideology and my choices were mostly honest, not based on being locked into one ideology. It has been a lot of fun getting the rewards I have achieved and I don't feel the least bit guilty.

Anyway, here is the bottom line imo. The game is going to be quite re-playable, but by the time I have played 30-40 games, a single ideology tree with 20 levels is going to be boring as hell. In fact, I wouldn't mind seeing the ideology system expanded, as some have suggested. Some of the rewards should be be open ended and come with untended consequences that might or might not bite you later in the game. I am talking about a reward that might be very helpful most of the time, but have a small risk of costing you big time. 

I think the ideology part of the game needs to be dynamic and unpredictable or it will just be a pain after replaying many times. I have no idea how to implement any of this, I am just here for the free food. 

this IMO is the biggest problem and i think its what most people are really complaining about.

I mean some are saying locking out choices or making choices that are against your starting ideology more expensive. However I really think it boils down to easily being able to max out the trees in a single game

if the costs were scaled in such a way that an average game would earn you enough points to unlock 25 - 30 ideologys no matter what tree they were in that would go a long way to solving this issue

Yes, if one is playing on very large maps, with few opponents, frequent events, and abundant stars/abundant planets, then yes it is easier to max out every ideology  Less so, if one isn't.

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Instead of bringing subjective viewpoints to the table (including mine ), let's bring some cold hard data.

Doing a bit of a test right now, it appears that the Ideology Table follows a simple progression of +3 followed by a +2 followed by a +3 and so on for each trait that is chosen within a table.

Trait #1: 15 points

Trait #2: 18 points

Trait #3: 20 points

Trait #4: 23 points 

To unlock all 20 traits in a table costs 780 ideology points. To max out all three would therefore cost 2,340 points (yes, I'm counting the disabled traits).  

Checking the game data, random events give 10 to 30 ideology points, with 20 being the most common.  So let's just use 20 as the baseline.

Near as I can tell from the data, planetary colonization is always a flat 10 points.  

Now random events won't always give an ideological choice. I don't know what the frequency is, so I can't make any hard analysis on that.  But lets say for arguments sake that one has 10 ideological random events in an entire game, for 200 points of ideology.  Might be less, might be a lot more.  That means, if one builds no ideological buildings, currently someone has to colonize 214 planets to get all three trees, presuming perfect ideological balance (which isn't likely due to distaste over choices).  So lets bump it up a tad to 220.

What if I am vastly underestimating random events, though?  As I said, I don't know what the frequency is, nor the length of some folks games.  Completely fair point.  So lets bump it all the way up to 1,000 points from random events.  That'd be around 25 ideological random events (again centered around 20 points per event). That still means the player has to colonize 134  planets to max out all three trees, again presuming one doesn't build any ideological buildings and has perfect choice.  

But what if a player DOES build them?  Well then, everything gets thrown out the window since there is no current limit to building (some of) the ideological buildings other than players not wanting to "waste" tiles and the fact that only one of each type of building can be built on a single planet.  Which almost makes this entire argument moot and then just gets down to how bloodyminded a player is to max things out.

Still, looking at the data, I can see why some people are maxing out in what seems to be an easy manner in their eyes.  Thing is, not everyone will be playing on the same settings, nor with the same playstyle.  Some folks might be loath to waste what they see as precious tiles to use ideology buildings.  Others might have more opponents than some people.  And still others might play on maps that even though they are large, still wind up without many planets for one reason or another.

All that being said, I am still in favor of letting people choose the "pace" of ideological growth.  Especially as more avenues of ideology come into the game.  But I am wary of fixes like "number of planets" because then there is the point of "number of opponents".  After all, an Immense map with fifteen, twenty, or more majors will play FAR different than one with eight. 

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Naturally if one wants to "only" max out one tree because of immersion/RP, then it does become much easier to max out a single tree on larger maps.  Even so, number of planets/opponents comes into play, I think.

And I'm sure that's why.  Those are going to add up quick.  One of those buildings (and I believe you can build only one per ideological trait  will equal one colonization event within 5 to 10 turns.   100 turns will equal 10 to 20 colonization events.

On the other hand, some ideological buildings don't generate per turn, but only at construction.  The per turn ones seem to me to be more geared for smaller maps and/or more opponents and/or scarce planets. I reckon, from a design viewpoint, that's the main way to finish out a tree when the number of planets to be colonized has been exhausted.

Unless one cheeses by constantly building and then destroying and then rebuilding flat bonus ideological buildings, of course. But that is pretty cheesy.

FWIW, I'm playing on Immense Maps with abundant/abundant. At around 70 colonies or so, I have, IIRC, 8 to 10 of the ideological traits unlocked in each tree (it tends to vary).  Now I haven't built any ideological buildings (flat or per turn), but I still haven't come close to finishing a tree.  

Edited: Currently, Benevolent and Malevolent each have a building that allows 1 and 2 points per turn, while Pragmatic only has one that allows one 1 point per turn and doesn't appear to have the one that generates a 2 point per turn.  This means that one can eventually get 3 Benevolent points each turn, 1 Pragmatic point each turn, and 3 Malevolent points per turn, and so adjust the equivalent number colonization events accordingly.

Ah, that must be new, as I could do that in prior builds of the game.  As I said I haven't played much with ideological buildings in recent builds.  Good to see that exploit has been taken out of the game.