I think the ideology mechanic looks great on paper but in reality it is crap as of now (Beta 0.91). They could delete it tomorrow and it wouldn't negatively impact the game, except for the Baratak Grove who get an artifact for each culture point. The culture point choices are mostly terrible. The cheaper leaders one is good. The free leader one is good. Eurekas is good. The increased starbase range one is situationally good. More than half of them I wouldn't choose under any circumstances. Making us pick the same thing every time is just a waste of time and is not in any way more fun.

To make things worse, moderators have hinted that they won't fix the "blocking events" problem until after 1.0 so you're on your own to remember the entire ideology tree and citizen ideologies (or keep a separate log). In addition, since they didn't bother to give each race a unique ideology (how come I am the first one to notice this?), you'll get a -1 to diplomacy across the board if you don't choose the authority path. This state of affairs is part of the reason I think Stardock is nowhere near ready to release this game to the general public.

If I were them, I'd get rid of culture points entirely, dole those awards based on ideological discovery (fibonacci sequence would probably work for costs), and give the Baratak their artifacts based on how many policies they have unlocked. Up to 7 juicy colony worlds is probably plenty. Events that currently award a free culture point can just award a free ideological discovery (any of the 14). That would be plenty of an award for the privilege of documenting my leader's awesomeness. They would eventually need to balance the awards somewhat but since they have basically ignored this mechanic since they realized (correctly) that an axis or two was insufficient (somewhere in middle of the Alpha period), they could continue to do so indefinitely.

I strongly disagree.  I thoroughly enjoy looking through all of the ideology traits and trying to figure-out which ones I want to get.  Then, making decisions throughout the game to get points in the desired ideology so that I can eventually get the desired trait.  I think this contributes to the strategic planning and decision making aspects of the game that, for me, make it so enjoyable.

As a side note, my favorite traits are:

• Early game:
  • Self-Governance (for the approval boost and free leader)
  • Ambition (cheaper to hire leaders)
• Mid-game:
  • Mobility Rights (extends the range of starbases)
  • Poaching (you keep the leaders of captured core worlds)
  • Planning (+10 logistics, important for building fleets)
• Late game:
  • Perfect Production (20% manufacturing boost)
  • Worker's Party (20% manufacturing boost if your worlds are happy)
  • Cooperative (no penalty for overcrowding)

This is great feedback, thank you. I'm going to make the following changes:

Representation- All colonies generate Influence.

Devotion- +2 Control per Turn and all leaders get the Tradition ideology.

Negotiators- +3 Diplomatic Capital per turn.

Planning- +8 Logistics (instead of +10).

Please continue to let me know what are your favorite and least favorite culture traits.

Are there other culture traits people would like to see added?

Not necessarily but I'd change almost all of them. The +2% for everything is a joke, you'll barely notice. If you want to jump-start productivity, have it add +1 of everything to your capital instead. Then it will have an benefit the whole game, though that effect will obviously be magnified at the beginning.

Anything that gives a fixed benefit is bad because it scales poorly throughout the game. (Save those things for executive orders. Actually, that might be a good mechanic, spend a point to unlock an executive order to do something useful like get a constructor. It least you would get a benefit the whole game.)

Notice that two players who have opposing views of this mechanic came to almost identical lists of what are good traits. There should be a reason for at least some races to consider each path and right now there really isn't. 

The Secrecy tree desperately needs to be revamped.

I thought before that it was probably the weakest tree. After playing a game with the Iconians (who have Secrecy as their primary ideology), I am now convinced of this. You can find my thoughts about the Iconians here.

In this post, I'm going to take a deep dive into everything wrong with the Secrecy tree. Without any further ado, let's get into it. 

Silver Tongue: +5 Deception

I don't feel like deception plays a big enough role in the game currently to justify taking this ideology point. At the same time, there are traits in other trees that benefit Persuasion and Intimation, so at least there's some evenness there. The primary benefit of taking one of these three traits is actually the ideology awareness it offers, not the benefit that listed in the text. Silver Tongue is therefore the worst of these three traits because, as we will see, Secrecy has almost nothing to offer, and therefore extra awareness in Secrecy is practically worthless.

Criminal Ties: Ally with the Pirates

This is a cool idea, but I don't think it's actually very useful. The benefit from this trait is three-fold: you won't accidentally lose any probes or freighters, your ships won't be "pinned down" defending colonies next to pirate bases, and you can get some reconnaissance and security from nearby pirates. On the other hand, you'll miss out on some "experience farms" for your ships. You'll also lose the benefit of the pirate bases as the game goes on, because the other civs will start clearing them out. The exception to this is that if the pirate bases are within your sphere of influence, you can actually take steps to preserve them by kicking out ships from other civs (and incurring a diplomatic penalty).

My criticism of this trait is that it is useless for the Xeloxi, who are already allied with the pirates. Because of the Crime Lords trait, the Xeloxi are the one race that might actually want to progress down the Secrecy tree; and yet this trait, which helps you progress down the Secrecy tree, is useless to them. Criminal Ties might be useful to the Iconians to help stave off military defeat, but I have strong doubts.

Darkness: -1 to moves and sensor range to enemy ships in our territory

This is the one trait from this tree that I actually like, and that is because it enables certain strategies for civs that aren't using primarily the Secrecy tree. For example, I can play the Arceans and get Mobility Rights from the Liberty Tree and add Darkness and a few other traits to enable a strategy where I build military starbases (with the upgrades that also reduce enemy movement), so that I have disgusting military advantage over my opponents. At t3, Darkness isn't too hard to get while ignoring the rest of the tree.

The one bad thing about Darkness is how poorly in synergizes for the Iconians who--despite having Secrecy as their primary ideology--can't really benefit that much from Darkness because of their poor influence.

Paranoia: All leaders gain the paranoia trait.

This allows you to keep the governors if you've lost a core world. Whether you pick is entirely situational based on whether you feel like you're losing the game. If you are losing the game, keeping your governor might not be enough to save you. This trait does gain more utility for races that have a negative modifier to their resistance, because they are more likely to lose a core world that they later regain.

The big problem here is just that most of the time, you won't want this trait. And because that is true for all the other traits we've seen so far, you don't actually have a way to progress down the Secrecy without taking subpar traits.

Crime Lords: 3 free leaders, +3% crime

If you are playing Xeloxi and you have the Secrecy awareness to get this trait, take it. If you are not playing the Xeloxi, think very carefully before you do. The leaders are randomly generated, so there's a good chance they won't be much use to you. You may even have to execute one if they've got the +3% crime trait. I would only take this if I knew I already had negative crime or felt desperate for more leaders. Coming this far down the tree, this is not the best trait.

Hidden Agenda: No one will declare war on you for 50 turns.

This is the capstone of the Secrecy Tree. It's the only reason you would even want to invest in Secrecy at all. It's a temporary benefit that does absolutely nothing for you past those 50 turns.

In GC3, there was similar trait offered to Pragmatic races. The major difference was that there it was offered toward the beginning so that one could take it early in the game. That could allow a weaker race (like the Thalans) to survive a rough patch, until later in the game when some of their strengths started to kick in. You don't have that option in GC4. Hidden Agenda is really only useful now in a game where you know you are going to win within 50 turns if no one declares war on you.

It's definitely a good trait if you are on the cusp of winning. Unfortunately, the Secrecy tree does almost nothing to get you to that point. You would be better off taking traits that actually help grow your empire.

The only circumstance in which I would be likely to take Hidden Agenda is if I was close to achieving a non-domination victory and had happened to get enough Secrecy awareness through events. Mind you, all other things being equal I would never choose to gain Secrecy awareness over another kind of awareness, so it's probable I would not have sufficient Secrecy awareness.

In conclusion, Secrecy is the weakest tree because it has to many situational traits. While these are not bad in themselves, putting them all together in one tree severely penalizes races that start with that as their ideology (i.e., the Iconians). Secrecy needs more traits that are always good, like the Creativity tree has now. 

TBH, they need to sweep through the entire ideology tree and answer three questions.

1. Has it been demonstrated to work properly?
2. Does it make sense?
3. Would anyone logically want to spend a precious culture point there?

Based on forum feedback, I estimate that no more than 90% of culture points actually work as intended. It wouldn't surprise me if there were options that no one has ever purchased.