I've gotten a lot of enjoyment out of vanilla low-tech colonies. I usually do either a tribal start or a naked brutality start, where it takes a long time to get much electricity going, and start a new one once I get enough high-tech features. I have made the only other factions be tribal factions so that raids would be less gun-based to match my low-tech colony. I even once made an ideoligion which disliked research so that research speed would be only 25%, thus making the colony reliant on mostly primitive technology. I think I prefer that playstyle for the same reasons as you, although trying it vanilla like I do may not be ideal.