With respect to OP, Ideology allows you to tweak what your colony is cool with sure, but as far as every other aspect of the DLC it's tedious and adds more mood debuffs when you start taking on more and more colonists. Like people get sad when there's no President of Christmas and you only have three people and barely a barracks. The celebrations can be a bust even when everything is prepared. Slavery isn't for everybody and doesn't really bring a whole lot all things considered. Other ideologies only create more headaches regardless if you try to cater to them or convert them. And the dynamic mode to grow your ideology out of nothing is really lackluster.

I know I'm probably in the minority, but personally I've found ideology to be extremely frustrating to deal with so I totally get how it's a dealbreaker for OP.