Has anybody tried fluid ideologies?

[Païtiti]

Hi,

Question in title. How does it work? When do you actually get to evolve your ideology? How long does it take to receive more archetypes/memes?

(Pls spoil, I'm lazy).

[Vladolf Putler]

for first reformation you need like 10 development points, this number grows for next reformation, you can change memes, rituals, percepts, etc during the reformation.
You get those development points by doing various rituals and if the outcome of the ritual is good or best you get like +1 or +2 dev points. You cant just spam rituals as they have colldowns, so it will take some time to collect all points for reformation.

[Jaggid Edje]

You earn development points by doing things (rituals, conversions, etc.) and once you have enough, you can 'reform" your ideology by making changes.

I am doing a fluid ideology right now, and I got my first reform at 10 points, which didn't take that long, happened before the first game year was over.
The 2nd is going to take 12, so it seems the cost goes up as you do it, though the difference between 10 and 12 is small...and with the additions I made in the first reformation it should actually be accrued more quickly.

if you do a fluid ideology, beware, it lets you make some mistakes without giving any kind of warning.

For example, on my first reformation I added an annual ritual that was a "symbol burning" holiday....but I didn't remember to actually add the "building type" that allowed me to build the effigy/pyre/flag that is needed for such a ritual.
The end result is when that annual date came around and my people expected the ritual, I could not actually deliver on it, and everyone got unhappy.

[Païtiti]

Alright. Can u choose unlimited new stuff after reforming or is it limited? If so, how much?

[Hykal]

Fluid ideology is limited to some things. You can only choose one meme at a time, and IIRC, change the style/ritual music. However the whole rituals/roles/artifacts thing you can edit to your heart's content. With Fluid ideology, you more or less have an in-game way to edit your Ideology without resorting to devmode.

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by 123:

Alright. Can u choose unlimited new stuff after reforming or is it limited? If so, how much?

It's let me change anything I wanted other than Meme's, as mentioned already. I could only add 1 new Meme on reformation. I was able to freely edit all the rest though.

[Progressive Dad]

Fluid ideologies is nice and all, but are the devs planning on adding gender fluid eventually?

[dande48]

Originally posted by Jaggid Edje:

on my first reformation I added an annual ritual that was a "symbol burning" holiday....but I didn't remember to actually add the "building type" that allowed me to build the effigy/pyre/flag that is needed for such a ritual.

That sounds like a bug. For regular ideologies, I'm pretty sure you can't set a ritual without its required building type.

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by dande313:

That sounds like a bug. For regular ideologies, I'm pretty sure you can't set a ritual without its required building type.

Yep, that was my assumption. It's why I didn't catch it, because if it were non-fluid setup it wouldn't have let me do it.

[Vladolf Putler]

Originally posted by dande313:

Originally posted by Jaggid Edje:

on my first reformation I added an annual ritual that was a "symbol burning" holiday....but I didn't remember to actually add the "building type" that allowed me to build the effigy/pyre/flag that is needed for such a ritual.

That sounds like a bug. For regular ideologies, I'm pretty sure you can't set a ritual without its required building type.

I screwed it in generation phase, when I added that scarification is required, but I did not add ritual Scarification, so I had perma minus mood from missing scarification, its not added automatically these things..

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by Bashar al-Assad:

screwed it in generation phase, when I added that scarification is required, but I did not add ritual Scarification, so I had perma minus mood from missing scarification, its not added automatically these things..

Not everything is, but for the rituals it doesn't let you add ones that you don't have the appropriate buildings for. At least for me it doesn't. And that's what he was saying.

[Païtiti]

'After your guys' feedback I gave it a go and must say that I find the experience a bit lacking. It feels as if the thing is not really thought through enough or maybe I have the wrong expectations.

Firstly, I wanted to do a very tough start naked survival somewhere in the cold with the pain is virtue meme. As I thought that would make sense. Having a dude naked and alone who simply is alright with what he has. But Pain is Virtue is more than that. There is unfortunately no possibilty to get "Rough living", Temperature tolerance etc. without Pain is virtue. But you cannot start with it....

So, I scrambled this plan and went instead with raiders that are forced to raid because of their situation. I picked a viking start and combined it with Freya Fierce as a storyteller.

If you dont know as vikings you start with 7 people. So I picked a cold biome where farming was not a real choice. While creating the ideology I found it extremly odd that you could only choose one starting meme but you can freely choose up to 6 rituals and change everything around pretty freely. So I picked max amount of rituals cause and started.

To reform your ideology you need 10 developement points. For the next reform 12 and so on. After playing for 2 Rimworld years I earned enough points to reform my ideology 3 times without even really trying. I was not cheesing the rituals but got a lot of points instead through raiding. Each attack on a farming/mining side gives you 3 points.

By now my colony was established enough so that raiding was not really necessary anymore so I changed my ideology again away from it and towards ranching. I found a couple of devil sheep and as they sell for 500 a piece I made much more money out of that than raiding. Plus you can still raid but dont earn developement points for that.

So, as you can see I understand the fluid ideology system as a means to transform the ideology of your colony while it developes. I think it does make sense that people choose an ideology that fits their lifestyle. It happened to be like that in history as well. I see how it is applicable to the new archonexus ending. Every time you start with a new colony you might also change your ideology to a new playstyle.

My issue is that although it is flexible it is not flexible enough. You should be able to start with all memes even the strong ones to be able to really pick the starting scenario you want.
I think Raiders might have been too generous with developement points. Do a couple of raids (which are really easy in the beginning) and be already able to reform. I made the mistake and fleshed out my ideology in the beginning and gave it festivals, venerated animals and such. I feel that you need to restrain yourself when creating. Maybe just pick 1 festival etc and develop as you go. Maybe set future festivals on certain dates that really mean something to your colony.

What I really miss is a sort of middleground between pain is virtue and tunnelers. Rimworld's caravan system was always lacking although leaving the planet via the stranded ship was one of the first game endings. I would appreciate an ideology that caters the needs of travelers. If you want to play in a nomadic fashion you really need to come up with some creative character creation otherwise it will fail. An ideology that supports this lifestyle could be similar to pain is virtue but without the need/strive for pain but rather an indifference towards it. It is cold? We sleep together in tight space? So what? We are nomads thats what we do.

To counterbalance that give them a need to travel. Restlessness when staying too long in one place. This is already a thing with vikings so why not use it?

I would really love to see some decent caravan ideology.

[schnappkatze]

That is a nice writeup. I was very bummed out in the beginning of Ideo that this wasn't an option at first and am currently in my first "proper" fluid playthrough. A few thoughts on it:

Like several things in Ideo, it is not meant to be balanced, so being able to gather more points with some Ideos makes sense. However, raiding seems to be really off then, because as you said, it is far too easy and comes far too often. I think I could reform my Ideo in naked brutality after 2 or 3 years the first time (Naked Brutality Transhumanism). Maybe there could be an event like a "holy raid" once in a year that gives points.

I imagine there will be some finetuning to the systems in the future - Tynan seemed to not want a fluid system to be in the DLC at first and they seemed to have put it in as fast as they could because people were complaining. This explains to me why it is not that well thought out, it wasn't what they had on their minds in the first place.

I guess by choosing all the precepts and festivals as you like you get the freedom to flesh out your ideo the way you want - I agree that it would feel more satisfying to work for it instead of being able to get everything right away, but we are supposed to restrain ourselves here. The focus is on player freedom, they can do as they like, the dev doesn't restrain someone from adding two festivals and specialists at once.

In the light of the last paragraph, not being able to choose the high impact memes for a start makes no sense to me. Why suddenly less focus on letting the player do as they like? I see no reason for this restriction.

[glass zebra]

Pretty sure you can't chose the "harder" memes at start because those are what messed up peoples expectations and be fluid ideologies be a thing in the first place. Something with low impact so you can basically play old rimworld and change it later. The whole thing about "having choices" is not super cool for many people to have a fun game. That is something you always have to consider in game design.

[Hykal]

The reason why only Tier 1 Memes are available are because people get pissy when they make an Animal Personhood or Treehugger ideology then get mad that it's so hard. Pain is a virtue is understandable on why it's Tier 2.

[schnappkatze]

But you already have the freedom to choose these memes in a fixed Ideology, which is actually harder than in the fluid one because you cannot backpadel. I see no reason to not just let let players choose them, maybe with a quick "this is not adviced" pop up.

And for some memes it simply isn't true - being a nudist is actually an easier start when you do naked brutality.