What are your opinions of all the ideology memes?

[Archmage MC]

I've been playing with them all, and so far besides a few outliers they seem to have positives and negatives to each one, or don't do much of anything.

[Caz]

With a few mods, Blindsight is a lot of fun. Without mods... not really.
Transhumanist is rough when you're just getting started, but is insanely powerful as you advance in tech level.
Collectivist and Supremacy are both meh. What they add, both good and bad, aren't really that exciting.
Rancher is OK, but if you don't have a beefy machine, don't expect to get the most out of this one. The number of animals you need to get the highest buff absolutely kills ticks per second.
The tree focused meme (can't recall its name without looking) is.... unique. It can be frustrating due to having to micromanage extracting Each. Individual. Tree. There's not an area select for that action and I've yet to find a mod that does this. If not for that tedious problem, I think it would be a lot more fun.

Overall I think most of them are balanced pretty well. And, like you said, some just don't really do anything, good or bad. They don't even really add any flavor.

[ichifish]

I’ve only played one run with charitable raiders collectivists and the combo is pretty middle of the road in terms of impact.

I wish the charitable meme had more opportunities to do things rather than just a passive mood effect for other events.

The raider meme seems reasonably balanced. If you’re like me and like to have allies the constant hit to faction relations balances shooting specialist somewhat. I like the way raider forces you to attack other settlements and found that I can keep the faction relationships high by taking out pirate bases, so this is kind of like getting a recurring quest.

[Jenkem]

>MORE
>NEED MOOOOORE

[schnappkatze]

Some are really cool and seriously give the game a new and different spin, but some are really underwhelming or just fluff. Especially male/female supremacy feel impactless - I had a few games with those and it never really felt like playing any different, just a forced inferior clothing choice for half my colonists. Could have used a few more tweaks, some stronger and some weaker (colonists of a certain gender cannot held roles, cannot have nicer bedrooms than the other, cannot be recruited, only be slaves), to feel impactful.

[Archmage MC]

I've been having fun with High Life. You can satisfy the drug requirement by using Pychleaf tea (or if you have Vanilla Expanded brewing, just straight Tea), or you can go the autobong route. The first way has no downsides and only upsides, the other way is the more thematic way and its nice that this exists. Plus placing an auto bong in your killbox that raiders need to move htrough leads to some really high and really bad accuracy raiders which is hilarious.

Human Primacy seems to be the only "You must have this" meme due to it being the only way to get a production specialist, which is super OP.

Tree Connection takes too long to prune the tree even with 20 plant and plant specialist and you can't have just 1 pawn prune multiple trees so you'll be wasting half the day for multiple pawns to use this meme, making it a 4th slot meme where you have pawns to spare for these trees. Only issue is at that point the buffs you'd get from these trees aren't doing much at all like they would early game. If they counted as Plants skill (They don't, so your pawns don't get the burning passion moodlet when pruning the tree) and the pruning time was cut down more by higher plant skill to be around 30% less than what it is now I could see this being a really nice meme in general.

Tunnler is fun, except infestations happen and gg base. They should have something to let you control infestations or make them not happen in an area, but also make it so that your forced to stay underground or you get some really bad moodlets, with less if its night out. (So you can at least caravan)

[ephemeraltoast]

Originally posted by schnappkatze:

Could have used a few more tweaks, some stronger and some weaker (colonists of a certain gender cannot held roles

I'm playing female supremacy right now and men cannot be leaders, and I have no mods affecting it as far as I know, so I think this is already implemented.

But for the most part it is just a springboard to RP, like many of the memes currently.

[Païtiti]

I honestly love the idea of ideology but as a whole I see it very much as work-in-progress or rather a framework given to the modding community in order to built their content upon. Some memes feel full-fledged out such as cannibal or high life while others are just hollow and have practicially no real influence on gameplay.

Take Individualism/Collectivism for example. There are hundreds of studies/books etc. about the topic how individualist types of societies differ from collectivistic ones, how their member react differently to different social scenarios, how peer-pressure, loneliness, mental health and so on and so on... are handled differently in different societal contexts. So there is imo no excuse for implementing this whole thing so half-heartedly into the game.

I'd propose something along those lines:

Individualists prefer single accomodations and an detest barracks. For collectivists it's the other way around.
Individualists prefer an open-work rooster with a lot of "Anything" while collectivists prefer working in along preset lines in workgroups.
The leader in an individualistic group recognices the abilities of every single person and can periodicily inspire members to excell in their task (give inspirations).
The leader in a collectivistic group recognices the power of working together so they give everybody around them a workspeed buff (workdrive as an AOE rather than an individual thing)

I really think that would make sense and improve on the memes. That was only one example. There are others that just lack any clear direction or impact on the game.

[Tidal Resonance]

Tree Connection has one of the largest effects on gameplay and playstyle out of any of the memes. This meme makes getting wood significantly harder while also causing dryads to be more useful due to the pruning speed increase. Relying on dryads and pruning each day has major gameplay effects. Overall, Tree Connection usually makes the game more difficult, although might be different on extreme maps.

The dryads are reliable, but inflexible. Tree Connection has very different feel from a more technology oriented meme, such as Transhumanist, even though it can be combined with that meme or from a meme like Rancher. It is more like your pawns are admiring the trees and prune the Gauranlen ones in tranquility (when raids are not happening). The ones like Transhumanist and Rancher have high dynamism and hustle and bustle.

Transhumanist has a long time before the payoff, although it starts reaping major benefits at that point. This meme fits well with those who dislike pawns having a weakness, like missing a finger or having a permanent injury. The meme also tends to encourage a tall playstyle and focusing on building up your pawns rather than recruited more at every opportunity. The biosculptors are much more useful here and can often be used on heavily injured pawns or those who would otherwise die of sickness far more efficiently than otherwise. High power consumption, but little need for cooks.

Rancher seems fairly balanced and does make raising animals a major part of your base economy. The meat eating requirements are a nuisance for awhile, but less so later on. Solar flares and EMI events are a major irritant with Rancher. Raids are often more difficult when you have so many animals. You will want to have a very large and heavily fortified pen area.

[Raymond]

It's intentional by design. When you choose your memes the game literally tell you how much each memes will deviate your game from regular rimworld experience. Collectivist and supremacy all have the lowest impact score, so they would barely be noticeable throughout the game. Ranching and tree connection both have highest impact score, so naturally they would more involved than other memes. Tynan did this so the dlc can accommodate people who just want a relaxing game without stressing too much about ideology, and people who want extra challenge or role playing by playing with a super niche high impact religion.