Too much religion, too little ideology?

[Stormtrooper]

Is it just me or did others also notice that the new DLC feels way more like "adds a religion" rather than generic ideology?

It seems you can have all kinds of weird cults of all sorts, there's also an option to have more toned down belief systems like major relgions from the real world, but I feel like this DLC is severely lacking in terms of non-spiritual ideologies.

I don't see a clear option to build communism, socialism (no, "collectivism" is too broad of a term to be specifically related to those), capitalism ((no, "individualsim" is too broad of a term to be specifically related to this), technocracy, utilitarism, democracy... Basically feel like there's too little content regarding political, sociological and philosophical systems because of the focus on religions and cults.

Sure, there are supremacist memes so I think one could try to build facist regime or just some totalitarism in general, but they aren't as fleshed out as cannibal cults it seems.

There's also transhumanism, but even that feels more like a cult of people worshiping advanced machines and software as gods rather than a high-tech society fascinated with scientific and technological progress.

Even at the beginning of ideology creation when asked about the source you can choose several religions, I believe also archotech but again it's a cult of AI worshipers then and only one option left is the one that is actually atheistic, so it is in opposition to spiritual beliefs. Meanwhile there are exactly zero options to choose from when it comes to something based on politics or philosophy that just leaves religion as an individual thing for citizens and is neither for or against it.

Tl:dr; I feel like in the current state of DLC there's too little "ideol" and too much "igion". Would love to see more options regarding the former in the future.

[SpaceThunder]

It is doubtful that it is possible to model socialism or capitalism with a dozen of pawns.

[Lyana]

For the most part I agree with you. The memes and religions could be more expansive. I love making my kind of society in this game, my 'utopia' if you will. Ideology is helpful in this, but also somewhat lacking.

I would advise you to keep an eye on the Vanilla Expanded Series, including Oskar's patreon page ( https://www.patreon.com/oskarpotocki ). They're planning something that I'm excited about and you might find useful as well. Just take a look at the patreon page and scroll down a little to the posts about Vanilla Expanded Ideology - Structures and Memes.

I would've liked to see this in the base game, but I'll settle for a mod. I'm used to that by now.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by SpaceThunder:

It is doubtful that it is possible to model socialism or capitalism with a dozen of pawns.

Yeah, frankly, it's entirely a command economy because you simply don't have enough people to do otherwise.

I do wish that there was something related to dorms and separate rooms, presumably linked to individualism/collectivism.

[Raymond]

without the dlc, your colony is already a communism utopia by it's every possible meaning.

[Cat®]

A small selection of political ideologies does not the concept of ideological structures make.

[Xao]

Overall, I agree with this.

It's this cult like nature that also makes so many of the options bad, too. Especially Transhumanism, which provides very little upside in exchange for a constant and debilitating obsession and reliance on technology that requires a large deal of power and material investment, and doesn't really do much- Or in the case of biosculpter pods does what it does very badly.

Originally posted by SpaceThunder:

It is doubtful that it is possible to model socialism or capitalism with a dozen of pawns.

Actually, modeling socialism is easy with a dozen pawns. Socialism really only works on a small scale anyway, because the system completely unravels when a community becomes too large to ensure all are participating, and doing so consensually and fairly.

What most people don't understand about socialism is that what the socialists sought can only be accomplished when power is divided up between a bunch of autonomous communities (this also goes for most Ancaps: They're basically asking for the same thing liberal communists do, but in different language).

Most large, "socialist" superpowers in practice just create all the same things capitalism does, but directly within the state: Rather than a set of feudal business structures, loosely in cooperation with each other (a trust), that buys and owns the state, you just get immediate totalitarianism under a state which owns and operates all business and capital.

In a very real sense, socialism is how colony simulators work by default. If not socialism, some kind of totalitarian/collectivist capitalism (e. g. strong consent manufacture is implied, your colony is assumed to function like a corporation, or a society ruled by corporations).

To reiterate: The problem with modeling socialism and capitalism is how little difference there is between them in practice, once power consolidates in each respective system. Power starts consolidated in most real world attempts at socialism, and with no one restraining power under capitalism, it too eventually ends up consolidated.

Well, in a colony simulator, the power starts consolidated, under you, the player. You are the CEO/Dictator, and it can't really be any other way on account of gameplay limitations. Basically, the reason why the capitalism and socialism memes change so little is because that's already how the game works.

Even if you break your colony up into several small colonies and manage them via different ideology, almost everything your pawns do is dictated by you- Even most of what they believe.

...Fun point of notice: The high life meme is all you really need to turn your colony into the global capitalist society seen in Brave New World. Just pick collectivism/individualism to represent what specific lies you tell your population about their existence and place in the world. Really, all that's missing is a drug that is explicitly modeled after Soma. ...So basically, Rimworld needs MDMA.

[Hyomoto]

RimWorld is already socialist. What you are asking for is not ideology, it's government. But yes, ideology slants towards ethical systems, not government ones. I've speculated that the next expansion might be government for this reason, since ownership and laws are essentially the missing pieces in the current system. Precepts can forbid taking drugs, but they do not allow punishment for disobeying them.

You can't have capitalism in RimWorld. The fact that slaves own an equal stake of the colony is basically all the explanation as to why that is that's needed. *You* can assign your colonist a really nice bedroom, but other people will still make use of everything but the bed. And should you reassign their bed they might be upset with their new room, but they'll never lament losing ownership of the old one: because quite simply, Pawns barely own the clothes on their back. Outside of user-made restrictions, every Pawn has an equal stake in all comforts and prosperity of the colony.

[Astasia]

It's not a society with grand concepts like communism or capitalism, you can't translate stuff like that to this scale, it's a small group of people with shared (or not) beliefs, so yes a cult is pretty accurate. Ideology doesn't exist to simulate realistic society, it exists to create wacky combinations of extreme beliefs to make the game interesting. It's how the game has always been, just more of it and more fleshed out. Your cannibalistic melee only caver colony that you were playing in 1.0 or whatever now has functional rules and bonuses to make that kind of thing easier to do and more engaging.

[Stormtrooper]

Wow, it seems like many of you abvoe focused on communism, socialism and capitalism, meanwhile they were just mere examples and not the point... Even if you rule these particular ideologies out because of being too conflicting with the way gameplay operates, my point still stands which was about too much religion and occultism and too little politcis, sociology and philosophy.

Though having said that, even these could be somehow modeled. Some simple things like if you go the communism route then individuals having way more wealth in terms of gear and bedroom than others could cause distress among colonists, cause hate and maybe even drive them to desire an execution as a traitor. Or in case of capitalism colonists randomly engaging in learning skills to possibly climb the social ladder and increase their value or whatever. Also I believe both communism and capitalism could have very interesting interactions with the content of royalty, something I'd be most looking forwards.

(this also goes for most Ancaps: They're basically asking for the same thing liberal communists do, but in different language).

Hehe, glad I'm not the only one noticing anarchocapitalism and liberal communism are much closer than both sides would care to admit. ;)

Most large, "socialist" superpowers in practice just create all the same things capitalism does

Yep, so happy to see someone else also notice on a large scale both are suspiciously similar to each other when it comes to what it means for your average citizen, in opposition to all these political ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on the internet. ;)

Ideology doesn't exist to simulate realistic society, it exists to create wacky combinations of extreme beliefs to make the game interesting.

And that's exactly the problem I have with this. Maybe wacky cultists are interesting to you, but not to me. After all, according to how it was advertised, it should simply add more options for all kinds of playstyles and colony themes, making *my story* more into *my story* than ever before. Crazy cannibals and war criminals don't achieve this for me.

It's how the game has always been, just more of it and more fleshed out. Your cannibalistic melee only caver colony that you were playing in 1.0 or whatever now has functional rules and bonuses to make that kind of thing easier to do and more engaging.

And what if I told you I've never played cannibalistic melee only caver colony, be it 1.0 or whatever else? I know this is what the most vocal part of rimworld community enjoys, but that doesn't mean there aren't others. Personally I always preferred a more serious, toned-down and realistic struggles of a community among post-apocalypse, not to lead a group of maniacs and psychos who realistically wouldn't have much chance of lasting long before killing each other or having more sane members just flee the community.

And no, that's not how the game has always been. The way the game has always been was offering players choices regarding how they want to play, so if you didn't want organ harvesting, cave dwelling and human skin furniture you didn't have to go that route and the game was still fun. And it was so great about it. So many options for all the tastes and playstyles out there.

But with ideology DLC I feel that players with similar approach to mine were left out and skipped in favour of the most vocal ones. Not surprising it happened at all (they have been the most vocal, after all...), I'm just asking for more options for others, too.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Stormtrooper:

And what if I told you I've never played cannibalistic melee only caver colony, be it 1.0 or whatever else? I know this is what the most vocal part of rimworld community enjoys, but that doesn't mean there aren't others. Personally I always preferred a more serious, toned-down and realistic struggles of a community among post-apocalypse, not to lead a group of maniacs and psychos who realistically wouldn't have much chance of lasting long before killing each other or having more sane members just flee the community.

And no, that's not how the game has always been. The way the game has always been was offering players choices regarding how they want to play, so if you didn't want organ harvesting, cave dwelling and human skin furniture you didn't have to go that route and the game was still fun. And it was so great about it. So many options for all the tastes and playstyles out there.

But with ideology DLC I feel that players with similar approach to mine were left out and skipped in favour of the most vocal ones. Not surprising it happened at all (they have been the most vocal, after all...), I'm just asking for more options for others, too.

For starters I would say you are only playing a fraction of the game, these kinds of restrictions and RP elements really add a lot to the game and the replayability, but ya not everyone is interested in that sort of thing. That was just an example though, another example is the charitable good guys that don't turn anyone away, the drug dealers that can't stop using their own product, the crafters that want to rely as much on trading as possible while avoiding as much labor as they can, etc. etc. Those concepts were all expanded on as well, in addition to new ones being added. Raiders, slavers, naturalists, basic farmers or ranchers, there are plenty of options that aren't evil or violent. Ideology doesn't take anything away from how the game was, it just adds more of the kinds of things that were already there.

[SolarSabotage]

Newest VIE mod is out, and it adds some much-needed variety in your ideology options.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2636329500
Isn't the solution to the separation of ideology and full-on religion, but from my experience it greatly helps.

[Kittenpox]

You mentioned democracy - perhaps this might be worth a look? https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2561949131
As for the whole capitalism/communism thing - the main difference of the 'isms is who gets paid. (A default vanilla game of Rimworld *is* communist/socialist - but that's off-topic and prone to arguments.)

[Lambda]

Originally posted by Stormtrooper:

Is it just me or did others also notice that the new DLC feels way more like "adds a religion" rather than generic ideology?

It seems you can have all kinds of weird cults of all sorts, there's also an option to have more toned down belief systems like major relgions from the real world, but I feel like this DLC is severely lacking in terms of non-spiritual ideologies.

I don't see a clear option to build communism, socialism (no, "collectivism" is too broad of a term to be specifically related to those), capitalism ((no, "individualsim" is too broad of a term to be specifically related to this), technocracy, utilitarism, democracy... Basically feel like there's too little content regarding political, sociological and philosophical systems because of the focus on religions and cults.

Sure, there are supremacist memes so I think one could try to build facist regime or just some totalitarism in general, but they aren't as fleshed out as cannibal cults it seems.

There's also transhumanism, but even that feels more like a cult of people worshiping advanced machines and software as gods rather than a high-tech society fascinated with scientific and technological progress.

Even at the beginning of ideology creation when asked about the source you can choose several religions, I believe also archotech but again it's a cult of AI worshipers then and only one option left is the one that is actually atheistic, so it is in opposition to spiritual beliefs. Meanwhile there are exactly zero options to choose from when it comes to something based on politics or philosophy that just leaves religion as an individual thing for citizens and is neither for or against it.

Tl:dr; I feel like in the current state of DLC there's too little "ideol" and too much "igion". Would love to see more options regarding the former in the future.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2636329500

go crazy

[ichifish]

My issue with ideology is the “Now with More Evil!” focus.

I don’t know who they tested this on, but clearly owning people, death matches, and eating people was their idea of a good time,

I don’t really care how other people get their thrills, but it’s telling that the a developer focused on these when there’s an entire ecosystem of mods already catering to it. Charity, the token “don’t be an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥” precept, seems like it got an afternoon’s attention.

Add to that the truly sociopathic archonexus quest, where you awaken a dormant AI last known for waging war on humanity by convincing people to join your ideology and then selling them to highest bidder,

[Hykal]

You can't replicate real world religions with Ideology either. You can't for instance, make your Space Muslims disapprove of eating pork, or make them pay zakat, or have them go on a pilgrimage. So no, I don't think it's more 'religion' either. An imam is no different from a commissar in gameplay POV, but it is from a roleplay POV.

RimWorld colonies also tend to be small, so you can't make governments. The closest vanilla ideology is basically communism without the state building, and even then, pawns don't have a sense of ownership outside of bedrooms.

This is fine, for all intents and purposes. The DLC exists to make mechanical and thematical cohesion. It makes running a mountain-dwelling human-eating colony viable without using mods. It makes roleplaying a proper mechanic. At this, Ideoligion is a success.

If you bought Ideoligion for the purpose of recreating Civ or Stellaris or Crusader Kings, then that's not the intended purpose.