Anomally or ideoligy?

[P O P]

Last 2 dlcs I need to get. Which one should I get first? Ideology is on sale right now, but you only will save $3.

[MadArtillery]

I do like anomaly more. Ideology will sit at the bottom of my list until they actually put some effort into the barebones, barely existant ideology system.

Anomaly has banger music, interesting raid types, some that do things other than try to kill you directly, and has a crazy butt load of new toys to play with. Synergizes very well with royalty both running heavily off psi sensativity and many psicasts being perfect solutions to anomalies puzzle like enemies.

Ideology has about half the memes it looks like it does and a mix of really good to mediocre additions besides it. The more dlc you own the better ideology is and one of the more unique ones is locked behind owning anomaly.

[Thyloss]

Do you play with mods? Ideology (for now)
Do you want to make the game earlier or harder without using dev mode? Ideology
Are you actually happy with the way the game is and just want content you can actually interact with? Anomaly
Do you like horror stories or Scp similar weird events? Anomaly
Really it is up to you which one you will prefer, but those are the questions I would ask to help decide.

[Dracon]

My opinion:
Ideology will be with you in every game and makes pawns deeper.

Anomaly on the other hand will not be in every game you play. In fact, you will have games were you actively avoid it as it will start annoying the ♥♥♥♥ out of you.

The entities will quickly start becoming dull, as you know how to prepare for them (tbh I knew before my first game as it's so obvious)
Maybe VFE: Anomlay will change things around a bit but imho Ideology will be more relevant on the long run.

[Thyloss]

I can mostly agree with dracon. Playing anomaly the way it was meant to gets boring fast after you have seen the events, and there is almost no mods for it currently, but anomaly does have a setting for “ambient horror” that will throw the events at you randomly. Even knowing the events it still adds some seriously interesting moments in early game, because do you buff your defense against raids that you know are going to keep getting strong or do you add safeties for an event that you may never see this play through but can completely bypass your current defenses?

[NotReallyMyName]

It... depends.

Anomaly is not exactly a horror, it is a fun little SCP playthrough, you get new entitites, a research tree, you can conduct various rituals to do dumb stuff and whatnot. Also allows access to a new way of dealing with enemies, by throwing corpses at them. Shambler killboxes are surprisingly powerful.

Ideology on the other hand mostly goes around choosing your playstyle. Like you can be a tunneler that grows shrooms in dark caves instead of farming regular crops, have mood boosted from having only a single ideology in the colony, faster mech work speed, policies on growing up, food, hell, you can make some clothes give boost to morale of your colonists. Rituals can offer a few boosts as well, like getting new followers, improving mood for all of your colony, get random presents from factions, or improving relationships with them. Biosculpting and neurochargers are nice as well. There are also dryad trees, which are kinda meh, but with a few mods they are actually decent, like decreasing the gestation time, decreasing the amount of pruning needed and increased the amount of total dryads per tree.

I prefer Anomaly, but without Ideology I wouldn't have the secret society of vampires abducting people from around the world and forcing them to fight to the death while some are kept as the bloodstock, I would just have a society of vampires abducting people from around the world that keep people as livestock.

[P O P]

Watched a Noobert video on ideology and decided to get it.

[Triple G]

Ideology gives You more options to set up the game. Anomaly is basically a play it one time and then You know how it is like thing. So basically what the others said.

I wrote a bit more about ideology in the other thread, but in the end both are somehow worth it if You like the game. But also both aren´t really needed to enjoy the game. And both have rather annoying parts in them. Ideology adds the biosculpter pod though, and anomaly adds the rituals which can also heal scars. But for both You would need to dedicate a playthrough to it, to make it really worthwhile.

Else the main things are that ideology adds slaves, and the rituals You can make by default, to get You new pawns, or discover sites, or simply to get a mood buff, and certain styles - like visual styles for a couple of structures - and anomaly adds new threats, also other rituals, ghouls, and a questline so to speak, while ideology also adds new quests, mainly ones which need You to travel a bit, or to invite others to Your colony.

The endgame is so that You would probably never do the quest for ideology, which means to abandon Your site two times and accumulate wealth. And in anomaly it would play further after it, as it´s basically a "side quest".

If it´s about replayability i´d go with ideology, while one can have anomaly enabled, but it doesn´t offer so many options to set up the game - like only two so to speak, either with monolith or without (or disabled, which i don´t count as option "for" the DLC)...

[Veylox]

anomaly is the dlc with the most content, ideology is the one with the least
When it comes to worth relative to price, anomaly is miles above, the funniest part is that rituals were introduced with ideology but anomaly does it way better

Beyond that, it depends on what you want to add to your game, if you're really wishing for -3 mood for cutting a tree go for ideology

Same if you hate SCP with a passion

[Triple G]

^
How is anomaly the DLC with the most content, when there´s biotech?

I´d say royalty is the one with the least content. Also in anomaly the ritual is always the same, while in ideology You have many different ones. Like visually. Dance party, fight between prisoners, sacrifice, lantern thingy, and whatnot. In anomaly they always stand around the circle. In both cases one can also play the game without rituals, while the ideology ones are more neutral for the most part, or bound to the memes. The anomaly rituals are always "dark".

In a way ideology and anomaly are similar, while anomaly only delivers one ideology, but more in depth.

[delayman2]

It depends. If you want some SCP/Aliens vibe then get Anomaly. It drastically differs the gameplay though since you'll be dealing with occult stuff. Ideology is adding a morality/principle effect on your gameplay. It impacts more your decisions and how you interact with our colonists.

[Veylox]

Originally posted by Triple G:

^
How is anomaly the DLC with the most content, when there´s biotech?

I´d say royalty is the one with the least content. Also in anomaly the ritual is always the same, while in ideology You have many different ones. Like visually. Dance party, fight between prisoners, sacrifice, lantern thingy, and whatnot. In anomaly they always stand around the circle. In both cases one can also play the game without rituals, while the ideology ones are more neutral for the most part, or bound to the memes. The anomaly rituals are always "dark".

In a way ideology and anomaly are similar, while anomaly only delivers one ideology, but more in depth.

Anomaly and Biotech are easily the biggest, but I'm pretty sure Anomaly is bigger in sheer content. Tons of events, a whole tech tree, tons of new technologies and rituals. In comparison Biotech has more flexible systems making it extremely replayable, but it still has less stuff in it

Ideology and Anomaly are not similar. Anomaly does rituals better than ideology, and then goes on to add a truckload of techs and events. Ideology only has the ideologies themselves, pretty much, and they boil down to a set of RP rules

[Triple G]

Originally posted by Veylox:

Anomaly and Biotech are easily the biggest, but I'm pretty sure Anomaly is bigger in sheer content. Tons of events, a whole tech tree, tons of new technologies and rituals. In comparison Biotech has more flexible systems making it extremely replayable, but it still has less stuff in it

All the genes, and the xenotypes, and the children, and the robots, and the vampires though, and the toxic environment. And like 5 new quests, without the endgame one.

Anomaly has the ritual circle, the new materials, and the new entities, which are basically the events, as the only other event is the distress signal thing, which is always the same, or the mysterious cargo quest.

While the main problem in quests which demand You to go somewhere is that the people get hungry and sleepy so fast, so one can´t really "explore" the areas, but need to hurry to turn back in time if one doesn´t want to spend 2 days somewhere, even if You go there with a full sleep and food bar. The distress signal is faster though, so it´s superior to some ancient complex thing, as one can always do it in one day without worries, mainly because one doesn´t need to break down all the walls in these tiny rooms...

Ideology and anomaly are similar in the way that they add certain stuff which does the same things. Like You have the biosculpter in ideology, but the aging ritual in anomaly. You have the raids and joiner rituals in ideology, but a ritual to skip a prisoner towards You in anomaly. Ideology adds slaves, and anomaly adds ghouls. Anomaly doesn´t necessarily do it better, but faster and cheaper. But to make use of it, You have to play around anomaly. If You don´t want to do the rituals - which are a very specific thing to do in a playthrough, like as if You had set up an ideology around them - You´re locked out of most the benefits anomaly offers. Else ideology also adds the relics and the relic hunts, if it´s about events - besides all the work sites on the world map, and the ancient complexes.

[dsagent]

Anomoly is Wayyyyy better.
You can choose to ignore the obelisk and play the game mostly normally. Ideology gets in the way a lot but Anomoly adds onto the experience.

[Veylox]

"Like You have the biosculpter in ideology, but the aging ritual in anomaly."

Yeah and you're never gonna use the biosculpter in your entire life because it's horrendous, while the de-aging ritual is one of the strongest additions to the game. Again, where they overlap, Anomaly is better

There's simply no shot that one person with both DLC looks at biosculpter and the aging ritual and thinks "yeah i'm gonna go for the biosculpter"

Ideology is fine, it's the lightest DLC for sure but it does some things right, playing with the different rules and going for RP-oriented colonies can add dozens of hours to your Rimworld experience for sure, but when it comes to sheer content Anomaly just stomps all over it, and people who dislike Anomaly just say the most random stuff like "doing a ritual is very specific" or "but you have to play around Anomaly". Yeah that's the point, when you buy a DLC you have to play it if you want its content.

Doing a ritual isn't anymore specific than using biotechnology, learning psycasts, or having an ideology. If you buy a DLC, you play with it, there's no point in saying "but if I don't want to use Anomaly's content there is none", it's simply not how that works.

If you want biotech you're gonna have to deal with a bunch of stronk modified races, If you play anomaly, you're gonna have anomalies. If you want to turn them off, fine, just do the ending

[MadArtillery]

Heh I guess you can relate biosculptors to chronophagy, chrono combining both bioregenerations scar removal while still being able to doing countless years at once in a short window, 2-26 age reversal cycles at once without taking over a week and glitterworld besides even with ideology and cleanliness boosts to get rid of a scar while still being shorter then a single age reversal by days. They aimed painfully weak with bio, wish they were worth using, even with the ideology boost they still feel bad.