RimWorld: Ideology Review (Yawanoc)
Ah, Ideology: culture and government. This DLC was originally conceived as the idea of, "how can we let the players double-down on their unique playthroughs?" Ya know, sometimes, you end up making a militaristic group sealed away under a mountain. Sometimes, you want to go all-in on cannibalism. Other times, you just want a unique challenge to shake things up. Ideology is all about getting the mindset of the characters to agree with the mindset of the player.
Your ideology can either be as strict or as loose as you want. You can also develop and evolve it naturally through gameplay so that it grows organically with your people. You can either develop your own beliefs, or you can adopt the beliefs of another faction in your game; sometimes it's great to have that challenge, and other times it's fun to play as a rebellious (or simply different) off-shoot of some other religion.
The value in ideology is that each of your playthroughs have the potential to be more unique than they were before. You no longer need to cycle through random pawns to find ones that want to live underground, when you can have your pawns passively encourage each other on your behalf. Having scheduled holidays and selecting government officials also plays nicely into shaking up the pace of gameplay, as these bring bonuses to your people and give you something new to interact with.
While these core changes are the main selling points of the DLC, there are also a few additional pieces of content to sink your teeth into here:
Slavery has been added for pawns that just aren't worth accepting as full-fledged citizens. Slaves work slower than regular pawns, but they do not have a recreation stat to fulfill. Slave rebellions are an added challenge (as are pawns who believe that slavery is wrong), but it will be up to you to determine if the pros outweigh the cons.
Gauranlen trees (dryads) have been added to allow Plant-focused pawns to also delegate some of their responsibilities to nature. Playing around this automation can be fun, and you can even build entire playthroughs around it, but the dryads tend to get violent if they lose their designated nurturer.
Dungeons are new places to assault that provide exactly the type of challenge you'd expect. You'll get points of interest on the map that you have the opportunity to explore. They'll be filled with all sorts of challenges ranging from dormant Hive, patrolling Mechanoids, pirate ambushes, or tribal worshipers who will all stand in your way. As you battle these threats and explore room-to-room, you'll find plenty of treasure to make your expeditions worthwhile.
The content additions to Ideology are nice, but you're really here for the core changes. If you've been playing for a while and you know what you want to get out of the game, and you want your characters to go into each new playthrough with the same mindset as you, this is the DLC to grab.