I don't own the base game, so I'll just wait a bit until more reviews. This game never interested me - until I read the description of this DLC - it sounds like there are several cool stuff you can roleplay here. So, do you recommend it to an old old school, family trad guy gamer like myself?

I have put a lot of time into RimWorld in the last few months. I'm also an old school gamer; I have been playing video games since the late 1970s. It depends on what types of games you like. RimWorld is rather unique, but fans of certain genres might find it to be familiar in some ways. To me, it seems like a blend of city builder simulation, strategy, and survival. It has many difficulty levels and can be heavily customized. In peaceful mode or a low violence setting, it feels more like a small scale city builder with significant survival elements, while in a setting that has frequent raids, it takes on the character of a small scale war game. The survival element can be challenging, especially in the early game, if a difficult environment is chosen for the colony. The colony size is quite small; my largest colony so far had about 20 people.

The nature of the colonists makes this game unique relative to other small scale village or colony builders I have played. Each colonist truly is unique; each one has different skills, a few traits which may be positive or negative, and possibly health conditions. This is all randomized - you can't customize each individual at the start, and new people with random traits join the colony regularly. The colonists interact with each other, and over time, relationships, friendships, and rivalries develop. In my most recent game, there were multiple relationships that progressed to marriage and finally to breakup. Sometimes, one colonist will insult another and they will fight, sending both of them to the hospital beds to be patched up. Also, colonists' moods are tracked, and if a colonist's mood gets low, there are many mental breaks that can occur. It might be relatively benign, such as a sad wander, or something really bad can happen - a colonist might destroy a vital stack of supplies or suddenly try to murder someone. Colonists in this game feel like real characters with some depth, which is quite impressive considering how much of this comes from random number generators.

You don't usually control the characters directly (except when drafting them to instruct them in a combat situation). You merely prioritize their work and leave them to their own devices. It's fun to watch them and see what happens over time; things are always somewhat unpredictable. Trying to make the best out of flawed people is part of the fun too; for example, if a colony has a few pyromaniacs, decisions about building materials could be affected.

With this new expansion, I think I'll be playing it a lot more in the near future. The new systems should make the interactions among the characters more complex and interesting.

I like this game, but I can see that it is not for everyone. If a small scale city builder/strategy/survival game that simulates each colony member with great complexity sounds like your kind of thing, you might give it a try.

Excellent reply above. I've not played for maybe a couple years (don't have Royalty either), but it is a very fun game that feels pretty unique. Try to embrace the "Story" element, and you can have a ton of fun even if your colony doesn't fare too well.

In one of my games, I had a prisoner, and he escaped. Went straight for a room close to the prisoner's ward, which had open doors to cut down on travel time. Unfortunately there were some gadgets inside. He grabbed one of the super weapons, pressed the probably huge red button on it... and the entire base exploded.

I couldn't help but hysterically laugh at the absurdity of it all.

That's funny. I've never had an entire base explode because a prisoner escaped, but the small things can be funny too. Once, I had two people form a relationship, only to break up later that day. I also had two people form a relationship, marry, and break up. Much later, they fell in love again and started the process a second time. Another funny thing that happened recently is that a colonist tore off another colonist's leg during a social fight. Sometimes, they lose fingers or toes in a fight, but an entire leg is unusual. Fortunately, it was late game and I had the fabrication bench, so replacing the lost leg with a superior bionic leg was an easy solution.

It is a good idea to carefully choose the location of the prison. Typically, in the later game when I build a dedicated prison, I build it far away from the storage areas and close to where the colonists tend to congregate, so that it takes less time to work with the prisoners and there are a lot of colonists on hand if the prisoners try to break out. An incident with an escaped prisoner gives me an idea for preventing problems. One time, prisoners broke out, and the colonists inadvertently blinded one of them during the ensuing fight. I was trying to recruit that prisoner, unfortunately. In a colony where a certain level of cruelty is acceptable, performing operations to cripple prisoners could be a way to deal with them. Then, if the prisoners are to be converted to colonists or slaves, bionic parts could be installed to reverse the damage.

I have spent a lot of time in the last couple days playing with the new Ideology expansion. Overall, I like the addition, as it provides a way to vary the game play and it increases the complexity of interpersonal interactions among the colonists. That said, it will likely benefit from some tinkering by the developers, as was the case with the Royalty expansion. In my current game, I started the colonists with an ideology that has an extreme effect on game play. They like trees (causing a potentially severe mood reduction if too many trees are cut down, along with a mood improvement if they walk past a lot of trees), and they like to be underground (allowing them to grow fungus in the caves and enjoy eating fungus and insect meat). Fortunately, a new furniture item is a bonsai pot, allowing them to have their trees even in the caves. They also don't particularly like having other belief systems in the colony, so converting new colonists to this belief system is a priority. One colonist was especially difficult to convert; his traits rendered him particularly stubborn in holding to his beliefs. I have noticed that conversion attempts sometimes cause social fights. Having multiple belief systems present in the colony creates a whole set of new challenges. Some just aren't compatible with others, so even in a community that values thought diversity, it will likely be necessary to convert colonists whose belief systems make them unhappy with the overall lifestyle of the colony. I found that this situation adds challenge to the early game. In the later game, it is easier to improve people's moods by having better food, better surroundings, and numerous recreation options, but even then, some colonists become dangerously unhappy until they are successfully converted.

Interesting write-up. Sounds like this could prove difficult in the early game, when you usually have low happiness boundaries anyway, and one person going off on a sad wandering trip isn't great if raiders suddenly attack, or a bear is hungry for example. The whole thing does sound interesting, though, and more so than Royalty.

Totally agree that small events can be funny too. And absurd. Like this one... I had bred a bunch of panthers. There had been a huge raid (crazy raids in the end-game), and there were more bodies around than I knew what to do with, so some were left out because I didn't have enough people to take care of it. A panther is eating a body, minding her own business. Then another one comes up from behind.

They have a different idea of a romantic mood than I do :D

Wait, so does Ideology DLC just add moral views? I do not own the game, although I am very interested in the game, but am confused of what this dlc actually add?

Ideology certainly adds moral views, and that is the core of the DLC, but the addition of these moral views can have impacts that cascade through all aspects of the game play, so it is a big change. The addition of high impact moral precepts can have a profound impact on how the colony develops. For example, in a recent game, the belief system I chose for the original colonists strongly discourages killing animals, except in self defense, and the belief system looks down upon consumption of meat. Animals may be kept for milk, eggs, and wool, but they cannot be slaughtered or hunted, or else the colonists will get upset. This made food production more of a challenge, particularly for the lavish meals required in late game to keep moods high. A lot more land had to be devoted to crop production, and that meant that the colonists had to spend so much time on agricultural tasks that some other work, such as mining and construction, progressed rather slowly. Having a decent group of animals in a pen helped, as milk and eggs could still be used in food, but surplus animals could not be slaughtered and either had to be traded away or release into the wild. Initially, traders didn't come around often enough to keep up with the surplus, and I didn't want to send out caravans, so a mob of released animals gradually formed outside the colony, and with more animals around, it seems like there were more maddened animals than normal. I had quite a bit of trouble with angry sheep attacking colonists who were outside the colony's walls at the wrong time. Keeping animals was only feasible since the colony was in an equatorial area and the animals could graze all year. In a climate with a long winter or in a desert area, this would not work very well. I usually like to play peaceful or near-peaceful games, as I enjoy focusing on colony building and don't want to deal with frequent raids. This particular belief system might be very challenging in a game with more dangerous settings, as it results in a colony that occupies a much larger percentage of the map than normal, and it might be difficult to defend.

This is just one example of how a particular rigid moral view changes the colony. There are many other possibilities. Since this adds a lot of variety to the game and adds some new challenges, this DLC greatly increases replay value.

Note that having extreme beliefs that drastically affect game play isn't required. Belief systems can be designed to be moderate and have limited impacts. Also, a recent update added the option to play in "classic" mode with a belief system equivalent to the pre-Ideology game - a good addition for those who might not want the full effect of the Ideology DLC to be operational in every game.

I would just like to thank everyone who answered. Thank you!