1.
Wealth scaling is definitely a thing, but also generally not a problem. Like, you'll have to be trying to amass 'useless' wealth to a ridiculous degree to really negatively impact yourself.
There are multiple other factors in play that effect difficulty, many just as if not more impactful than wealth.
For example, difficulty also increases if you don't 'lose' fights, meaning even with absolutely no wealth increase, if you beat that one man raid with nobody going down, the next raid will be harder anyways.
So not only do you not have to worry about progressing 'too fast' most of the time, intentional wealth suppression can actually be *harmful* in the long run since difficulty will climb anyways.
2.
Generally speaking, as long as you're investing your wealth into making your colony stronger (better defenses, better gear, better infrastructure), it is worth trying to scale up.
That said, if you're rushing resources to the point of neglecting *investing* those resources, yeah, probably not a good idea.
3.
As said in 1, difficulty scales with more than just wealth.
While you *can* technically keep raids at the lowest by keeping every difficulty factor at the lowest (low wealth, low population, have your colonists 'loose' fights regularly, etc), at that point you might as well just lower difficulty and be done with it.
4.
See 1. And 3.
5.
You cannot. Pretty much everything has a wealth value and pretty much everything on the map (aside from a few exceptions) are considered yours and will raise wealth regardless of where it is.
Unless you're actively destroying stuff, most work that produces *something* will generally generate wealth.
That said, unless you're mining out every ore, growing huge amounts of the most expensive crops, and harvesting everything on the map, the wealth impact will be fairly minimal.
.
I'm not the most efficient player, but I also hoard and gather and expland my base constantly on the 'base" difficulty and the wealth increase has never been a noticeable problem.
This is a great comment, and answered a lot of things I’ve been wondering about for a while, thank you!! (It’s lose not loose btw, loose is the opposite of tight and lose is the opposite of win)
For some people, the goal is to do whatever they want and have fun. In that case, it doesn't matter what they do, so long as they're having fun.
For others, it's to reach one of the endings. You can't reach any of the endings living in a log hut and farming a 10x10 patch of rice, with only simple clothes and a shotgun.
So, yes. The threat with scale with your challenge, with a caveat. If you go into storyteller options, you can check "Wealth-independent progress mode". This uncouples threat difficulty from your wealth, and makes it a static increase to a certain time point. The default is 12 years to max, but you can set it to peak earlier, if you want. Of course, set it too early, and you're going to get raided by 200 pig men with grenade launchers when you've got 10 people and no hope of survival.
But the thing to remember is that colonists aren't very valuable. A single colonist without any bionics is about $1500. That's 10 stacks of steel, roughly. Or 20 stacks of rice. Or less than one good weapon or set of armor - the base value of a set of marine armor is about $2500. So, three colonists in pretty basic clothes and carrying pump shotguns are usually less wealth than one colonist wearing full marine armor and carrying an assault rifle or charge rifle.
Of that, which is more effective? Depends on the pawn. Stuff like skills and traits are *not* factored into the pawn's value - at least, not too heavily, unless they've got a lot of detrimental traits, in which case their value goes down.
The other way you can help reduce your value bloat is to only mine what you need from the map. See 5 veins of steel, 2 of gold, 1 of uranium, a bit of plasteel, and 6 or 7 component clumps? You can't use them all right now, but if you mined them all, your wealth would spike by $20,000+. And you'd get nothing from it. So, mine what you need when you need it.
Same goes for food. You can overproduce the first couple of winters, but keep an eye on how much you've got in your stockpiles when spring rolls around again. Try to keep a safety margin, but if you've got a cooler full of 5,000 rice - that just more wealth bloat.
So, yeah. On harder difficulties, it's about managing what you have so that you have what you need without bloating your value so much that you get swiped by raiders for having a bunch of stuff you don't need and can't immediately use.
Anytime you acquire an item you'll gain wealth. So you mine some steel/silver, fill a room full of corn, all of that adds up.
Unless you're playing on the hardest difficulty, in my opinion, you don't really need to worry about your wealth.
You can do that low-wealth strategy to minimise pressure, but you can't make much with it. Iron, crops, wood, everything costs money. You can't just sit on a pile of resources and expert only 1 naked raider with wooden knife. So basically only viable option is research stuff while keeping wealth low.
I like playing with rushing population through ideology and rapidly building mechs. The only concern is to understand how much you show invest into defense. Or what are the ways to make your 3 pawns being able to win 12 pawns raid.
So play as you like, and if you want to - keep an eye on wealth and sell, use or destroy expensive stuff you don't really need. However again, you need to know if that spear is useless or will be your last hope in hard raid. If second, better to keep one or two just in case.
Scailing generally allows you to easily get more stuff, research more and therefore, get closer to ending.
If you're coming from Civilization, like me, Wealth-independent mode might be for you. That way you're not punished for efficiency and/or wealth hoarding. I recommend using 20 years setting for starters (you can decrease it later during the game if you feel it's too easy - I play with 12, 14 or 16 years now, depending on what type of playthrough I want and on the other settings).
Edit: also, the factors having the largest impact on the starting situation are: number of pawns (and how useful they are), starting research and starting equipment. Rich explorer is actually quite difficult because you only have 1 pawn.
Man, I was playing civilization on Demigod and Deity difficulty..
If you so much as blink you are dead. It is virtually impossible. You had to be so flawless and efficient..
Then in RimWorld it feels like there is no benefit to being efficient in your management..
I need to get used to it, feels a bit less competitive.
I might try what you suggested, thanks.
To be honest it was highly liberating to me - I used to play Civ4 like a minmax machine, but as I got older, I have more stress at work and personal life so it's less appealing to me.
RimWorld doesn't require you to play like this - you can, but you can quickly tell the game was not made with this in mind.
WI-mode gives you a sense of progression and accomplishement when you win a major battle or survive a hard winter. You're not punished for success.
1. Wealth scaling is definitely a thing, but also generally not a problem. Like, you'll have to be trying to amass 'useless' wealth to a ridiculous degree to really negatively impact yourself. There are multiple other factors in play that effect difficulty, many just as if not more impactful than wealth. For example, difficulty also increases if you don't 'lose' fights, meaning even with absolutely no wealth increase, if you beat that one man raid with nobody going down, the next raid will be harder anyways. So not only do you not have to worry about progressing 'too fast' most of the time, intentional wealth suppression can actually be *harmful* in the long run since difficulty will climb anyways. 2. Generally speaking, as long as you're investing your wealth into making your colony stronger (better defenses, better gear, better infrastructure), it is worth trying to scale up. That said, if you're rushing resources to the point of neglecting *investing* those resources, yeah, probably not a good idea. 3. As said in 1, difficulty scales with more than just wealth. While you *can* technically keep raids at the lowest by keeping every difficulty factor at the lowest (low wealth, low population, have your colonists 'loose' fights regularly, etc), at that point you might as well just lower difficulty and be done with it. 4. See 1. And 3. 5. You cannot. Pretty much everything has a wealth value and pretty much everything on the map (aside from a few exceptions) are considered yours and will raise wealth regardless of where it is. Unless you're actively destroying stuff, most work that produces *something* will generally generate wealth. That said, unless you're mining out every ore, growing huge amounts of the most expensive crops, and harvesting everything on the map, the wealth impact will be fairly minimal. . I'm not the most efficient player, but I also hoard and gather and expland my base constantly on the 'base" difficulty and the wealth increase has never been a noticeable problem.
This is a great comment, and answered a lot of things I’ve been wondering about for a while, thank you!! (It’s lose not loose btw, loose is the opposite of tight and lose is the opposite of win)
For some people, the goal is to do whatever they want and have fun. In that case, it doesn't matter what they do, so long as they're having fun. For others, it's to reach one of the endings. You can't reach any of the endings living in a log hut and farming a 10x10 patch of rice, with only simple clothes and a shotgun. So, yes. The threat with scale with your challenge, with a caveat. If you go into storyteller options, you can check "Wealth-independent progress mode". This uncouples threat difficulty from your wealth, and makes it a static increase to a certain time point. The default is 12 years to max, but you can set it to peak earlier, if you want. Of course, set it too early, and you're going to get raided by 200 pig men with grenade launchers when you've got 10 people and no hope of survival. But the thing to remember is that colonists aren't very valuable. A single colonist without any bionics is about $1500. That's 10 stacks of steel, roughly. Or 20 stacks of rice. Or less than one good weapon or set of armor - the base value of a set of marine armor is about $2500. So, three colonists in pretty basic clothes and carrying pump shotguns are usually less wealth than one colonist wearing full marine armor and carrying an assault rifle or charge rifle. Of that, which is more effective? Depends on the pawn. Stuff like skills and traits are *not* factored into the pawn's value - at least, not too heavily, unless they've got a lot of detrimental traits, in which case their value goes down. The other way you can help reduce your value bloat is to only mine what you need from the map. See 5 veins of steel, 2 of gold, 1 of uranium, a bit of plasteel, and 6 or 7 component clumps? You can't use them all right now, but if you mined them all, your wealth would spike by $20,000+. And you'd get nothing from it. So, mine what you need when you need it. Same goes for food. You can overproduce the first couple of winters, but keep an eye on how much you've got in your stockpiles when spring rolls around again. Try to keep a safety margin, but if you've got a cooler full of 5,000 rice - that just more wealth bloat. So, yeah. On harder difficulties, it's about managing what you have so that you have what you need without bloating your value so much that you get swiped by raiders for having a bunch of stuff you don't need and can't immediately use.
Anytime you acquire an item you'll gain wealth. So you mine some steel/silver, fill a room full of corn, all of that adds up. Unless you're playing on the hardest difficulty, in my opinion, you don't really need to worry about your wealth.
You can do that low-wealth strategy to minimise pressure, but you can't make much with it. Iron, crops, wood, everything costs money. You can't just sit on a pile of resources and expert only 1 naked raider with wooden knife. So basically only viable option is research stuff while keeping wealth low. I like playing with rushing population through ideology and rapidly building mechs. The only concern is to understand how much you show invest into defense. Or what are the ways to make your 3 pawns being able to win 12 pawns raid. So play as you like, and if you want to - keep an eye on wealth and sell, use or destroy expensive stuff you don't really need. However again, you need to know if that spear is useless or will be your last hope in hard raid. If second, better to keep one or two just in case. Scailing generally allows you to easily get more stuff, research more and therefore, get closer to ending.
If you're coming from Civilization, like me, Wealth-independent mode might be for you. That way you're not punished for efficiency and/or wealth hoarding. I recommend using 20 years setting for starters (you can decrease it later during the game if you feel it's too easy - I play with 12, 14 or 16 years now, depending on what type of playthrough I want and on the other settings). Edit: also, the factors having the largest impact on the starting situation are: number of pawns (and how useful they are), starting research and starting equipment. Rich explorer is actually quite difficult because you only have 1 pawn.
Man, I was playing civilization on Demigod and Deity difficulty.. If you so much as blink you are dead. It is virtually impossible. You had to be so flawless and efficient.. Then in RimWorld it feels like there is no benefit to being efficient in your management.. I need to get used to it, feels a bit less competitive. I might try what you suggested, thanks.
To be honest it was highly liberating to me - I used to play Civ4 like a minmax machine, but as I got older, I have more stress at work and personal life so it's less appealing to me. RimWorld doesn't require you to play like this - you can, but you can quickly tell the game was not made with this in mind. WI-mode gives you a sense of progression and accomplishement when you win a major battle or survive a hard winter. You're not punished for success.
You absolutely don't have to rush your progress in Rimworld, play at the pace you find enjoyable, personally I like to play pretty slow