What the Gods doing?

What the Gods doing?

What if the gods named by your ideoligion could actually answer? I made this mod to enhance my ideology-related stories. RimWorld's Ideology system already lets a colony name its gods, define sacred beliefs, perform rituals, and build a culture around them. I wanted those gods to feel like active characters in the story: watching the colony, responding to its actions, rewarding devotion, punishing failure, and sometimes walking onto the map themselves. What the Gods doing? turns each deity-bearing ideoligion into an ongoing relationship between its believers and its gods.

Divine favor

Every deity-bearing ideoligion receives its own favor score from -100 to 100, displayed directly on the Ideology screen. Favor belongs to the ideoligion—not the whole colony—so colonies with multiple beliefs maintain separate relationships, cooldowns, stars, and gods. Favor follows the ideoligion's current memes and precepts. If a fluid ideoligion is reformed, what pleases its gods changes with it. Universal favor events include:

• Completing religious rituals, scaled by ritual quality
• Eligible sacrifices
• Prayer at an altar or ideogram
• Losing favor when a sacred altar is destroyed
• Invocation success or failure

Belief-sensitive favor can recognize:

• Charity for ideoligions that value charity
• Converting new believers for proselytizers
• Successful raids for raider ideoligions
• Animal-husbandry milestones for ranchers
• Gauranlen planting and connection
• Blinding and scarification rituals
• Masterwork and legendary production for human primacy
• Body enhancement and age reversal for transhumanists

Favor is event-driven. Ordinary work ticks, meals, harvesting, and constant pawn scanning do not farm favor.

Prayer and invocation

Select a player-owned altar or ideogram to access the divine actions. Pray Any eligible believer can walk to the altar and pray for one in-game hour. A completed prayer grants +0.5 base favor. Each pawn has an individual two-day prayer cooldown, so prayer can become a regular part of colony life without becoming an infinite favor exploit. Invoke deity A leader or moral guide performs a physical altar ceremony. The vanilla-styled setup window lets you choose:

• The ideoligion
• The deity
• The divine invoker
• Participating believers

Participants gather behind the invoker while the ceremony runs. Room impressiveness, attendance, the invoker's Social skill, current divine favor, and chance determine the answer. Possible results include:

• Divine Silence or rejection
• Divine Displeasure after a failed invocation
• Blessing of Renewal and direct injury healing
• Divine Inspiration
• Supernatural signs
• A manifested divine avatar

Messages state the actual mechanical result. Interrupted ceremonies spend no favor, cooldown, or divine-star call.

Divine avatars

When an invocation succeeds strongly enough, the chosen god may manifest an avatar beside the altar. Avatars:

• Keep the deity's name and source ideoligion
• Normally remain for three days; exceptional avatars remain for five
• Are deathless and show Divine healing in the Health tab
• Have no hunger, sleep, recreation, comfort, mood, or other mortal needs
• Cannot be captured, recruited, enslaved, arrested, or converted
• Defend nearby believers and attack only pawns already hostile to the player
• Never deliberately begin fights with neutral factions
• Stay near their manifestation anchor instead of leaving the map

Their tactical powers include:

• Divine Mend — heals injured believers
• Divine Ward — protects believers in danger
• Judgment — strikes hostile enemies

Divine stars and true deities

Every five avatar manifestations earns a divine star and one Call true deity use. Calling a true deity uses the same altar ceremony and consumes the call only when the ceremony completes successfully. The true deity is a separate, stronger divine pawn that remains for five days, with improved movement, melee strength, Mend, Ward, and Judgment. Once per visit, select Receive divine teaching. Choose an awake, reachable believer and one eligible skill. The deity walks to the chosen pawn, performs a visible incantation, and grants exactly +1 skill level when it completes. The teaching can be cancelled or retried if interrupted without consuming the one-time gift.

Believer reactions

Believers receive memories for divine events, including:

• Faint Divine Answer
• Divine Blessing
• Witnessed Manifestation
• Witnessed True God
• Divine Inspiration
• Divine Silence
• Divine Displeasure
• Avatar Destroyed

Multiple ideoligions and mod compatibility

Multiple player ideoligions in one colony work independently. Each uses its own believers, leaders, deity identity, favor, cooldowns, manifestations, stars, and true-deity calls. Deity-bearing modded structures that use RimWorld's normal deity data are recognized automatically. A compatibility API also allows other mods to add favor events, structure rules, invocation anchors, avatar profiles, and custom deity providers without becoming required dependencies.

Settings and balance

The settings menu includes:

• Physical manifestations for abstract theists
• Avatar duration multiplier
• Divine combat-strength multiplier
• Favor gain multiplier
• Optional divine punishments
• Exact or descriptive favor display
• Altar command fallback
• Vanilla-style invocation window
• Debug logging

Default cooldowns are two days for invocation, six days between avatar manifestations, and fifteen days between true-deity calls.

Requirements

• RimWorld 1.6
• Ideology DLC
• Harmony

Recommended load order

• Harmony
• Core and DLC
• Ideology-content mods
• What the Gods doing?

Story first

This mod is designed to create stories rather than replace Ideology's normal systems. A generous god may reward charity. A raider god may approve of a successful attack. A colony can gather at its altar, risk the displeasure of its deity, witness an immortal protector descend, and eventually speak to the god behind the avatar. The goal is simple: make the gods your colonists talk about feel present in the stories you play.

Future plans

This is the first stable version, not the end of development. I am planning more features and concepts to make the mod deeper, more varied, and better integrated with ideology-focused stories. Possible future updates include expanded deity personalities and appearances, more belief-driven powers and events, additional ways for gods to answer their followers, deeper reformation support, broader compatibility with ideology mods, improved visuals, and further balance and quality-of-life options. The current systems are designed so they can be expanded over time without every new feature requiring a new save. Feedback, balance reports, compatibility information, and interesting colony stories are welcome.