I hope the uber difficult combat in rimworld will not be mandatory in the final game, banished has lots of complaints by people who've played tens of hours, but little to its newbies. I hope that ludeon is following it closely.
I bought Banished and sorry but it's dull as dish water IMHO. :)
Also, if you don't like the combat, play on Phoebe...
I agree with the general sentiment, it would be nice if there was a way to be challenged without the direct combat, but as TronPrime1 points out, the basic storyteller is already there for this. There isn't all that much content or challenge in the game currently though for Phoebe to be very interesting.
Sacarathe, since there's already interest in mod creation, the best thing you can do might be to come up with concrete suggestions for mods, and perhaps even implement them yourself. :)