Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awNOMe9kJ2Q

Some stuff I noticed in the preview:

-Another confirmed Ancient, Lily of the Parks, who spawns in the Rockies and is all about restoring the environment (no matter how many people have to be killed for fertilizer)

-Farouk is confirmed to be behind/leading the Nation Cult religion, and if your tribe joins his faction and rises in the ranks enough you can actually contest the election for President-of-Presidents and have your own leader elected instead; sounds like a simplified version of the Pope elections.

-Ancient tech that can be rediscovered includes combat robots and "nanotechnology"

We’re going to be getting more information soon

Ahh, by Torque's hands! A fellow traveler! Come, come, sit with me by my fire. No, no danger here...just some warm soup. Please, come fill your belly while I spin you a yarn 'bout my own people what calls this blessed asphalt their home. You've probably heard of 'em before, or the very least, heard their engines roar fiercely in the dark night. They're the Highwaymen, and to them alone does the holy black veins of The Unbroken belong.

Origins: The Chained and Old Torque

We know little of the times before Old Torque, only that we were slaves to a powerful, cruel warlord. Our people toiled day-in and day-out, living in squalor and barely-fed. We would have been there still, were it not for the legendary mechanic himself. His true name lost to time, it was him who secretly spread the knowledge of the Iron Tongue, how to speak and care for the Wheels.

One fateful night, when all slumbered through the warlord's camp, he gathered his faithful with him and liberated the first Wheels from the garage, roaring away into the night. We've traveled The Unbroken since that day, never stopping too long lest the rust overtake us. We found Wheels with large cabs and became a veritable rolling city, only stopping to resupply when needed.

Religion: The Unbroken

Before the Great Fall, the land was silent and still. Men built their cages on it, their walls and buildings, and called it order. Thus, the land grew heavy with their rust, and grew to hate man.

When the fires came, the land tore open in its rage, and from its anger sprung forth The Unbroken. She stretched and spread her tendrils, grasping and reaching until all of the world was gathered within her grasp.

On the night that Old Torque left with his first followers, it was The Unbroken herself that called out to him, a siren call that promised unbridled freedom to those who would properly worship Her as the god She was. When the gate opened and the Wheels rolled free, she rose up beneath them in a fierce embrace, and has not let them stop since; for to stop would bring rust, and invite Her wrath upon us.

Social Groups: The Freeriders, the Prospects, the Hands, and the Drag

As She wills it, our tribe is divided into four groups; depending on, of course, whether you got Wheels or not.

Elite: The Freeriders

Top of the food chain, these folks got their own ride and know the Iron Tongue enough to keep it running. To drive a Wheel is to know freedom in its purest form, to flow with The Unbroken like no other can. They are the elite of our military forces, and ride into battle with fury and fire. No working Wheel means a loss of status, so Freeriders are careful to always have a back-up and take good care to keep their Wheel in working conditions. They are our lifeline; mobile raids against the rusties (that's folks that ain't us) give us all the food and supplies we need and thrive off of.

Citizens: The Prospects

One rung down the ladder, the Prospects are people who are typically apprenticed under a Freerider and work as part of their crew. While typically manning weapons crews or working as a battle-mechanic on the field, they can also step up and ride a spare Wheel under the supervison of a Freerider. During downtime, Prospects do the majority of maintenance work for the Wheels, as well as overseeing work crews of the lower castes as needed.

Underclass: The Hands

Other, lesser work still needs doing, and this is the job of The Hands. Skilled labor, any craftsmanship and construction unrelated to The Wheels, is taken care of by this class, often overseen by Prospects. Though unglamorous, the work isn't typically too back-breaking, and those with enough mechanical aptitude often get uplifted into the Prospects. When there is room, they are allowed to ride on larger transport Wheels, though are rarely provided any weapons or expected to join in during hostilites.

Thralls: The Drag

Those with no status, real dregs o' society, forced to march when the convoy takes to the road and watched over by Prospects and Hands. Unskilled, back-breaking labor is all they're really good for, their only hope being noticed by a Prospect for having a mind quicker than the rest. It's a common punishment for breaking the law to be stripped of all possessions and forced into this group, so be sure to mind your manners proper.

The Vision: What does the future hold for us?

Times...well, they're changin'. The Unbroken has more n' more strangers on Her day-by-day. Rusties are getting more well-organized, and the mobile raids that keep us alive are gettin' less and less folks coming back from 'em. Roadmaster Redline, our leader, claims he's had visions from The Unbroken herself calling him to her 'heart', a far-off land what was called 'Indianapolis' that the ones that came before used to show just how fast they could make their Wheels go. He says its time to make a 'Great Garage', a proper land for our folks to settle down in and begin a new age of Wheel supremacy, maybe even one day learning to make new ones rather than just fixing up the ancient relics we manage to find. Some folks call him sacrilegious, that settling down is just beggin' for the rust to overtake us, that this journey is folly. Whatever they mumble, doesn't look like it's slowing ol' Redline down one bit. We start our journeys soon, traveller.

Will you be joining us?

(Just a small RP/mock-up of one of the tribes I plan crafting to the best of my ability as soon as the game releases. I've always found one of my favorite parts of Paradox games, whether it be Stellaris, HOI 4 (OWB), or Crusader Kings is the pre-game; coming up with and developing ideas and backgrounds for various factions. I haven't been more excited for a game in a LONG time! Heavy amounts of After the End and Old World Blues has given me a great desire for a proper post-apocalyptic strategy game, and it's already obvious that this is a laqbor of love by the developers. I'm so excited for the role-play and story-building aspects of Afterworld, and very much look forward to every dev diary in the future!)

I wonder if we can play a society of kindly Shelterfolk that is all about justice, knowledge, and a good life, regardless of how many cannibal tribes have to die in chains to make it happen? Or can we play militant barbarians that treasure any trace of the old world and keep people that preserve it as captive idols? With games like these, there is often a "choose one or the other" exclusions that turn the cultures and nations into good or bad, same-y, binary blobs. Do you think we will have the chance to be a mix of good and bad?

Ah, man, I’m so excited! I’ve always craved more in-depth nation-building and roleplaying in a GSG-4x style of game, many have attempted it with varying intent and quality of execution but the dev diaries and preview footage have me very optimistic for Afterworld. As it’s been percolating since 2012ish, there’s a lot of genre entries (for 4x games and post-apocalypse settings more broadly) with high and low points to cherry-pick and learn from. I hope we get a diary that goes over some of the mechanical inspirations the devs have had, there are a few highlights from the gameplay preview that strongly reminded me of other games:

• I enjoyed the city development and noble & population management of Old World, not unlike what we saw in the short city interface segments, but was a little disappointed by Old World’s limited scope.

• Ara had interesting early ages, transitioning from nomadic tribes to classical-medieval production chains as you built up provinces, but it became quite tedious (and ran like shit at the time) before just turning into an alternate Civ game.

• ZEPHON and Civ Beyond Earth also stood out in my mind for the options they gave players on evolving their nation over the course of a game- I generally like both of these, especially for the exploration and story you get in a playthrough, but the civ tile combat (and DLC unit prevalence) is a slog.

• The PDX catalogue is all over the place of course, each game series is focused on different aspects of being a GSG. I really enjoyed the first diary’s comparisons to Stellaris’ setting accessibility, though more anchored to a specific vision for Afterworld. Especially with the work of the Custodian team (and modders!), Stellaris has been in a great spot for a while. We’ll have Vicky-esque laws, potentially government mechanics, and more recently I’ve also been engrossed in EU5’s pop & economic simulation, really hoping we see some similar system interactions here.

Overall it seems like Afterworld will be a melting pot of 4x ideas with a lot of options for roleplaying and more dynamic management than a ‘traditional’ civ-like, built on Stellaris’ foundation, and especially after today’s dev diary I’m really optimistic for how it’s going to turn out.

Guess the most pressing question I have now while we wait is: with the emphasis on the American frontier, and confirmed Railway Subunion, will trains be visible on the map like Vicky?

I'm just curious about everyone's speculation on when we might get the game.

Stellaris was the peak genocide simulator and cant be replicated in other paradox games (except cities skylines but it isnt as fun)

This feels like the perfect game for it; maybe you force a community to starve to death or something worse.

Stellaris is the best game that allowed me to be evil so I really hope this has the goods

My Papa used to make me and my siblings laugh when we were young by telling us that it's always raining in Chattahoochee:

The clouds either beat you with rain, or the sun beats it out of you. No matter what, it was always raining.

He was long past the point of worry and unease when he died, and I can't help but think that he would've loved hearing stories about the Sweats if they had started a few years earlier. Yet, for those still young enough to dread, the Sweats are an amusement most would have preferred to stay a joke.

It started like this-

A patrol comes back from a day deep in the thick of summer; heat drunk and choking back water. The guy in the worst of shape claims that he saw people out there.

Not like another group or patrol, but like, humans. His words- not mine.

Everyone at camp finds that the funniest thing they've heard all year, no one listens to his pleas of clarification on what his sun drunk mind meant, and the story of Sweats grew to inseparable locale vocab. From that point, it became folklore that the Sweats were special, mythical figures that would come out and mess with you on very humid days.

Misplaced a radio? A Sweat stole it.

Got lost? The Sweats moved a trail marker.

It was funny stuff, until the Sweats started killing people.

We were lucky to learn of our ignorance to the situation through the misfortune of others. A man by the name of Liam Shaak from Fort Atelbra came into town one day waving a gun around and claiming that our patrols had murdered some of his hunters. We had proof that all of our men were far from Atelbra range at the time of the murders but now we, together, faced the mutual concern that neither us nor Atelbra were truly alone in these woods.

We also faced together the weight of what that first witness had tried to describe. Sweats really are like “humans” that you see out there- like one sees a deer or bear on the side of the road. There's an off-ness to the way they walk among the grasses or stand still as you spot them. They wear clothes and, sure, they occasionally carry a rifle- but they never feel like a man you can approach for conversation. They feel like background shaped like a person. That's the best way I can describe it, at least.

It also added to the unease they brought that you never really saw their faces. Their hips moved in a way that looked wrong and produced a posture that bent away from you like a shy sunflower. That was, assuming they were even close enough for you to notice that. Instead, they seemed to almost always be moving or standing still on the road just far enough for the sweat bleeding into your eyes to bend their image to the precipice of what was actually your own observed reality.

Sweats seem made from your own; men formed by mirage itself.

They are flesh though. That much is certain. They leave bootless footprints with bent and awkwardly spaced toes. They got hair on the back of their necks that catches the sun like the fur of a hog. They eat deer and butcher them 40 feet up a tree so that a femur can fall down and scare the shit out of you on a patrol.

A buddy of mine heard some story a while ago from some traveling librarian where there used to be animals that looked a lot like us. Apparently, this whole region used to have special farms or something just for animals like this. In this story, some of the old fat cats of before thought that they could make a machine that could do anything. When their invention failed and proved to be garbage, they went out and tried to make humans they could boss around like machines.

They had big buildings with no doors or windows; farming a mix between humans and this other animal and making them work.

When the bombs fell, there was no one left to keep the lid tight on those big boxes- so the beasts inside made it out and headed to the forest.

That's what my friend, personally, thinks the Sweats are.

I don't know what they are, but they're moving. Planning something out there in those woods. They're stronger than us too, both in ability and numbers.

It's always raining in Chattahoochee, and we may have to work with the Sweats one day if we wanna stay dry.

The ads and attention are freaking annoying. I'm rock hard already, and I have no release date. This release is going to be explosive. Can you just let me forget about this game for a little bit?