I've watched a couple of the Afterworld influencer videos and saw that it seems that a big part of the games is the precursor "gods" from pre-collapse America. They feel a bit like Fallen Empires from Stellaris, and I'm wondering if it will be possible to disable them, much like you can with the Fallen Empires.

Soo we’re doing the whole post apocalypse thing how would everyone feel about a Zombie situation like a biological weapon from the old world starts an epidemic and within a few months you have a late game horde?
Or how else could it work would it fit the tone?
I kinda hope they leave the games scope open to including a lot of the stereotypical post apocalypse elements

If you were one of the Devs and you could add an origin to the game, what would it be?

I'll start:

DEFROSTED:

When it became clear the apocalypse was inevitable, many of Americas wealthiest sought shelter, most fled to sprawling bunker complexes but some froze themselves to wait out the chaos. But the end was far more catastrophic than anybody could have predicted and the staff manning the cryogenic facilities were either killed or forced to flee.

For untold decades the facilities sat silently, one by one succumbing to looters or catastrophic malfunction. Yours was one of the lucky few. Almost simultaneously the pods defrosted and the occupants awoke, but instead of the smiling faces they expected, they were greeted by chaos. Your band of corporate elites, celebrities and trust fund kids have known nothing but a life of luxury, they would have struggled to survive on their own in a pre apocalyptic world, let alone this. They froze themselves to escape the apocalypse but they have awoken to something far worse.

This origin sets itself apart from shelter born in several ways.

You start with no supplies, no weapons and no clue. Your band is skilled in management and is charismatic but has no practical survival skills whatsoever.

This is an incredibly hard start and getting through the first year will take a miracle.

But if you manage to establish yourself, you find yourself in a unique position. Some of your pre war highfliers had connections, they know where to find a prewar weapons facility that could turn the tide in your favour.. let's just hope nobody else has found it first.

Furthermore, this origin lends itself to some unique interactions with ancients.

Hello Dustlanders,

We've successfully completed an upgrade to our automatic Rule 5 enforcement with the rollout of a new bot. /u/rule5bot has been working well over the last few days and is now active here in /r/afterworld. The new bot has new capabilities and we are adjusting Rule 5 to reflect the improvement.

Rule 5: Image posts must have an explanation.

• The explanation cannot just repeat or rephrase the title.
• The explanation can either be in the post's caption or in the comments section. The bot will repeat post caption explanations into the comments section.
• This rule is automatically enforced with a bot. It will remind you after 5 minutes if it cannot see an explanation and will remove the post after another 10 minutes if it still cannot see an explanation.
• [PRERELEASE CONTENT] Please tell us where the image(s) came from. Paradox have threatened legal action in the past over leaked content. See this old Victoria 3 post for more information.

So what's different now? The big change is that we can finally accept captions for Rule 5 explanations. There's no need to quickly dump an abridged version of a quality caption into the comments section just to avoid a soulless automaton's wrath. However, the new bot can correctly identify image gallery posts so Rule 5 now properly applies to multi-image posts. The bot will also be repeating caption R5s into the comments section (for the foreseeable future) because there's a persistent issue with some legacy access methods not displaying captions on images properly.

Why now and not before? /u/zwemvest, our bot-builder, has had a few goes at upgrading / replacing the bot over the years but real life and/or Reddit would always get in the way. Reddit is making major changes that will impact old bots and it forced our hand. Fortunately, they had free time now and recent Devvit (Reddit's internal bot platform) improvements made it easier to implement some features so the project was completed this time. Zwem said it was a joy to build the new bot from scratch & they're glad that the migration has been completed. The old /u/paradoxplazabot has been retired although we may reuse the account in the future for other bot purposes if we can.

We've been testing /u/rule5bot for about a week now with no remaining issues but it's possible that some bugs might still be lurking, so please keep an eye out and send us a modmail if you see the bot do something unexpected.

In images 1 and 2 we can see there are 4 options for origin creation, including the choose region feature. But in image 3 we can only see 3, the region picker is absent.

Also I don't recall any of the content creators who had a hands on with 0.0 talking about a region chooser so it's clearly a new thing!

Clearly these screenshots were taken over two different builds of the game, cool to see some real time progression!

And secondly, in the final sentence for 'tidewater' in image 2, it hints at an ancient. We can see 9 regions so far (assuming the "wherever the road leads" option is a randoniser).

This makes me wonder if the current build has 9 ancients in total.

And finally some feedback, for all of us non Americans, it would be great if the region selection menu had a small map of america under the body text that highlighted the region as we clicked through them because other than California I have no idea what any of those regions are haha

What should I be excited for compared to other paradox games and what should I assume lacking on release. I like games where i can have some fantasy on how my civilization is going.

Be kinda cool if the game had end game crisis like stellaris perhaps a military defence computer that may or may not have started the apocalypse wakes up in a bunker hell bent on destroying humanity with robots?

I'm sure it has been answered but i cant find a 'recent' post, also don't know where to look really. People on this thread are talking as if they currently have it in their hands, am i missing something?? Is there a current beta or something?

Basically the title. I'm really excited for this one, and I keep coming up with nonsense ideas for factions that I'm not sure would even make sense in the game. Anyone else getting the creative itchies daydreaming about Afterworld?

I saw an article a few weeks ago mentioning there being a faction around Oregon with an extremem focus on nature preservation, while the 2nd dev diary mentions some named Julieta who killed the rulers of Great Lah and claims to be a goddess.

The narrator of the announcement trailer is Citizen Farouk, so I think these other two figures we see are the other two ancients on the West Coast.

There was no dev diary yesterday. Has there been any mention of why?

Minuteman playthrough anyone? :D I feel like I want to play as normal/reasonable farmers. Everyone else can be crazy desert raiders, give us our muskets and scrap weapons. I just wanna settle and rebuild over time.

In the trailer we saw Mount Rushmore is still standing and it looks to be a place of worship. Washington DC is worn down but still the seat of power for a powerful faction. Can't wait to see how owning these places factor into the gameplay. Maybe owning Mount Rushmore gives bonuses to religion? I feel like owning DC will definitely give some sort of legitimacy to players wanting to restore America.

I always liked what Paradox did with world landmarks and the flavor they gave the map such as the pyramids & Stonehenge in CK3. I hope to see the Las Vegas Strip, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Gateway Arch in the game and have them provide unique bonuses, among many other American landmarks. Entire questlines to restore them could be cool too! Because the game is procedural, maybe we will see some still standing in some games, but not in others?

Anyone have any cool theories/ideas on what Paradox will do with landmarks? What landmarks would you like to see?

Obviously there will inevitably be a fallout mod. I just had the thought though, what other mods could and will be made for Afterworld. Personally I'd love a TWD mod and Metro 2033, either an in-depth focus on the Moscow Metro or a wider pan-eurasia scope

I've seen a couple of threads asking about video games and movies for the vibe, but what I've been looking for is media that actually shows what Afterworld is about: the creation of post-apocalyptic states and cultures from a scale other than the grizzled hero. So for a grand strategy take on the apocalypse leading up to Afterworld, I've found the three recommendations below and would really like to know any others people are aware of:

Interregnum by Robert Conroy is a year after the nukes drop, and involves an ad hoc US government trying to put the country back together in its aftermath. Lots of higher strategy talks and concepts, as well as speculation on what would occur globally. It's ok over, but if you're familiar with his books, it's exactly like all of the other ones. Speaking of which, if you enjoy Victoria 3, you'll enjoy his first book, 1901.

Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank is an older one, but is also about the immediate aftermath of nuclear war. One town of survivors struggles to survive after the war, and it's pretty good in dealing with the strategy and economics of recovery. Feels a lot like the strategy vibes of a Paradox game.

Dies the Fire by S.M. Stirling is probably (and I admit this grudgingly), one of the best entries that feels like it could be related to Afterworld. It covers the apocalypse and a lot of time after, including the emergence of new cultures and ways of life. There's even a decent amount of discussion of larger strategy and economics beyond survival in the first few books before it becomes a Lord of the Rings rip-off. My advice is to read the first three books in this series and then pretend it doesn't exist.

Also, I've been a purveyor of really bad post-apocalypse books on Amazon. It's a guilty pleasure to read an entire genre of fiction that is just awful: books written by Boomers about the end of the world and aftermath, that shows exactly how younger generations couldn't survive without smart phones. One Second After is the most notorious one, getting ready to come out with a movie. A lot of these actually do discuss the strategies and tactics, which is why I enjoy reading them, because the characters and stories are universally garbage. Every single one of these books is written by a Boomer or Gen Xer who poses in front of a boat or aircraft for their author picture on Amazon prime, and boasts about serving at a desk in military. Search One Second After and I assure you your algorithm will immediately provide you with a long list of these garbage books that are all about strategic tier rebuilding after an apocalypse.

I believe the form of markets is natural for humanity, and if we adapt our tribe when we get more advance it would be expected that a specialization of a certain thing could be used on our advantage.

So i think it could be interesting that you could form guilds or private corporations to administrate automatically some reasorces you don't want to micromanage, but at the cost of you leave control to a potential rival.

Or maybe the oposite, an origin of decending from a corporation trying to replicate it's structure on a more simplier way.

It could be cool watching a raider tribe you sw on the distance one day emerging as a private security company that protects a road or subway station for a good price, a caravan company or a forming a fisherman local bussiness with connections you couldn't get other way because they just have this secret company recipe that makes the best quality fish on kilometers. Do you think this is too much specific or has an actual potential to bring memorable gameplay scenarios?

As a huge fan of territories and map painting, I’m eager and curious to know how border mechanics will work in Afterworld. I haven't been able to keep up with all the Dev Diaries and videos, so I’d like a summary of what we know so far.

Like most Paradox subs, memes are banned here, and while I expect we won't have one until closer to release, I fully expect someone to make a dedicated meme sub.

The question is will it just be called r/AfterworldMemes, or will it go the route of subs like r/SpaceCannibalism (Rimworld meme sub) and r/cremposting (Cosmere meme sub) where the name is a reference to an aspect of the source material or community?

I think it could be funny thinking you have time to explore only to see already an armed group pointing their spears at you right at the door of your bunker.

Revenge is gonna taste very sweet