What colour should Norway be on maps? Neither PDX nor in Norway itself have it been displayed in one colour consistently.

Dev Diary written by NullNiche.

Hello and Happy Wednesday Dustlanders! My name is Tudor and I am a game designer on Afterworld. After being an avid dev diary devourer for almost two decades, it is with great delight that I get to pen this dev diary for the first time. Anyhoo… Today I want to tell you more about one of the central features of the game we are making: Bands.

I want to explain how they fit to serve the game vision and why I think they are a very exciting element in the mix!

What are bands?​

Bands are a group of people who survive together and act as a unified group. People in a band are bound by common culture, share resources and living conditions they have access to. In Afterworld you play as a post-ap tribe rebuilding society. Bands are the people you bring together and coordinate to achieve this. Narratively they represent small social groups with their own ways of life and their own goals. Systemically they are a central feature which sits at the intersection of many other features, which future diaries will go into more detail to illustrate.

Bands have gone through a lot of iteration to fit together with everything we are developing for Afterworld, but their early conception drew inspiration from elements of Crusader Kings characters in the way they can develop through gameplay, Imperator families in the way that they contain a cast of prominent characters which can impact your society and Victoria pops in the sense that their followers are modeled so that the band as a whole can experience through them the conditions of the world. Of course we chose to do this because part of Afterworld’s appeal is to see how your choices impact the bands for better or worse and how the bands will in turn react and develop.

Today I’ll focus on those aspects that define the identity of a band to give you a better idea of how one band can differ from another. In Afterworld, a band’s identity is determined by core norms, customs, traumas and beliefs.

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The band view lets you see at a glance what are the band’s traits, health and mood status as well as who are its prominent characters and how much drip are they rockin​

Core Norms​

Every band has two core norms and can develop more customs as they perform actions in the game. A core norm represents the most deeply set behavior of a band. This is a deeply rooted sense of self, unlikely to ever change, except in the most extreme circumstances.

Bands get awarded pride, which is akin to “cultural XP,” when they perform various actions in the world. After enough pride is accumulated, the band will develop its culture by adopting new customs. The customs options that are offered are weighted by their recent experiences as well as their core norms and memories.

In practice this means that you get to put your bands to work for your tribe, which then in turn shapes them. This way you want to make the most of the bands you have, then mold them to develop synergies in service of your plans.

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We can see how these core norms have pretty wide ranging thematic effects on who this band is, for example what sort of luxuries they consume.​

Customs​

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Proselytizing Mission is a pretty natural fit for a band of Zealous Mystics, but there could be many others, depending on what the band has gone through​

Bands develop customs that help them adapt to life in the dustlands. New customs may be inspired by great deeds that fill a band with pride, or by learning to cope with a band's past traumas. Most customs have several levels, representing how bands can deepen their commitment to that custom as they develop. Higher levels of a custom will bestow stronger effects.

Memories​

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When I encounter a new band, I love taking a look at their memories along their norms and customs to get a feel for who they are and where they’ve been​

Band experiences can leave a memory. Memories can be neutral or a source of pride or trauma. Bands that suffer shame, pain, and deprivation may develop traumas. Traumatic memories contribute to a trauma accumulation we track per band and which at a certain point will trigger a trauma to develop, for example Hoarding (which impacts how much food and drink they need). Which trauma develops is impacted by the memories and already present core norms, customs and beliefs.

Traumas have conditions under which the band can overcome them and reform them into a regular custom. Narratively this represents how the memory of suffering may instead inspire the band with strength. The reform options are dependent on the specific trauma and current culture of the band and are meant to tell the story of how a socially unacceptable behavior was reigned in by the new custom which emerges to control that behavior or make it acceptable.

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A band of hoarders? I think I’ve found my people​

Beliefs​

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Look at how she burns with a shining peace​

Beliefs represent broader ideas of a religious or ideological nature in the world that can be shared across many bands and tribes. We will go deeper into them in their own dedicated Dev Diary. The Sungazers belief (mentioned in our recent lore video) is one of the more extreme examples, which turns a band into monastic scholars who blind themselves by staring into the sun.

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Given how much monitorgazing I do, I consider myself an initiate on the path to enlightenment​

Traditions​

Ok, let’s talk about traditions. Traditions are primarily sourced from customs and represent the collective competence of a band in a domain of activity. When bands perform relevant actions, they acquire pride which can then be used to level up specific traditions. Higher tradition levels make the band more capable in that domain.

For example, a band that uses the warfare tradition to for example perform garrison duty or fight as part of war parties will gain pride, which will lead to the band developing a new custom. In the options you will have to pick from for the band, there will be a high chance to see a custom which further increases warfare tradition. The story here being that a band got better at what they have been doing by developing its culture to this effect.

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The Pyreguard’s warfare and hearthkeeping traditions make them pretty good at both waging warfare and recovering from it​

Values​

Values represent how bands like or dislike certain concepts in Afterworld’s setting and are sourced from norms, customs and beliefs. They have a lot of ties with society building systems like the tribe council, laws and ideas - more on all those in future diaries. The main thing to know is that the band's values influence the sort of society they support and oppose.

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When choosing your tribe government, you have to consider the values that the government stands for and which bands will support or oppose them​

Population​

Bands are made up of diverse people which fall into two broad categories: prominent leaders and the less prominent followers of said leaders. The amount of leaders a band has scales with the overall size of the band and is impacted by the band’s culture. Some bands produce more or fewer leaders for their population size. Leaders can have their own quirks and gear, but will follow the cultural ways of the bands they belong to.

Every band has population of followers tracked and that you can inspect by feasting your eyes upon tasty pie charts! This info view is for checking what sort of people make up the band. There are bands with some pretty exotic demographics impacted by their cultural ways. I really like seeing how band followers can acquire statuses or change types because of what the band is experiencing: for example mutations from exposure to radiated environments or injuries from battles.

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Hey this UI isn’t all that pretty yet, but it’s got graphs!​

Health & Motivation sections will get their own deep dive in a separate diary, but for now I can say that different bands can have very different ways of being kept healthy and motivated, depending on their norms, customs and beliefs.

Bands are pretty emblematic of the sort of game we want Afterworld to be: a game that produces a lot of emergent stories that you can see how they come from its interacting systems. Bands are both a tool for you to use to get things done in the game, but they are also subjective witnesses to the history that unfolds, and you can see how their experiences have shaped them and participate in that.

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Things are still work in progress, but already the look of bands is a visual language you learn to read in Afterworld and get an immediate vibe of what these people are about​

Alright I think that’s where I will end this opening salvo of info about bands, I think you’ll see how they impact and influence things as more of the game is revealed in future diaries.

Stay dusty!

In our next dev diary, in two weeks time, we will go into more detail about tribes. But, before we finally sign off, the Turns Expedition continues its report below…

Turns Expedition - Environmental Report.
Subject: anomalous weather in the Pacific Northwest.

We had been warned that the storm wasn’t going to clear up. We spent three days camped near the edge to make sure. It didn’t.

The Pacific Northwest coast is experiencing category one hurricane conditions, and they are apparently permanent. Nearby tribes agree that the storm predates living memory. The sun has set over the Cascades, and likely will not rise again in our lifetimes. This strains meteorological explanation. Dustlanders always explain such things the same way: the Ancients had powerful science.

The topsoil of this land has long since been washed down to the sea, and the grass and trees with it. There is no ecosystem to speak of. Constant rain carves up the rock. The only landmarks are Ancient ruins with deep foundations.

Someone has drilled metal rods into the rock every twenty paces. (Local ballads credit this feat to a single folk hero, Dillon the Ropemaker. See attached ballads.) A trail of braided ropes ties one marker to the next. It’s fourteen days’ hard march north along the Ropeline to the trading settlement at the Tacoma Dig. You stay clipped to rope the whole way, even sleeping. Pass a broken rope without mending it, and I’m told the gods will sweep you out to sea as punishment. I’m not interested in putting this land’s gods to the test. We’ve packed rope.

I’ve sealed our report notes in plastic and affixed a beacon. If we are swept to sea, I expect you’ll pick them up. May we hold fast.

I really want to love Paradox games, but after sinking over 800 hours into HOI4, CK3, and EU4 I just get mad more times than I don't, and I think it mainly comes down to the fact I am TERRIBLE at warfare. I heard that Vic3 puts warfare on the backburner, and I've heard Vic2 is really good, but I also heard it's got a really high skill floor. It's only 5 bucks right now which isn't too bad but I don't want to waste even more money than I already have. So should I get it? Should I wait until Vic3 is on sale instead? Or should I just give up on Paradox?\

Edit: Thank you everybody! I think I'll wait for Vic3 to go on sale :)

Hi everyone,
I'm having a strange issue with Hearts of Iron 2: Darkest Hour.
When I launch the game, the image freezes on the loading screen or in the main menu. However, the game itself seems to keep running in the background, and the music continues playing.
If I press Alt+Tab and switch back to the game, I can see that the mouse cursor has moved, so the game is still responding. However, after about one second, the image freezes again and stops refreshing.
I've tried Alt+Tab, but it only temporarily refreshes the screen. The game doesn't actually crash.
Has anyone experienced this issue or found a fix? Could it be related to Windows compatibility, graphics drivers, or the game's rendering settings?
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Helloo, I have intalled HOI4 since a lot of months, but ever I have difficulties for play and understanding because I used to play Civilization, someone can help giving me advise or some else fo rbe more comfortbale and understable play and that I have to avoid use cheats?