CivWiki Highlights for December 24, 2023
Happy Christmas Eve!
This is a highlights post only doing quick bulletpoints on the highlights of the news and happenings of the week. This is mostly because I currently do not have the will nor time to compile a full newsletter on everything that’s happened this week, especially since the normal schedule had the newsletter on Christmas Day.
A full newsletter will be available later, sometime on December 27 or 28 (depending on how stuffed the news cycle gets and my own efficiency). Nearly everything present will be in the newsletter next week, in some form or another.
Featured
Featured Image
This week’s final lovely Christmas tree is from Griffin, who’ve set up a nice little Christmas village. Located on the other side of the grand canals, the square is all filled with shops, snow and is just a short walk away from the Adria Church you see in the background. It’s a lovely place and it’s a lovely place for a little celebration. This year was another great round of Christmas decorations, folks, and you’ll see some more later on today!
Featured Article
The Christmas Agreement was a document signed by Lusitania and Mount September in December 2020. The countries had been relatively close since the founding of Mount September along with various out-of-game activities throughout 2020; the treaty was a way to formalize their diplomatic relations and foster economic growth between the two nations. Among other agreements in the treaty was a railway line to be dug to improve the slow travel times, with both countries outside of the HITS international rail.
The treaty was fostered under Septembrian Foreign Minister Thraldrek, and was signed by Mayor Squareblob of Mount September and King Metriximor of Lusitania. The alliance was one of the first outreaches of diplomacy during Mount September, and would later lead into the creation of the Augustan Federation (with Lusitania) shortly after. This was also one of the rare moments of Lusitania engaging in diplomacy, as they preferred to stay out of any conflicts. The treaty solidified the relationship between the two countries as they continued strong well into 2021.
This week’s featured image is a screenshot of Lusitania on CivClassic 2.0 at sunset.
The News
This is Vinland’s beautiful castle overlooking their bay.
- The continuation of the Doom City Conflict resulted in a Mount Augustan siege across the country’s bridges with Doom City with four players pearled, SQOpenSpellbook, Defender4488, and Nightmarr in BUILD and SymSquid in Doom City.
- Doom City had stated they were taking measures to retake Arsenio Pact following their demise.
- There were also continued disputes over nether portal ownership in the territory, as well as possible Estalian intervention in the conflict (as ShadySauce is a member of Doom City and Estalia); other Elysian Pact members refused to be involved.
- The Fempire Vault, which held SymSquid, was attacked by Estalia to free SymSquid, who was stored in the vault.
- BUILD eventually surrendered, but were disappointed at the involvement and conduct of Estalia; they agreed to territorial changes but pushed for releases of Defender and Nightmarr.
- Mount Augusta’s new mayor and deputy mayor were heavily involved in this conflict, and had little support in dealing with this crisis.
- Elysian Pact members were planned to take a Christmas photo in Pavia on December 23, however Complexii drank an explosive nitroglycerin brew which killed 25 players. Thanks to ArtificialDriver.
- A similar event occurred in Icenia where SirAlador was killed following an explosion near an Icenian park.
- The Leibniz Confederation reaffirmed its claims to poor reception, with many arguing the country had overclaimed already settled land.
- RamenBoy and starwars19080 were pearled by Elysian Pact members following a raiding spree in Cascadia, who pearled Hakr_.
- Nara and Ila’Kyavul announced a Friendship Treaty to promote non-aggression and international cooperation.
- CivCubed has introduced tier 2 alloys, allowing players to create stronger, more versatile weapons. They’ve also introduced a voting feature to raise awareness of the server (and like CivMC, give essence).
I apologize if I did not address your news in this post; only the most important news was put here. Further elaboration on these points, and events that were omitted, will be present in the newsletter later this week.
Top 4 Fun Things of the Week
This picture is from Nalora, in the Imperial Federation.
- Vinland just looks really awesome with render distance jacked up to 11
- jbblocker finally publishes a textless version of Game of Pearls for all the memers to template on
- Kallumbia has somehow made the only ensemble pic of the season, due to other cirumstances
- Ghas News returns to give us an update on Mount Augusta and Fempire
Events Coming Soon
- CivMC announced a roadmap as well as readditions of the previous Christmas update.
- The International Hockey League has a midseason update with announcements that hockey would return next year.
There’s not much else to say here, this is pretty much everything that I can say without spending more than 2 hours on this edition.
The schedule for the newsletter at the end of the year, barring any slowdowns or unforeseen circumstances is:
- December 27/28 - normal newsletter (that includes all news this week)
- Dcember 31 - best of speclang 2023 (not a newsletter but fun writeup of my media consumption)
- January 3, 2024 - normal newsletter, with interviews from Civ players on reflections from 2023
- early 2024 - normal newsletters will temporarily continue on Wednesdays during at least January (but returning to Mondays during late January/early February, due to my own schedule)
Finally, for one second please read this: everyone on Civ has tried extremely hard to not be involved in any battles, skirmishes or wars on Christmas Day, so I really hope that everyone takes the time to spend the today and tomorrow with family and friends.
And if you need this, you must know that no matter who you are, you are loved!
Please spend this normal newsletter Monday with family and friends, don’t spend time on Civ. I wish every reader a restful and merry Christmas, and a wonderful new year!