CivWiki Monday Newsletter for January 16, 2023
Good morning and happy MLK Day from New England!
A little quieter of a week, is what I would have said until the end of week, when everything just happened out of nowhere. Before like Thursday, It was definitely a week spent working for everyone, whether building or PvP or XP stuff. I don’t want to say we have another war on our hands, but I do find it funny it’s the same people as last time, basically. Everyone in that quadrant must be extremely tired.
Ready for this week’s news?
Featured
Featured Image
This week’s featured image is the Zocalo in Cortesia Del Mar. Zocalo is the name of the main square in the center of Mexico City, and Cortesia has done a great job with getting that style down. I really like the square vibe and the heavy use of the diorite here, it really makes these hall-like like buildings feel ancient and weathered down for years. Their distinctive style is always a delight to see in the #builds channel on the discord, and it’s continued here as well. Great job guys, hope to see more pictures soon.
Featured Article
Iria is a nation focused on trade and infrastructure, and is currently one of the longest running Civ nations. Originally founded by Lottosprayer and HorizonLeap in the early years of Civcraft 2.0, the country was a mainstay throughout the entire iteration and was a founding member Northeastern Alliance (NEA). The country endured raids from multiple groups, including the Islamic National Front, BMB, and Eagle Crew throughout the first half of the server. In the back half of Civcraft 2.0, the country became embroiled in a conflict with the Federal Socialist Republics after cooperating with Savion on a vault, leading many to exit the NEA.
Iria continued to participate on every major Civ server following Civcraft 2.0, with the country continuing to trace their lineage back to the original iteration. In Civcraft 3.0, they reached a hesitant alliance with Concordia in the snowy Tjikko, and in Devoted 3.0 making an alliance with Aquila in the Delta Alliance. On their iteration in CivClassic, the country resided in a mesa valley on the eastern edge of the map, built one of the largest international train stations recorded on Civ, and included leaders such as Squareblob and RedDevel. The country continues to this day with their current iteration on CivMC.
The featured image is the Cathedral of Castulus, one of the very first buildings built in Iria by Lottosprayer, and the surrounding gardens built by Gobblin.
Current Events
Khione, a sky-based town in the Imperial Federation, taken by BigMik511.
Around CivMC
If you’re wondering why your news doesn’t come first, I’m rotating the quadrant orders week-by-week, so too bad!
I personally found this week’s news extremely funny as most of these were such “haha funny” conflicts that mean absolutely nothing and that all three of the big drama points involve some variation of the same three parties. I wonder if we’re just playing a giant game of Diplomacy…
Ok nope. I wrote this four hours ago thinking this would be the end of the drama, but guess what!
The Northwest
Alright, here’s the one piece of good news I have from the region:
- Princess Bow of Winterbourne recently welcomed a Commonwealth expedition to the North Pole. (yes, Winterbourne is technically within Northwest…)
Ok, there you go! Skip the next part if you don’t care!
- Icenia, after being raided by chosentwicelol once more, claimed they tracked down the bunker that Chosen was basing his raids out of and attempted to raid it before getting stopped.
- Estalia has said it was a Generic War-era bunker and conceded it was directly connected to their iceroads; however, they claimed Chosen did not have access to the bunker.
- Icenia has claimed that undecayed snitches of Chosen’s were present in the bunker but provide no other substantial evidence to the attack.
- Estalian forces came to intercept, and Icenians were told to avoid engaging. However, ggmrap attacked Walkers and fighting ensued with ggm and Juniortide both getting pearled.
- However, the situation was (thankfully) resolved, with JuniorTide unpearled, and ggmrap … banned as he turned out to be an alt of a banned player.
- ggmrap has been claimed by Icenia to be a trustworthy member, and were incredulous on the admin’s decision to alt-ban.
- Despite this, relations have generally remained cool, only having disagreements on the facts surrounding the attack.
- This section had inadvertently claimed and implied the bunker was accessible by chosen and Estalia was aiding them, this has since been corrected and clarified with Estalia & Icenian sources (after previously only verified through a third party).
- Meanwhile, the Temporal Isles, along with Kallos, declared war on Valyria.
- The cassus belli was due to Dr_Bacon_Hair’s removal from Valyrian infrastructure groups, and have accused Valyria of uncooperative behavior with them.
- Kallos also cooperated with Temporal Isles to declare war.
- The declaration has generally been met with disdain and confusion, even within their own country:
- The Elysian Pact has said they would not interfere, except if the Valyrian Triumvirate were to be attacked.
- Ironically, one of the first things tonight was that PhysicsGamer has said negotiations are occurring with third-party Transport Union so we’ll see how that goes. You know, if you’re actually going to start negotiations, that’s not called a war, that’s called diplomacy.
- Completely off topic and (almost entirely likely) unrelated to any of the above but dredd_kiji attempted a 1v5 with Icenia and Gang Shi fighters in downtown Icenia and was pearled by Raeders, and I guess Ch1pr’s video is all to show for it
Alenarith & Southeast
Why is it when there’s Civ drama in Alenarith, it’s always you three?
- The SEC and ISP made a joint post on the subreddit stating they released meat312’s pearl, after the DOD’s self-imposed sentence.
- As a reminder, Gensokyo initially posted these claims a couple of months ago, after he along with SpeedyJustice attempted (and spectacularly failed) to bring a coup into Gensokyo.
- Negotiations back then came to an impasse after only a couple days, and meat312 was pearled by the Arsenio Pact for protection purposes.
- The post argued meat had served sufficient reparations with the AP after taking part in the Speedy Coup, backing up their claims with examples of other punitive actions of war criminals throughout the iteration.
- Countries that are backing Dalgon as part of the Dalgon Organized Defense Treaty have generally been responsive to these claims, and are very happy Icenia and the rest of the SEC have signalled support.
- While Gensokyo has so far not made an official response to these claims, Yoahtlan Alcuahtl bgbba responded, refuting these arguments, believing that the perpetrators named would cause international conflict again, and that people were getting off the hook fairly easily.
- Many people have generally been calling out bgbba for these claims, saying he has been a hypocrite for his own claims, as well as not understanding the situation properly.
- bgbba continued in another post, further extending his argument on more harsher sentencing, however many have dismissed his argument.
This section was corrected to clarify and include the post’s content and Icenia’s viewpoint.
My personal view is that this is all stupid.
- Earlier in the week, Danzilona charged meat312 with pearling Danzilonan citizen TheTrackBall. He accepted a plea deal and was pearled for an additional half-day.
- The country is also currently voting to create several cooperatives to take on the responsibilties of their previous executive branch of government that they recently abolished.
- Danzilona has also occupied Cortesia Del Mar’s capital along with forces from Venne, clamoring for the country to accept new borders between CDM and Danzilona near Imbolc, hopefully marking the conclusion of the Imbolc Conflict.
- PatrickBateman has opened the fourth iteration of MACRO in downtown Mount Augusta, taking over the former Foogle tower. It’s offering apartments, shops and horse stalls, all on the first floor.
The new Lugani Tower in Northwest Lugano, in Pavia, built by Creepi0n.
Lyrean Community & Northeast
- Yoahtl elected bgbba as their newest Alcuahtl, however in his announcement has said he is intending for the stint to be a temporary position.
- Highroll was pearled inside Altepetl last week by Yoahtl himself, after Estalian and Elysian Pact associates attempted to pearl him previously.
- Yoahtl posted a claims post as is normal procedure in the country.
- It was discovered that after Aetherix, a citizen of the Imperial Federation was pearled, Pavian duke Spoonce requested the EP to take action.
- Originally, the expedition was not intended to be pearled but as the situation continued into Yoahtl, Estalians chased Highroll down through radar, although ultimately did not result in a pearl.
- Yoahtl has since restricted all Pavians from entering the country and have removed unrestricted door access, although relations have since cooled down, and Elysian Pact countries are welcome to sue Highroll in Yoahtlan courts.
- The University of Lambat had a surprise gas leak, and a fire subsequently broke out; the building has unfortunately burned down but nobody was hurt. Lambat has vowed to rebuilt the campus.
- A small rivalry has emerged between the towns of Heavenroost and Timberbourg in Lambat. Crossposted from the Lambat Post.
- Pavian Crown Prince Gobblin II passed away after falling from their various construction sites. It was his third dice day. His replacement is Cissonius I, the Duke of Braemar, and was “the fastest vote ever”, according to eyewitnesses.
- SPQR has passed several laws increasing the scope of their constitution.
Imperial Federation & Southwest
It’s funny because most of the news that could belong in this section already got covered in earlier sections…
- A food shortage has occurred in Myra after discovering that breeding doesn’t work! There is an Imperial investigation in progress…
- Commonwealth’s Prime Minister election is next week, although nobody has put their hat in the ring to be PM. I hope they do have an election this time…
- The Transport Union is moving its central hub to the Low Garden, and looking to have rapid development in the region very soon.
- FE_Flags of Iopa has also become the representative for Tortuga Gate.
- Mount Hassaan has taken over a portion of the former Hyperborean territory in the Southwest isles, with the nation giving them their blessing.
Server News
- CivMC’s restarts have gone from just under two hours to just under 20 minutes, slashing the previous restart time to a fifth of the original, after admin SoundTech provisioned space on the local machine for a faster save time.
- The fix is a wonderful improvement in (for lack of a better word) marginalized time zones as some player’s peak playtimes coincided with the excessively long restart times.
- CivReign has announced that their server will open at 5pm Eastern Time on January 27, barring any unforeseen circumstances.
- CivVie is back into hiatus mode as the developer(s) currently involved are inactive at the moment and are unable to fix the exploit in a timely manner.
- Civ+ has teased that they’re introducing one-time tutorial books, for doing certain actions.
The Fun Stuff
Row houses along the Great Overland Railway in Katipan, Lambat, made by AKJanklin.
Man that sounded weird, dude. You said something about Dalgon? Extended pearl sentencing? Temporal Isles? You must have hit your head really bad, come on, let’s go look at funny block pictures.
Builds
- It’s cool seeing the greater development of North Africa’s Petergrad in the Commonwealth grow over the last few months, nice charm of a beautiful Italian coast city
- Alright I know a fire broke out and it’s probably burned down by now but can we appreciate what ""was"" the University of Lambat building?
The highlighted build pictures this week:
- The new Lugani tower in Northwest Lugano is a great feat. I had the chance to visit and it’s a great view from the top with the Distant Horizons mod.
- Khione has this funny build style in the sky over the water, it’s hard to pull off but when it’s done well it’s spectacular like here
- Row Houses are always good when they’re varied, like AKJanklin’s set in Lambat
- CDM is always looking spectacular as usual, kind of shaping up to be a successor to Pacem on CivClassic in terms of build style this iteration, they really understand their style well!
Multimedia Projects
There are no multimedia projects this week, so instead here’s just a bunch of Civball fanfics from OnceDoceTrece/janet blackquill:
Alright, I think this segment is over now. Onto the next item today — wait this is the only other thing we had?
- Imperial Federation’s London-style map of all their rails is actually, really good, a more modern version of it honestly.
- Gang Shi changed their flag to a red version of the Holy Jaded Empire’s flag. Kallos did likewise, except purple. And don’t forget Mount Augusta! It’s really Raeders just editing different colors on a screen, I mean it’s just throwing things in Photoshop.
Memes
- Somebody posted a suggestion to reinstate crimeo as admin (who was the former admin of CivRealms). Just thought it was funny.
- Is this supposed to be something, Ch1pr? Are you sure?
- Chris has been circulating family guy hamburger helper. It’s funny. I don’t know why. It has nothing to do with Civ.
- bgbba posts irl
- Trying to spook me with a shitty HJE meme? no
- Thank you wjkroeker for summing up my entire worldview right now
Advertisements
Starting in February, this section will be transitioning to paid advertisements. More details to follow soon.
- The Monument Group published their Q4 2022 Earnings Results; with much of their revenue coming from sales and design of buildings.
- After a buying spree causes a short spike in the Pavian exchange rate, a correction occurred late in the week bringing the price back down hovering around 13i/d. Crossposted from the Lambat Post.
- MACRO’s fourth iteration created by PatrickBateman has opened in the former Foogle tower (yes I’ve said this before but they are selling free shop spaces)
Metagame Highlights
- The Distant Horizons project unfortunately hit a bit of a slump when working with MEGASync this last week, but they’re quickly reorganizing efforts and finding a better way to sync up rendering efforts.
- TheJmqn is asking for iconic in-game screenshots of massive multiplayer activities that truly exemplify what Civ is, it’s a niche of advertising that really goes unsung, and I think really helps people get convinced to come play in the genre, so I hope you can contribute something!
- Bgbba has said in Yoahtl that “What’s the point of being ironically racist and edgy if it’s too intelligent for the dumbass zoomers!” in response to his normal bgposts.
Long Weekend Cry for Help
The King’s Court in Savaguard on CivRealms, one of the notable pictures that TheJmqn has brought up to promote in-game screenshots for advertising.
I have got to stop staying up on Sunday night.
Thank you for reading this week’s newsletter. A big thanks to bgbba, ChrisChrispie and BritishWanderer, ShadySauce, SirPenrose, Walkers, and Tuomasz for providing invaluable (and incredibly detailed) information on all the events that happened this week.
Thanks also to Gjum for also providing information as well as a readthrough this week without actually pinging me, he did a great job for staying up at 3am in Germany.
I’ll have more info about the new direction for the advertisements/classifieds soon. I’m still working out the kinks and I’m going to check with the staff (aka newsletter mafia) on the best approach.
As always, if you’d like to see your information in the newsletter, please fill out this form! If you’re too hesitant to fill out the form, or don’t know what to write, I’m also happy to receive DMs and find a direction for you to publish something in here.
Thanks for reading, and as always…