CivWiki Monday Newsletter for January 30, 2023
Good morning and happy Monday from New England!
I’m sure people are slightly disappointed with a lot of the news that’s come out during the last week, whether about CivReign, or about several of the news things on CivMC, but there are some cool things still happening regardless. Then again, you, the reader, are probably hyped about the newsletter even existing, so I can honestly type whatever in this starting section and nobody will actually care.
Ready for the news?
Featured
Featured Image
This weke’s featured image is a view of Altepetl, in Yoahtl. Taken by reffelruz during the CW’s vacation in the territory, it’s home to the great pigeon at the top of the tower, and the jungle and Mexican themed city below. Yes, that’s right, they actually put all their urban design principles in #builds_irl into practice on the server and not just bitch about Boston being actually terrible!
Featured Article
This week’s featured article was contributed by reffelruz.
The Commonwealth’s iteration in CivClassic 2.0 was the second iteration of the monarchy started in 2.0 by sashimii. Established by Cowguypig, many veteran citizens would return, along with members of Lio, Neverwhere, Thule, and Concordia. In the country’s first weeks, Westminster, the capital, faced heavy raids supported by Lexington. After an order by the King was made to remove the bunker, Lexington declared war on the Commonwealth, leading to the beginning of the Somber War, leading to the bombing of Westminster, the creation of the Western Alliance, and SATO.
Following the 6-month war, CW returned to clean up the capital; many new public works were initiated, such as new farms in Arran, Strassburg, and Hexcorp, the walled-city Victoria, new building developments in Albion and Taliesin, and the Second Olympic Games. Peter5930, who was captured and tortured by Lexington — building the End Citadel in response — returned home as King of the nation, and became the subject of a new religious movement arising out of Meditat during the war, which identified him as a messianic figure. Today, the country continues in the CivMC iteration. Full article…
This week’s current article image features eastern skyscape of Westminster, the Commonwealth’s capital.
Current Events
Lambat’s Poblacion District, taken by Kaprediem during the monarchist coup.
Around CivMC
Imperial Federation & Southwest
- The King of the Imperial Federation, King_Cupar, has resigned from the position, following an announcement on Tuesday.
- In his announcement, he stated that “I do not have the capacity to continue to play Civ on the regular basis”, along with citing burnout and negativity towards the IF, especially regarding comments directed towards newfriends.
- He passed off his crown to the incumbent Chancellor, Jalhf, to be the new king.
- For many this was seen as a sudden announcement — IF Senator Southw3st was not aware of his intention to withdraw from leadership.
- When reached for comment, Jalhf was unable to provide explanations for his comments regarding newfriends.
- As a result, Jalhf’s subsequent announcement the next day settled affairs on his vision of running the country moving forward.
- Internally, the Senate is making some reforms that are yet to be announced, but have been proposed.
- While in King_Cupar’s announcement, he announced that Pridelands were negotiating to secede from the country, Jalhf clarified that their exit from the IF would happen in a few weeks, with the full intention of continued friendship between the two countries.
- The Godhaven factory house exploded following a TNT grief by Binchymonkey.
- An ongoing verbal conflict between Myra and Khione of the Imperial Federation has resulted in a threat from to withdraw from a treaty on land management.
- IF citizen Coolchacha97 was pearled by Kallos member K0mmi after several reports of obbybombing; the bounty was set at (an absurdly high) 128 emerald blocks.
- The Imperial Federation has condemned all threats of obbybombing from Coolchacha97, and said they would never support obbybombing.
- Representatives from the Commonwealth visited their colleagues in Yoahtl this past week, as part of a relaxing (all-inclusive?) getaway for their citizens.
Lyrean Community & Northeast
- Last Wednesday, Lambatan President Kaprediem was overthrown by monarchist forces supporting Queen Banyough.
- President Kaprediem was killed and was forced to hand off power to Banyough, who declared herself as queen, creating the Empire of Lambat.
- Soon after, the town of Timberbourg in the west of the country was declared as its new capital.
- Different provinces reacted differently to the news:
- Monarchist support was seen at first in the capital and Chungia, the two most populous areas in the country, while Republican support has been seen in Heavenroost and Kawayan.
- However, late on Thursday, Chungia declared independence from the Empire, with Progreso changing its name to New September, as a reference to the former town of Mount September.
- Territorial changes continued throughout the week, with monarchist forces conquering Heavensroost and Republican forces retaking the entire capital by Saturday.
- At the time, fighting still continues, with both sides deploying artillery and tanks in the streets of the city, along with monarchist forces deploying wool.
- Territorial changes are still fierce as the war is continuing throughout the country, with this terrifying image representing the territorial situation at the end of the day on Saturday.
I should also clarify the above is entirely role play, self-described as a farley war and slightly unserious.
- Pavia completed construction of its large wall separating Pavia City from the Duchies in the countryside.
- Additionally, they finished a rail connection with Estalia in their train station.
- SPQR made several agreements with other countries resulting in several border changes of their territory, including agreements with Dirt and New Jersey, and taking some exclaves of their ally, Jorvik.
- CivMarket announced the closure of plot operations in its territory, citing the Generic War and other factors that stagnated development of the territory.
- As of now, they are continuing primarily as an exchange subsidiary of the Monument Group; they currently operate a diamond/iron exchange in Pavia.
- They encouraged the vendor community to participate in the wider market as a whole, and are still developing plans for future exchanges.
- As part of the announcement, CivMarket unclaimed the lands and hoped they would be used for newfriend settlement, as part of the ongoing debate among the land scarcity for new nations to settle.
- However immediately after the post, Estalia quickly claimed the area formerly held by CivMarket, with some players in the comments arguing against the claim and the country’s jump to claim more land.
- Later that week, the Newfriend Defense Network also claimed the land to hopefully develop the land quickly or to revive CivMarket in some capacity.
This definitely isn’t ChrisChrispie’s picture, but damn, that’s Icenia? That’s NUTS!
Alenarith & Southeast
- ComradeNick made an internal announcement in Mount Augusta outlining several achievements during the first half of his term, highlighting ongoing infrastructure projects, legal reforms, and new cupboard assignments.
- Landsraad elections for Truidencia are back for next month.
- As part of the war in Lambat, Monarchists from Lambat were sighted on Cortesian rail infrastructure
- Nara and the Imperial Federation collaborated to upgrade the Shiroyama and Pride Rock rail on Saturday, with several people coming out to help!
Uhh…Northwest I Guess
- As part of a discord restructuring, Kallos assigned several people new roles.
- Personal note: I got assigned a poop role, and while that did get rectified within the day, K0mmi told me to get a grip, so if I get to roast anyone, it’s him…
- Additionally, the Kallos branch leader of the Newfriend Defense Network, Mushroom_Cultist was exiled from the country, resulting in the branch’s closure. He’s hoping to set up new branches elsewhere.
- After being pearled by Kallos, Coolchacha97 denied support from wjkroeker in the nether, after he confessed he was an Icenian citizen.
- He continued to make threats to grief Transport Union tunnels with up to a compacted stack of obsidian. (Threats such as this have been made before)
- While wjkroeker denounced his Icenian citizenship, JuniorTide responded in the comments saying they had nothing to do with this pearling and supported wjkroeker’s efforts.
- Icenia opened a new Metro in their city, with a grand opening having several residents travel on the routes. Serving two lines spanning four stations, it’s the most public appearance of a city-like metro on the server so far.
- Following a request for freed land in nations, Icarus unclaimed a piece of land near the world border. More on the request later.
Server Administration News (uh oh)
- CivReign administration announced a three week delay, citing personal issues and unexpected development hurdles.
- They believed that if they had rushed towards launch, it would forgo a lot of quality control and mechanical integrity, and believed they needed more time to make a quality product.
- The administration is hoping to release details of server mechanics with infographics and tutorials for new features, mainly fueled by RektTangle in the coming weeks.
- The admins are hoping to also host a small server to demo PVP setups.
- Finally, they sincerely apologized for the unexpected delays, knowing that many people were hyped for the launch that was to happen this week.
- A post on CivReign also asked (and basically reclarified) that Proximity Voice Chat will be supported on the server, which will make every server interaction way funnier
- With the new launch date of Feburary 17th, the delay’s announcement has been received with general caution, as many are afraid that the “buzz” of the server will be killed.
- It’s notable that CivMC also took a one-week delay prior to their launch, also for development issues, however much of TTastic’s comments have clued in that these changes have been more extensive than ore dusting.
- In response to CivReign’s plans to move back their launch, CivRev quietly pushed up their Beta plans for Feb 4, this Friday. No further announcements regarding the beta have been made.
- CivVie admin Zombie_Striker announced they would be reexamining priorities following last month’s disastrous launch to focus closer on the economy, and are actively looking for new developers to continue the project.
- CivMC admins have updated and clarified their rules regarding bots and mods.
- These changes were regarding reading block or entity information, which indicated that these were targeted to curb mods such as CivModern, Interpol and Synapse, mods notable for reading and obtaining player positions.
- These changes have been met with both optimism and disdain:
- Additionally, a quality of life update was released this week on CivMC, with numerous new city spawns and fixing several bugs. But who cares about that, this newsletter now gets shown on CivMC!
The Fun Stuff
The completed Tricon building in the Commonwealth.
Builds
- Weekly “I love Icenia” post from “ChrisChrispie” always comes with obligatory “aerial Icenia picture”
- Chris, you gotta start zooming into little gems, like these botanical gardens from Anvil which is a super nice garden near West Icenia
- Pripyat, a new autonomous region of Mount Augusta, actually has some good builds so far, can’t wait to see what they have in store.
- The TriCon building is finished in the Commonwealth, bringing a very striking image in Verdant Valley
- The Joja Resort by Fairbyfly reminds of those Hilton Hawaiian Village towers, it’s great
- The Colossus of Priderock, a large monolithic statue in the middle of sea looks absolutely fantastic and will probably get featured next week
- Yoahtl always do be looking fine
Multimedia Projects
- I always love a good map, especially this vintage map from Winterbourne
- Always a sucker for a good metro map as usual
- And here’s also a cool Icenia metro advertisement that will inevitably show up on a T billboard in the next day from Sirboss
- ShadySauce has this so I guess its cool, it is labelled “S4NTA x ElKool” after all
- Always will commend a really well designed (albeit extremely complicated) map, this one of Lambat’s ongoing war which must have been an absolute pain to develop
- Another amazingly cartographed map of Volterra, great job from u/byzothe1, it’s truly the most NatGeo-like map I’ve ever seen from Civ
- Lambat has made a (seemingly sad?) retrospective of their country’s events during the last 6 months
Memes
- Kaprediem asks for reasonability with Dirt!
- wjkroeker upd8 number ate outlines more Nether escap8s with the Transport Union, but also 8
- Weak IF king resigning meme, expected better
- Selling land, never used
- Someone is way too happy that there is a Sneed player on the Chiefs
- tfw you are listening to an audiobook about industrial society and its consequences while being a minecraft terrorist
- bg lives rent free in Chris’ brain
- poop
- Chris is also trying to pitch a wojak squirrel to SoundTech who isn’t having any of it
- In addition, there’s also this funny mind blown boar memoji that people are using a lot more recently; 4/5 blown heads
- David Attenborough should be narrating this meme
- LordofMarzipan is disappointed
Unpaid Endorsements of Products with Economic Value
Starting next week, this section will transition to paid advertisements, please contact @specificlanguage#2891 for a spot in this section. I’ll also have a followup post later this week about specific details regarding these ads.
You can tell I changed the header so your browser doesn’t funnily block this.
- TheJmqn has prepared a second Civ Jeopardy game and is looking for sponsors.
- The MACRO tower is looking for art & artifacts, as they’re hoping to have a permanent art installation in the tower.
- After a week of prolonged hovering over 13i/d, prices have generally spiked well above 14i/d this week at the CivMarket exchange in Pavia.
- Icenia’s Botanical Gardens Giftshop is actually a really cool map & pickaxe store in disguise, with some of the lowest prices for ST/F picks in Icenia
- MooseMart is now open in Kallopolis, thanks to Lasady for a great looking place
Metagame Highlights
- Everybody’s favorite recurring praise circlejerk thread, the reputation post, has returned for CivMC. I’m not going to talk about the top vote earners, because like I said, it is a circlejerk…
- Cissonius has implored everyone to reconsider claimed land that is underused, citing the need for unclaimed land, especially the terrible name called “newfriend reserves”
- There is a thread in the CivMC suggestions channel for a public ban list, which has never been the case for any Civ server ever. However, the current vote is a 66-4 vote for the ban list to be publicly available.
- The Distant Horizons project has announced they have finished mapping all of the Southeast quadrant, and Commrade_Potatoe has added highlights & images of the results!
- Apparently nobody knows that CivLegacy is actually ""secretly"" functional and has 500% more content than Altplay
- I migrated the newsletter from AWS to Cloudflare during the week, which now results in me paying 50 cents less to Amazon per month!
Blueballing Cry for Help
Jaydon and the rest of the CivMarket crew, at the opening of CivMarket’s plot operations back in July.
Thanks for reading this awfully long newsletter, I don’t think I expected this week to be as busy as I nearly thought it did, so if you’ve gotten to the end, great job!
Big thanks to reffelruz for writing this week’s Featured Article, after I sprung it on him very late in the week. He’s probably the best Commonwealth historian currently active on the server, so I’m super grateful for lending his time and writing.
Also thanks to Creepi0n, Kaprediem, Gjum, and Yodabird for providing information for this week’s newsletter, did a good help to several of the news stories this week.
For the ads, I’ll post the exact procedure on the Reddit/Discords starting on February. I’m planning to lower the price of ads following feedback, and I’ll be changing the procedure that I said last week, but I’ll be announcing that on February 1st.
Finally, if you want to get an advance discount on some of your ads or just want to have your stuff posted in the newsletter, one easy way is to make a Featured Article! It’s quite easy, and a perfect way to make some of your nation’s (or server’s!) history or culture understandable to newfriends and everyone who reads this newsletter! Plus, you’ll receive a discount when writing an article unrelated to your ad! Give it a shot, it’s easier than you think!
Alright, that’s it from me. Until next time, as always…