CivWiki Monday Newsletter for March 13, 2023

Mar 13, 2023 • specificlanguage

Good morning (if it’s actually morning for you) and happy Monday from New England!

It was actually a quieter and joyful week for everybody and it’s definitely something that feels a lot better than before. I was so worried this last week that it felt oddly weird that I didn’t have to write so much tonight and that that this newsletter is like, less than half the length of the last one…

Ready for the news?

Featured

Featured Image

This week’s featured picture is Margaritaville on CivMC. Although it’s recently become part of Lambat, the tropical vacation resort has transformed rapidly into the Civ equivalent of Santa Monica Pier, from a brand new Ferris Wheel to a whipping roller coaster all on a little island in the sea. Still a great place for a nice getaway, now with both thrills and chills! Give a hand to MaybeGravy for his great work to make this a paradise for everyone!

Featured Article

This week’s featured article was NOT written by Yodabird.

The AF-CES Partnership was a supra-alliance organization between the alliances of the Augustan Federation and the Conference of Eastern States on CivClassic. The partnership was created due to amicable diplomatic relations, especially with countries like Lambat being part of both alliances, and continued military exercises and cultural exchange. In late August, both alliances agreed to formally cooperate with each other in diplomatic and military affairs.

Despite the partnership’s short-lived lifespan, the alliances heavily cooperated in international affairs. Both alliances were involved in several crises, such as the Mount September Ice Road Conflict, issues with Kallos with minemaster933’s pearl, and the Battle of Eddie Murphy. Due to the general dissatisfaction from the partnership, several nations, such as Lambat, Gabon and Lusitania leaving from the CES or AF. Although both parties hoped to continue the partnership, the end of CivClassic eventually saw the end of the cooperative. An international alliance cooperative like the partnership never emerged on CivMC, where many of the countries’ successors are playing. Full article…

This image however, is a crop of the August alliances chart made by Yodabird.

CivReign News

Gensokyo’s first “hut” on CivReign (Topaz will get mad at me for saying it’s a hut)

Raids by Okx and Doom_Weaver continued on several CivReign nations. Crossposted from the Laurentian Dispatch.
- However, Okx was banned this week following accusations from the admins on x-raying.
- Doom_Weaver argued that TTastic did not have any substantial evidence for banning Doom_Weaver and continued to call for his unbanning after clean gameplay.
- The mistake was eventually rectified the next day and they continued to raid with less success than before — although they continued to raid Laurentia and broke chests in an attempt to despawn materials, Laurentians eventually killed Okx and fredhun/Doom_Weaver.
- It didn’t really slow them down though, as they continued raiding with little to no resistance with some being frustrated with the raider playstyle being heavily favored with the slow tech tree.
Agent_Sparks9 was accused of unruly behavior in Vangar and was evicted from the country this past week. Crossposted from the Laurentian Dispatch.
- Sparks claimed it was a disagreement from a carpentry factory and their communist ideology. He also desired to make his own country but ran into claim conflicts with other towns in Vangar.
- The unsavory behavior reached a climax with Sparks’ house being raided by Umbrian officials followed by Vangar’s capital, Slumville being raided.
- While the situation is resolved now with Sparks having his own nation, it left unsatisfied parties in both nations.
Elections among most major nations started up once again:
- Zhirall, Aeth, and Lunaacatt was elected as the first judges in Laurentia
- CuntJesus was elected as Prime Minister of Norlund followed by JPM, Joadgr and Bernie Sanders (haha) filling out his cabinet
In the wake of the Okx raids, Laurentia also opened their doors to international factory access and market trade, regularly selling bronze and later steel pickaxes.
A relatively easy to obtain Miner Brew was released to the public by Hikoru promising night vision and better luck while mining.
That is, if the luck feature worked on discovery as an admin mistake actually prevented any ores while mining. This was fixed later on Saturday.
Other updates on the server included the long-awaited inclusion of brewery, with 57 brews of various types, continued HiddenOre and mining fixes, and general preprations for Adamantine rebalancing.
The continued updates to reduce grindiness and the beginning of actual progression have made the perception of the server generally better than the previous couple of weeks, and the playerbase believe admins are moving in the right direction to make change.
In the meanwhile, admin Cortwade is hosting a server-wide Gartic Phone game on March 17.

CivMC News

The Shiroyama Ice Rink minutes before the start of the Olympics opening ceremonies.

Sports Reporting

Of course, the talk of the server this week was the Naran Olympics. A big hand to Blatlas, Bron, Prawny, Swordmaster and everyone on the organizing team who did a great job putting all of this together.

Please insert Joe Buck commentating riveting chess gameplay here.

Preliminary hockey matches continued throughout the week, with
As well as chess matches:
- The newcomer Thrall Clan won their first chess match this week
- Pavia’s spleef match was followed by a round of chess with grepsedawk
The opening ceremony had several issues of fireworks and speeches from Swordmaster and Lowtuff
Several events were won by MechanicalRift, including Summitting and Shooting
The 1v1s had some ridiculous near-ties, with Cortesian Yodabird and Commoner reffelruz tying alongside S4NTA and Hg__80 also near-tying in the final with S4NTA just eking out the win
Additionally people forgot they had pearls in their inventory, which made some people pearled and others completely randomspawned, like VilyanZ which delayed the entire Olympics by an hour as he had to travel all the way from Yodel to get back to competing…
The hockey tournament was the marquee event on Saturday night, although Icarus lost 4-7 against home-team-advantage team Nara.
Unfortunately despite all these events, much of the preliminary events were not executed in time meaning that several big coordinated tournaments like hockey, spleef and chess are set to have delays and medals awarded long past the Olympic end date.
As of the conclusion of the Olympics on Sunday, Nara went all out for this Olympics with 17 medals total with 5 golds, with Estalia coming in second in the medal count with 7, probably won from all the PvP events.

Screenshots and videos of events are being uploaded in the coming days.

Now the question is, are we going to have to wait another three months for another Olympics?

Actual News

Of course, there is actual drama but there’s little to speak of this week:

So just to rephrase on the Danzilona coup as discussed last week:
- SandFalls as part of the Worker’s Party, counter-couped the Junta government led by Des23 on March 5.
- Azelair restored the government of the Free Worker’s Commune of Danzilona on March 6 and declared that New Swisston would not be excluded, stating that “Many people were involved in bringing this iteration to life and ultimately it is up to all of us to keep this thing together.”
- March 7 then saw Lowtuff take complete ownership of the country, after adopting a Carson-like model refounded by Lowtuff, they are claiming that “Danzilona has become part of Lowtuff”, in a way. Profound.
- This was only reiterated during his Olympics opening ceremonies speech that “Danzilona is me”, but I don’t have a source but trust me bro
Accusations of Leibniz Confederation’s inactivity were rife last week, as Okx has been more active on CivReign raiding.
- Warmia unclaimed a small area last week, and the area has been under interest by several parties due to its large holdings of land (read: tiny islands) in the Southeast. At the time, Leibniz’s leaders claimed they were trying to find the best way to promote activity in the Southwest.
- Warmia unilaterally unclaimed Leibniz’s land due to their inactivity, and implored Leibniz to unclaim more land
- Eventually Leibniz sold an island to nearby Venne for one diamond, and Venne was able to finally announce that they had built on the island for months.
After Shadno potted up accidentally at the Olympics everyone went absolutely insane until they realize literally everyone overreacted
Neubergburg was also claimed over by the Great Thrall Clan following inactivity.
This week also marked the creation of several states on the server, with Weirdscraftland joining from little-known ScratchCiv, and newcomers YSFR and Roal-Devoir in the East, alongside Athimwaabi and Respein in the West
Pacem introduced their railroad company, planning to build railroads across the server.
While CivMC did not make an official announcement, they hired new moderators ArkenX, Cissonius, Greenish9, and JuniorTide to help with discord and reddit moderation.
Mount Augusta elected an extremely hotly contested judge race with one single candidate, Logic_Man who definitely did not lose
Unfortunately a few hours past the deadline, but Nara also launched 8 lanterns last week in commemoration of International Women’s Day for survivors of domestic violence.

Everything Else

AnimeReviewer created a retrospective on his own history and Civ and his journey to becoming a leader in Estalia.
A blast from the past: Take a look at Lodish’s transcription of Seldomshock’s speech from the opening of the Orion Olympics on Civcraft 2.0
With CivReign losing a global map website, it really emphasizes how much Gjum’s contributions to niche Civ things are incredibly helpful for the whole community.
DockerImage attempted to host a small PvP tournament on Bunkies this past week but ultimately failed due to very few people actually showing up…

Although CivReign player counts have been staying pace with CivMC for the past few weeks, it dipped down to around 10 last weekend. CivReign players have wanted the admins to advertise, however admins have previously stated that they would not do so unless they had a product ready to show, which has also started a debate about newfriendliness. Others have started developing Civ servers as you’ve seen in this fixture, but it really takes time to develop servers for no money.

The Fun Stuff

Fempire’s “big lady doing Yoga” as self-described by Brudrustro, but it’s made out of copper, so I guess it’s closer to a Statue of Liberty? Maybe?

Builds

Not particularly too impressive but the effort behind SPQR’s great hall is worth commending, maybe it’s just the picture angle
Edius is actually coming along faster than I thought, with a render along the sea being a great sight as well as a proper screenshot along a cliffside house
Kind of a shock when Venne revealed they actually pulled a sneak attack and built amazing stuff without anybody noticing
People are really sleeping on Griffin builds, even me but only because I just didn’t want to put them on the highlighted pictures list for the second week in a row but it’s really fucking good. They really have a wide collection of pictures and builds with spectacular views.
Incredible Olympics photography from Torynado, I need to know what his shaders are

And the highlighted stuff:

Fempire posted a statue that was relatively indecipherable at first but thank god there was actually context
Margaritaville popped off by becoming both Santa Monica Pier and California Adventure in one
Is it telling that Gensokyo are the only people who posted builds on CivReign this week?

Multimedia Projects

Icarus’ capital, Blue Cove was rendered as a ball, so I guess it counts as not really a build?
Just a wholesome image of Mercutio at the games even though they lost
Speaking of Olympic events, here’s a compilation of all the dumbass PvP montage videos created during the Generic War from Hokkaido
Ok I still didn’t ask permission from Kapre to use this one but at least the Lambat map is actually finished this time looking amazing
How are we on map #14 from TheJmqn already? It’s not been a year right?
TheJmqn continuing map coloring area visualizations from Prawny results in a pie chart that’s too colorful
The Great Thrall Clan already slapping with a jingle that’s basically a song…PercJackson, liquidstereo, you might want to start looking at your competition…
A great artist’s interpretation of Laurentia
Pacem propaganda posters are always amazing
Ok, while this is a meme, the editing is honestly incredible on the Game of Thrones that it’s upgraded from meme status, props to jbblocker for this.

Memes

Non-Civ Content

Holy shit ChrisChrispie just picked up the cutest pupper in the world
Why aren’t you watching the World Baseball Classic? Do it now
Not march 10 anymore but
I present Jimmy Fallon and the cast of the Mario Movie doing the most cringe acapella cover for 1 minute and 30 seconds until Miyamoto shows up to make it all worth it
Please argue in the comments below about whether The Last of Us’ finale was worth watching over another year of glamourizing celebrities at the Oscars
I’m contemplating spinning up a modpack server, right now I’m playing through Create: Astral. Anyone up to play?

Olympian Cry for Help

Seldomshock’s newest builds in Shockton next to the beach. Lusitania 2, anyone?

Thank you for reading week number 44 of the newsletter — I think there’s too many weeks and I accidentally removed one from the collections playlist on Reddit now…

Special unthanks to Yodabird who didn’t write his featured article on time after giving him a 2-week delay, but also thanks to Yodabird for making good content that I used for the featured article picture, so I guess it cancels out??

If you want to write your own featured article, contact me or feel free to fill out this form! I will cold call you if you don’t, there’s always some interesting story that you don’t know is interesting…
If you just want to rant, feel free to write an op-ed or any opinion article, even just a retrospective on the past like AnimeReviewer’s this week. Honestly, anything.
If you’d rather just throw money at me, donate to my ko-fi. Thanks to Lodish for making a “wise decision” by donating to me and all he got back was this shoutout.

As we’re coming up to the 1-year mark of the newsletter, I’m thinking about starting a Civ images competition akin to Pavia’s. Keep an eye on that.

Back to the weekly grind it is then! Until next time…

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