CivWiki Monday Newsletter for April 10, 2023
Good morning and happy day-after-Easter from New England!
Did you know that the word ‘Easter’ comes from an Old English word that has absolutely nothing to do with Easter in the slightest? It comes from Ēostre, a West Germanic goddess that has basically no relation to Christianity at all. It’s literally only because they used her name for the month of April so like, yeah average medieval thing.
So speaking of April, are we ready for the news?
Featured
Featured Image
This week’s featured image is Pavia’s windmill in their grand farms in the eastern countryside. Maybe some of you forgot that Pavia isn’t just the city and has a wonderful rest of the country! Courtesy of Creepi0n, this picture is around Lugano, and is the quintessential British midlands with ruins, a quarry and large sprawling farms and a smattering of small towns. They’re great builds, and I love highlighting more quaint builds like these. Great work!
Featured Article
Southshire is a democracy that originated on CivClassic. Its namesake came from its location south of Westminster in The Commonwealth, and in its early days, was considerably involved in its foreign and domestic affairs, playing a minor part in the Somber War. The country eventually seceded to Yoahtl before becoming independent following the war. Despite a minor incident in the Infinity War with the LSD in the Entente-Laconia War, the country remained on good terms with most nations, including joining SATO and the UDF, developing close relations with Icenia in the late days of the server.
Although the country was relatively small in size, its main city, Southend, had detailed builds in its small peninsula located south of Westminster. The country hosted a world-famous brewery, public library, and eccentric large builds, such as Melman the Giraffe. Its religion, Canalism, played a minor part in the development of the city. Other areas included the Nudist Beach Resort and nearby Oakhurst. Today, Southshire’s triumvirate plays on CivMC, with its capital city, Samchester, named in remembrance of a former player, ironically located in the north part of the map. (Full article…)
This week’s featured article image is a grand view of Southend, Southshire, with its giraffe, Melman in the background.
CivReign News
A few more short rise buildings in Gensokyo, as part of a larger city expansion.
Maybe another small section from the Reign people this week? Grind begets inactivity as everyone knows.
- Norlund held their highly anticipated Carrot Festival last Saturday, and had a great time in VC that afternoon.
- Mount Augusta, the Brigantines, and Gempire mutually agreed to create the Free Portal Organization, agreed to share and publicly open an Aqua Nether Portal free for anybody to utilize.
- CivReign admins also made another update that made several changes to Adamantine and Mining, as well as making pickaxes way more accessible.
- Also not mentioned last week, there’s a small (but very non-neglibable chance) that Ents, Stone Golems, and Locusts will spawning when cutting down a tree, mining, or farming respectively.
- They’ve also created new textures for cast iron and bronze pickaxes that look pretty cool.
- We are quite literally becoming RLCraft, aren’t we?
Uh, hold on… checks notes …that’s it? I’m sure there’s definitely stuff behind the scenes in all these countries, but if this is literally all the news I got from Reign this week, something’s not sitting right about this server.
- And that’s definitely a problem considering that people are seeing about CivReign right now. There’s currently a feedback thread going on their discord with many voicing concerns about the low player count.
- With the player count hovering around 10-12 people daily, not even matching CivMC numbers during the aforementioned Carrot Festival, it’s a concern that a major server is doing nothing.
- From my perspective, although they have fixed the grind in recent weeks, the fact that they aren’t advertising or bringing new players in, or doing anything to motivate people to play, is making people turn away, which then the low population becomes a further motivating, and self-fulfilling cycle.
- Many are really pissed that admins have not done anything to advertise as well as address grind at the same time. Both of them combined are making players perceive a very negative outcome in the near future for the server.
CivMC News
Venne’s new city, Venozia. It’s even more built out than a few weeks ago!
Correctionary Facilities
Last week, I sent out a newsletter in which I talked about a player who was supposedly imprisoned in an ender pearl. Unfortunately, I got some of the facts wrong in that newsletter, and I want to take this opportunity to apologize and set the record straight.
- This is regarding Coolchacha97’s pearling, who was initially reported as being pearled by fredhun and being held by Nara. Although I didn’t attempt to make any interpretation of the mentions at hand, I did link to the Federalist Papers that week which had disputed arguments of the timeline at hand.
- Although ComradeSankara claims they were invited into Dalgon, Coolchacha appeared in Nara and had offended Bronnakus; ComradeSankara eventually pursued him as he went into the pit in Dalgon.
- While Sankara was pearled and subsequently released and CoolChaCha was pearled and given to Blatlas a few weeks ago…
- Coolchacha was also banned recently due to transphobia for 6 months. He has a goodbye post if you desperately want to read it, but it might just become a small violins copypasta…
Apparently he trolled a little too hard.
Everything Else
- Withers just keep showing up.
- GuggaBugga was killed by a Wither outside of Ohio, and shouted out the Imperial Federation for their support in reclaiming their items as well as fighting off the Wither.
- Temporal Isles also had to deal with a wither, and viewed the fight from afar.
- I’m pretty sure there have only been three reports out of the twelve withers that were released so Hakr_ has done a great job messing with everyone.
- Ashnwill got a new ISP and tried fucking around and finding out, and was very unsurprisingly pearled by Icenia
- Warmia banished Mushroom_Cultist following accusations of treason and open accusations to ruin the country.
- Warmia also opened the Shockton-Warmia line, a direct express line from Warmia City to Shockton in Volterra.
- King_Cupar ceded several areas south of Regentsburgh, either giving them back to the Imperial Federation or unclaiming them entirely for use by newfriends.
- Additionally, ComradeSankara was elected for their third and final term as chancellor of the Imperial Federation.
- A very sneaky announcement saw Gensokyo’s territory on CivMC becoming a protectorate under Truidencia.
- Apparently I didn’t quite mention it last week, but an imposter of Gobblin’s account entered the discord, leading many to assume that his account was hacked. However it was misinterpreted and Gobblin was in fact, not hacked. Crossposted from the Main Street Journal.
- The Monument Group announced they would be creating a bank, designed to act like a real bank with loans, interest, diamond storage, and other vital banking utilities. This came about through their purchase of Cartesian Bank. For more details about what this entails, take a look at their announcement.
- Xcios and Cissonius were married this past Thursday in Pavia.
- Following the wedding however, Djani’hweh and SandFalls sacrificed masqis who was claimed to be “an ENEMY of the Mehri, constantly calling for war against us”.
- The creation of the world book of the Mehri is now available in Lambat’s library.
- Speaking of things you missed on the CivMC discord, Transylvaia and Respein, two newcomer nations, met in a little feud with each other on their nation ads following continued issues from several previous servers.
- Icenia elected their newest Senate for April, with many veterans returning for this month. Fortunately, Slushhi was re-elected and Bloom made up with Icenia.
- The SEC has also elected a brand new chairperson, and it’s ChrisChrispie who’s leading the charge this time.
- CivMC updated on Wednesday to provide several quality of life changes and bugfixes, including lengthening maturation and acid times for reinforcements, and a full revision to the years-old Welcome Book.
Around the Civ
This section is essentially everything else that didn’t necessarily belong in any server-specific section, but also anything that isn’t really a meme, so I guess, it’s just good Civ-related content that isn’t like a screenshot I guess
- Paddington does a critical review of the composition of “Entry forbidden” and “Keep away” signs near exclusion zones near vaults
- Xan has “developed” a faster yet really more easily griefable rail system that’s more than 50% faster
- ErrorL is still hyping up the fact that he’s conquered CivMC and is pretty delusional about saying so, I’m surprised that his fanbase of 9-year olds are still worshipping him despite taking every L possible. Anyway, cope, seethe, etc.
- Diet_Cola is making a big effort to update all Civ plugins up to 1.19.4. Could we be seeing a server upgrade soon?
- While Vintage Civ still patiently waiting for SouthernBloc to return, the community is still buzzing about all the new 1.19 features, especially with the hint regarding a brand new github commit that we can’t see. It shows how much impact Vintage Civ actually had in the community and how important people see it.
- It’s so popular that KingoftheMochas is starting his own server, Return of the Civ that hopes to be a spiritual successor of VintageCiv and is currently in a beta (after only being started two days prior.)
- Although it’s a Star Wars refernce, I think “The Civ Strikes Back” would have been thematically and more accurately appropriate name
- Rosegold is a brand new botting framework from grepsedawk and Gjum along with many other contributors. Written in Crystal, the goal is for the framework to provide easy accessibility for botting as well as access to the client, along with server compliance. While it’s still in active development, it may be the most comprehensive and high-effort work to date to make botting more accessible to the wider Civ audience.
The Fun Stuff
Ruby Downs in Yoahtl, an impressive conversion of a Wild West town into Civ, built by MaybeGravy.
Builds
- A very nice Brigantine build in the late sunset
- Lambat has some cool skyscrapers in this nighttime skyline)
- Gensokyo is working on some buildings in their little hamlet so far as they prepare to build up their big palace
- I thought Dalgon was allergic to sunlight but apparently they aren’t!
- Pavia has some builds going, showing off their windmill in the featured image this week as well as another section of the city going up as well.
- Venozia is really looking beautiful
- How about a Spaghetti Western set in Ruby Downs in Venozia
- Mount Augusta is not just building up their Town Hall on CivMC but on CivReign as well
- Norlund gave us a look at their beautiful town square during the Carrot Festival
Multimedia Projects
- Warmia has a national anthem now
- They also have an updated map
- ACCoker is pulling out episode after episode of his CivMC let’s play, with Episodes 5-7 highlighting their first PvP and “the cow heist” from Gang Shi.
- I’m not sure why Gang Shi cares so much about a vault pearling several weeks ago but this is still good graphic design
Memes
- Both Flameoguy and Yerb_studios both made things that I don’t think anybody understood but really was just a nothing burger
- Hi Wilson, I’m Dad
- Dad asks if he’s winning, son
- Sirboss just posts a clip from The Interview
- Driving through Europe vs. America vs. China
- Enter the arena
- Weezer flag, bottom text
Non-Civ Content
- My friends and I watched the Dungeons and Dragons movie, drunk. It was still a hell a lot of fun considering we were in the theater by ourselves, but I think I wished we didn’t rely on our fucking sorcerer and barbarian so much
- I spent most of my Saturday procrasting on my homework and writing the newsletter, which included my friends and I literally smashing the record on an escape room by like 3 minutes
- I finally got through Chapter 2 of Create:A&B while procrastinating on my homework
- After starting the season 2-5, Mariners are finally winning shit in Cleveland. Cleveland, out of all places.
- Our Chessbot barely made the tournament if anybody was wondering, but it at least wins against a random player that does fool’s mate very often
Semi-Disquieting Cry for Help
A picture of the wedding between Xcios and Cissonius in Pavia, courtesy of BritishWanderer.
As some of you might know, I had a very unavoidable and traumatic experience happen last night at my college. This isn’t a joke at all. I’m not going to go into details and I didn’t tell very many people. But coming out of this, I just want to say I’m incredibly grateful for this community and their support throughout last night and the near-past year of doing this writing thing. I’m honored that I’ve provided something that people have cared so much about and that I get to do this every week.
I want to do something pretty big for week 52 (we’re on week 47!) to show my appreciation to you guys, but we’ll have to see if I have time. In the meantime, I want to give a huge thanks to Creepi0n, BritishWanderer, Gjum, Yodabird, Hoover, and fredhun for some of the support this week.
If you’d like to support me somehow, then
- feel free to submit a featured article to show up in the newsletter at some point,
- contact me if you’d like to help edit the newsletter on a semi-regular basis (I’m going to be considering applications, please talk to me for more details), or
- donate to me on Ko-fi to gain no financial benefit for your money whatsoever
Thanks to everyone who’s stuck around these 47 weeks, can’t thank you enough for your support.
Until next time…