CivWiki Monday Newsletter for May 1, 2023

Good morning and happy May Day from New England!

I hope it’s a beautiful morning for you but it was not a beautiful weekend for me considering you guys managed to throw not one, but three spits of drama this past week. There are dull moments on Civ, sure, but when there’s something happening, there’s something happening.

Speaking of something happening, this is the 50th CivWiki Monday Newsletter! It’s been quite a ride for the past few months. I’m not going to celebrate until we get to the year mark in a couple of weeks, but it’s a milestone nevertheless.

Are we ready for some walls of text?

Featured

Featured Image

This week’s featured picture is Icenia’s skyline, once again. It’s been a while since I highlighted the city and I think this is a newer render from Icenia since a lot of the background pieces in the town center are things that have been added since January, so it’s gotta be new. For me, this is one of the most distinctive skylines of Civ, not just because of the density of the skyscrapers but the diversity and organizational layout of the city. Also, not to mention approaching the city from the sea is really cool too!

Featured Article

The Battle of the Crucible was a major vault attack during the Infinity War. In February 2020, Columbia discovered that NATO officials had insided the country and significantly griefed their vault in an attempt to take control. Entente and UDF fighters rushed to the vault to defend it from an incoming attack later that afternoon, as NATO attempted a retaliatory attack. Unlike most vault attacks, NATO officials began their offense at bedrock level, working their way inwards.

At the onset, only eight defenders were at the vault at the time, but fighters from Mir and later most Entente countries helped defend the vault. Several NATO attempts at breaking through defenses were made but had stalled. A fatal mistake by Bob_The_Builder allowed Entente forces to gain the upper hand; he was pearled after being discovered behind enemy lines. NATO officials eventually retreated after this occurred. This event arguably marked the turning point for the war; although the Siege of Columbia and Valyria continued, NATO fighters began to burn out due to continued attacks and would lead to the end of the Infinity War within a few months. (Full article…)

This week’s featured image is the Crucible Vault, pictured close to the start of the Infinity War.

The News

The Black Mesa Vault in Gang Shi, shortly after being broken. Picture taken by Quauhtli’n’Mia.

Market Watchdog Attacks “Chinese” State

When Chris told me about “That’s Nuts” I knew it was gonna be huge!

So I’m sure that you guys remember last week’s events with fastestgrass being pearled by the SEC. It turns out that while last week was accurate, there’s a lot more to talk about now. Please note that there were several of these events, there may be issues with the sequence of events that I’ll fix as necessary.

• While a weeklong sentence was agreed upon with Gang Shi, continued security concerns had the SEC move the pearl to the Arsenio Pact’s vault.
• Although Icenia intended this as just a precaution, Gang Shi believed that they wouldn’t keep their word and on Monday, pearled VilyanZ in Fempire.
  • Lambat eventually sent out a statement regarding this, and a post the next day, despite not engaging militarily in the war.
• Negotiations were quickly attempted and were stalled just as quickly — Gang Shi in response griefed an ice road of the SEC’s and showed up to Altepetl, attempting to break bastions.
• As a result, Yoahtl closed up its doors and requested that nobody leave the city at this time. Despite this, GordonFreemanQ was pearled as he was unaware of the announcement.
• SEC fighters quickly came and prolonged battles ensued outside Yoahtl — IKEA_FRIDGE was pearled in the ensuing teamfights attempting to defend the city. Gang Shi fighters eventually retreated.

On Tuesday, the SEC retaliated by disabling a considerable amount of Gang Shi infrastructure. Following this, as you probably all know, the SEC declared war on Gang Shi (although the war had been going on a good while at this point.)

• Most of their rationale is very quick and to the point, and covers most of the stuff we’ve put up there. However, one point hasn’t been mentioned yet: the Kibbles crew had taken refuge in Gang Shi and had joined their ranks.
• However that evening also saw some teamfights in Gang Shi as well. The SEC were able to pearl both Antea and Kibbles in the fighting, and K0mmi as well in a later fight.

Continuing into the early hours of Wednesday, a SEC skybridge began towards Gang Shi’s vault. They continued towards the vault, eventually pearling PhysicsGamer, squidhasthebad, and UB40 in the ensuing attacks with help from allies.

• Later that day, Yodabird posted a final war settlement, announcing that they had released all war pearls along with requesting and continuing to seek out other Gang Shi pearls.
  • Shadno and oko did a whole lot of work to get every little piece of this working, mostly skybridge planning as well as insiding Gang Shi itself.
• Additionally, Oko later that week posted a list of pearls claimed from the vault and asked for further claims on those pearls who would otherwise released.
• Antea made a post later that day angry about buildfriends such as Tolype being kicked out of Gang Shi land arguing that the SEC was engaging in excessive hostile intentions (NeoTide was not by looking at the images)
  • JuniorTide further clarified no claims would be made against Tolype as long as he left Gang Shi Claims.
  • Here’s the requisite bgpost link.
  • That being said, this is Tolype’s like, fifth nation at this point?
• On Sunday afternoon, ChrisChrispie posted the SEC’s sentencing for the players — ranging from anywhere between 2 weeks to 6 months.
• At least for fastestgrass, who’s been my only Gang Shi contact this past week, they’re unhappy about the imprisonment length of these pearls, essentially leading them to quit because of the SEC’s rhetoric and perception of the war against him.
• Currently, the SEC are looking forward to split up the land between interested parties nearby, and will announce the new land claims soon.

So Gang Shi’s gone. That’s one of the three(?) big dramas done, maybe take a little pause before continuing.

The View from Hell

Gensokyo, from like a few months ago. I think I may have actually used this picture already. Thanks to Cowguypig for his pictures.

Guys, this meme is dead, just stop.

• Gang Shi may have been defeated but since they also held some political power across the server, it’s expected that it’s going to change a lot of geopolitical structures around on the server. Starting off with…
• On Wednesday, only a few hours after the SEC declared victory over Gang Shi, Hg_80 made a post about Gensokyo’s claims.
  • He argued that despite them taking up a non-negligible amount of land in addition to having said that they weren’t playing on the server, they shouldn’t be holding onto those claims.
• What was mostly stopping people from overclaiming Gensokyo was twofold:
  • Previously, Gang Shi were the primary military backers of Gensokyo per the GOD treaty, per the GOD treaty.
  • Second, Gensokyo expressed sentiment that “some [players] might still want to play there.”
  • Back in Fall 2022 Gensokyo had been held by Danzilona and passed hands on Truidencia quietly in the winter. The only reasons for keeping the land was the above.
  • This was exacerbated considering Transylvania hoped to settle in the territory a couple weeks ago but was forced to move elsewhere because the GOD pact was “still in effect” after consulting with Topaz.
  • It’s like my own commitment to playing on the server and holding like 5 citizenships even though I don’t do anything…
• Currently, discussions have been started in the Alenarith Forum to try to remedy these issues and free up some land on the continent.

If you’d rather only be looking at geopolitical drama, feel free to skip this next set of bulletpoints:

Obviously, if I were covering the newsletter normally, the above is all I’d cover. But if you’ve stuck around for months at this point reading this newsletter, you’ll know talking about Gensokyo is a touchy subject. Feel free to dive deeper into these other arguments if you’d like to lose some braincells.

• The easiest to explain is the accusation that “Estalia forced them off the server”, if you remember Estalia’s build night antics a couple months ago, this argument has reasonable backing
  • Estalia did remind everyone that this was a retaliatory measure after someone stole several compacted stacks of valuable materials.
• ComradeNick asked people to understand why Gensokyo left in the first place, urging people to invite them back onto the server with kindness.
• SpeedyJustice then posted in a separate thread that he really supported declaiming Gensokyo land, explaining that Gensokyo’s unjustified and rude behavior is deserving of this. That being said, if you’d like to disregard this rant, I would too.
• The last thread I’m going to attempt to summarize here is RektTangle’s post giving an Gensokyojin perspective, who proposes that Gensokyo isn’t really a “Civ community” like the rest of us, saying they preferred to keep drama out of their lives to preserve their community.
  • Some people took offense to their self-proclaimed “low tolerance for shittery”, however.
  • I’ve tried to involve Gensokyo in the newsletter with their movie nights and modded server in the Non-Civ Content sections to try to drive this point home.

At the end of the day, the last set of bulletpoints are just venting frustrations in and around Gensokyo’s behavior, and nothing really justifies the fact that they are claiming a lot of land while “inactive”. If you’d like to see more about mapping and the thorny issue that is claims maps, skip ahead below to the “metagaming section”.

Everything Else (on CivMC)

It’s the church of t! It’s an actual church (in Prussia’s section of Pavia, taken by ArtificialDriver)!

As if we didn’t have enough to talk about yet…

• Reconstruction Era, despite its many endings has decidedly NOT come to an end and has reformed as the Reconstructist Party in Mount Augusta and ceded all its territory to Warmia, in “efforts to help newfriends”.
• Speaking of Warmia, they annexed its “partners” Lesneria and Wlazestan as counties in their territory.
  • However, the Cinian Union soundly rejected this, arguing that the move was violating the constitution of the Cinian Union and accusing Warmia was engaging in “illegitimate, opportunistic expansionism”.
  • Warmia however is arguing that the Cinian Union is being overly protective of the territories due to the terms and conditions of the agreement.
  • In general however, public perception is going in the way of the Cinian Union…
• Plrog announced he would be passing the nation of Respein over to smothyhoo who won a 5-1 vote.
• Lusitania unclaimed some sections of Jungle and Savannah in the southwest.
• DonFuer was the victim over grief on Saturday night. It’s heavily suggested that Zelmisburg was the perpetrator behind these attacks as he owned the area next to Fempire and started a war over it at the beginning of the iteration.
• Southshire announced they would be joining Icenia as a state, much like Petrichor has in their own country. Please check their treaty for more details. Damn, Icenia is big.
• Transylvania announced that they would be transitioning into a republic, after one year as a monarchy.
• Plupsnup is runnning for Chancellor of the Imperial Federation, hoping to bring equal rights to all Imperial citizens.
• The Monument Bank announced their Financial Statement for April 2023, with over 12,000 diamonds in the bank’s possession.
• RedDevel has released a CivMC poll asking players to rate their experience so far on CivMC, from frequent activities to requested changes.

CivReign & The Other Servers

A windmill on Return of the Civ by nickflik and fiamatta. Sorry let me check that again — THREE windmills.

• CivReign’s population is really down — this was taken on a Saturday EST afternoon.
  • A two-month downturn on an extremely hyped server is something that nobody really wants to see, and has been semi-unprecedented in Civ history (with the notable exception being CivEx 3.0)
  • I wanted to reach out to somebody regarding the server’s downturn, and Cortwade has said that they hadn’t been as active as they’d like to be on the server. He hopes that people will play the server following changes, speaking that they would work “however and whenever we can, and that will not change” regardless of the player count.
  • I truly hope that this server will get back on the right track, but as it stands, it’s unfortunate this was the case.
• On the completely opposite side of things, Return of the Civ has been actively developing their server, with about ten players appearing on peak.
  • They’ve been updating (and readding back) mods pretty frequently with a relatively active playerbase, so hoping the best for them
• Meanwhile SouthernBloc has declared he is still alive. Fingers crossed that there’s active development on VintageCiv.

Metaversing

Transylvania’s lovely town center. Yes, ok, I’ll recognize you exist.

Hold on, we’re five headers in and we’re still not done yet?

• Magnileve announced on Thursday that he would be bringing back polygon map claims of CivMC on the UMP, which would allow claims to be shown on the world map.
  • However, there was backlash regarding this — Solitaire7/GDan has called to stymie this effort stating regional maps are superior and global maps are inaccurate as it keeps inactive nations.
  • Kaprediem responded through another post stating that even though people are calling for regional maps, nobody’s making them, and that you shouldn’t kill global maps if this happens.
    • Gobblin responded to this post with a very reasonable take of just culling nations as needed
  • Magnileve eventually made another post the next day, responding to the backlash, stating that having contacts and the validity of the current claims maps are the only stumbling blocks in the way.
    • It’s mostly solved by having a variety of maps and continually contacting nations to check if they’re still active, which is what we’ve always done.
  • Interestingly, many were shocked about the amount of backlash that came from the initial announcement. Hopefully this won’t happen again in the future and nobody will have unreasonable arguments again. :)
• Once again, Solitaire7 made an effort to advertise the server last Friday, this time highlighting Icenia in his four posts. However, reception by the subreddits it was posted on was arguably worse than last week.
  • The r/Minecraft post was removed, but not because it necessarily broke any rules, only because it was based on prior events when posting about Pavia and Nara.
  • The r/worldbuilding post was removed mostly because it did not have enough world-building material in its comments.
• I’m generally confused about what this guy is asking, especially it’s a very odd question to propose about MMORPG design. For those who don’t know what SWG is, it’s Star Wars Galaxies, a game that I don’t think many in this community have heard of
• One suggestion that’s been put in is the Bandit Mask, essentially something that anonymizes you to not only others, but the Civ plugins themselves.
• To end on a fun note, it turns out that CivMC is making TikToks based on our content and I can’t believe it actually got someone to join the server.

The Fun Stuff

The Orakuru Clocktower in Nara towering above the forest.

Builds

• Transylvania, despite them posting a lot still, has a pretty quaint town center
• Nara has probably built the biggest clock tower on Civ…
• …alongside probably the biggest church on Civ in the Prussian district of Pavia
• Meanwhile Pavia is of course, hard at work building every inch of their playground with Gobblin building in the city, a cute vibes outside the townhall picture from ASCENDIDK, and ridiculous pic dumps from Gobblin and BritishWanderer.
• While it’s technically not normally a build I would highlight on this section, the Black Mesa vault is one of the vaults of all time
• There’s a beach house that I really liked from lognots
• Who says that builds that aren’t Minecraft aren’t cool? The triple windmills on Hold’s Folly looks really cool
• DonFuer has a great timelapse building one of their towers
• Of course, your requisite monthly Icenia skyscraper album
• Henderwicz being surprised about the appearance of Fox & Dino in Kikurimura built statues commemorating their visit
• Griffin’s Grand Temple of Adria is really breathtaking, especially in the context of the whole city
• A very nice picture of apartments in Mercutio by the sea
• Not to mention Mercutio’s horse stables and the Nara Peace Garden

Multimedia Projects

• Mercutio made this lovely map of their territory. It’s simple, but it’s well done and I like the fonts
• Fox and Dino are in the snowy Nara village of Kikurimura this week, I like the drawing of dragging his frozen ass up the hill
• Always have to appreciate a good Civball from Southshire
• It’s Medwedian Touhou girl. Idk, Topher found this and it’s really good even if it’s not Civ
  • The “reference image” kind of makes the joke in a Civ perspective
• Of course it isn’t a Gang Shi conflict without a diss track
• TheJmqn has posted some brand new nation map size data
• DonFuer has given me reason to believe they are still alive on the server
• Here is a well-made map of the SPQR and people are getting on that I like pastel colors on maps
• ChrisChrispie is now Dark Brandon
  • If you don’t get the joke, see reference picture

Memes

• Reading everything is nauseating, thanks Oko
  • Kind of the theme of this section is the reference comment if not stressed enough
• Once again, I cannot stress enough that this is probably the best meme in the entire existence of Civ and is perfectly applicable to this situation
• Ok, yes we get it you hate Respein — you don’t have to be so openly anti-Respein though
• The View… but I prefer The Talk instead
• The
• View from Mercutio (but it’s pointed towards Gensokyo)
• Sirboss, I too vicariously live through the subreddit
• It’s finally never been more over than it is now
• How is Phoenix Wright gonna argue against that?
• The biggest thing I ever made? Probably “that’s nuts”
• I still don’t know what Gwua is saying?
• Even though slander memes are months old at this point, this was still at least mildly funny from Warmia
  • It even feels like this is a rejected slide from the video

Non-Civ Content

• Your baseball bulletpoint^TM this week is some feelgood news — Drew Maggi, 33 years old on the Pittsburgh Pirates waited 13 years in the minor leagues and finally gets a chance to start a major league game, and got his first major league hit on Saturday!
• Gang Shi has moved onto Valheim if you’d like to join them
• Pavia held a movie night with Glass Onion, until Cedar’s internet cut out before the last like, half an hour
• CivReign held(?) a King of the Castle party for its playerbase — if it was held?
• meat312 is doing stuff with Lord of the Rings
• If anyone uses IntelliJ-based IDEs from JetBrains, gotta say that the new UI is better only when you put a theme on — it’s extremely clean and I love it

Mayflower(s) Cry for Help

Phobitica and friends posing in front of a monument in Mercutio.

Thanks for reading the 50th CivWiki newsletter. WAIT, it’s Week 50 already?! I’m wasting too much time on Civ…

I’ve had a lot of work IRL this week, so I haven’t had time to post the screenshot competition quite yet, but I will do so hopefully later this week when I’m less busy and not trying to cobble together three final projects at the same time and also report on like five different drama things that happened the entire weekend. But trust me, it’s coming!

Thanks to everyone who made this newsletter possible including BritishWanderer, Creepi0n, Yodabird19, Gjum, and new additions to the staff, Xcios, RedDevel, ShadySauce and reffelruz. Also huge thanks to JuniorTide, phobitica, Oceanstar, prawny331, fastestgrass, Lagiacrus, Jaydon, Metriximor and Cortwade for providing information for this week’s newsletter. Wow, look at all those names. You’re never going to see an assemblage of that again.

If you’d like to support the newsletter:

• Contribute a featured article! It’s easier than you think, it’s literally just a synopsis of a CivWiki article you find interesting. Think of it like a nation ad, but worse.
• Donate to my ko-fi, you get no monetary benefit except a big ‘ol shoutout at the end of the newsletter.
• Share this newsletter to your friends, your discord friends, or whoever else that might find all of this crazy lore interesting…

Regardless, thanks for your support for this newsletter the 11 months, it’s been quite a ride and we’re almost to a whole year of this thing. Can you believe it?

Anyways, as always…

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