Poll of the Month

As previous, polls are continuing! They’re even longer now that the time period to submit is a full month. Unfortunately, you still have to read the whole writeup to get to the poll.

This poll section is reporting on last month’s final poll on the 24th, focusing on Civ’s perception’s improvements within 2024.

Gameplay Improvement in 2024

I’m sure the admins would love to see this graph. The average was 3.23 and the median was 3. A reminder that in this rating scale, 3 is the midpoint (“about the same”.)

I do remember that during the summer in 2024 the gameplay of Civ did feel a little stagnant, and there was especially some backlash over the Heliodor update in the fall. I think that now that the economy has started to settle, this is relatively indicative that the change has gone over well.

Heliodor definitely provided a much needed late-game wealth sink, it’s only temporary and inflation still feels like it’s rising again. But, who knows. There were some massive cosmetic improvements throughout the year and the admins invested in a lot of quality of life improvements in the game last year to make it good. Of course there are some downsides and some questions about where the admins will take the genre’s direction, but at least there’s relatively high hopes for now.

Community Improvement in 2024

Now this — this is a much more positive graph. The average was 3.47 and the median was 4.

I think this was definitely helped by the fact that this was one of the first years we did not have a major, game/server-defining war. After a series of Icenia-Gang Shi wars, and the Generic War, the server has settled into long-term stability, and there’s very little for people to fight over anymore besides ideological differences.

While many of you may not have noticed, one thing that significantly helped was the presence of many newfriends that showed up during last year. There was a lot of organic traction (thanks to people like Solitaire) and therefore I feel like a significant amount of newfriend-welcoming nations saw an influx over the course of this year. I think that definitely raised the morale of the community a lot, as we saw a good amount of fresh faces to complement the old guard. It’s made the scene a lot livelier, for better or for worse.

Pair those two together, and I think this has been the most stable and lively that mainline Civ has felt in a good while. Some melodrama here and there, but definitely in a much better spot.

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Poll Questions

As a result of being a monthly poll now, I’ve taken the liberty to add more questions since I don’t get to ask things very often. I am also open to your DMs @specificlanguage if you have a particular comment about any questions as a whole.

The overall article’s cover picture was an overlook at the city of Bloom, Icenia (cr: Xcios)