CivWiki Newsletter for June 5, 2025

Good morning and happy Pride Month from the Pacific Northwest! I guess it’s also CivMC’s third anniversary, huh? Maybe I should have led with that…

Looking back on three years of a single server becomes quite a task. If you’re an oldfriend, you’ll know how relatively rare a long-lived server like this comes about, and how much of a miracle that not only is the server still alive, but thriving after all this time. Seeing 100+ players on the regular for these anniversary drops is such a fun sight, and gives me tons of hope for the genre as we march forward into the years to come.

That’s enough nostalgia, I think. I hope everyone’s enjoying and celebrating the CivMC anniversary week. Are we ready to talk about the news?

Featured

Featured Image

This week’s featured image is one where I decide to celebrate folks a little bit. I tried to highlight new, thriving nations that came out this year, but of course that’s not the case for at least one nation you’re seeing.

Suramir is located on the top left, which I guess is the exception to the rule I laid out. While Estalia has been around since the server’s inception, this new area built around dirt and mud blocks is a much more grounded build from them, showcasing a great village with this view looking like a Lord of the Rings field.

Salerno is top right, a much newer nation that did a great job showcasing itself over the past year. They’ve made the most out of their archipelago and has some really cool builds as well, not to mention a giant blimp. Some great stuff and I am so proud of their country’s development.

Groveheart is bottom right. Although it got founded at the beginning of 2024, it really found its stride as it became its own nation later that year. Its distinct architectural style has rightfully made it stand out and always is a great place to visit.

Finally, Exyria is bottom left; built up from the foundations of its predecessor, the country’s distinct purple color theme and architecture make it a great new place for many to come and build to their hearts content. (This particular picture is the communal factory building by Diviine.)

Although I’m highlighting all of these nations, I want to congratulate everyone on making it to the three year mark. Only one and a half years to go!

Featured Article

Civ is a genre of Minecraft server that emphasizes player autonomy, minimal rules and a natural emergence of organized groups of players. Conceptually similar to games such as r/place and EVE Online, Unlike other common genres such as anarchy, Towny or factions, the server’s mechanics force players to organically form nations by implementing features equivalent to ExilePearl (player-enforced justice), Citadel (structure protection), and NameLayer (group permissions), each of which generally interconnect with each other. These allow players and groups to enjoy considerable amounts of self-determination, allowing considerable player-made creativity, collaboration, diplomacy, wars and distinct communities with minimal influence from admins or moderators.

Although the so-called “mainline” servers have been mainly situated in Minecraft, with Civcraft, CivClassic, Devoted, and CivMC receiving the most traffic and attention, there have been other servers in the genre extending to games such as MineTest and Vintage Story, as well as others with experimental mechanics such as CivRealms, Bergecraft.

This week’s featured article image is an advertisement poster from Civcraft, created by bobpndrgn.

This Week In Civ

The News

Hydris, a new city from (cr: _Banana_Blu_).

Happy Anniversary!

As always the most important news is first: unlike previous CivMC anniversary events where a single handout was given, Hakr_ has been doing surprise anniversary drops all throughout this week. At the time of writing, the special items have been:

• June 2: A pretty standard anniversary gift on the anniversary itself, styled to a Recovery Compass
• June 3: The Pearlholder 9000, an “admin-approved” barrel to hold pearls in. Although I guess you don’t have to hold pearls in this one
• June 4: Hakr_’s Dirt Destroyer, a really overpowered… wooden shovel

Hakr_ is continuing to release more anniversary gifts throughout the rest of the week and into the weekend; although some may be “surprises”, he has been working on making it less inconvenient for players.

The End? It’s Over

• Estalia (or, I guess it’s officially Suramir now) found a glitch that gave them access to the End dimension.
  • It was likely a bug with an existing end portal although I could not recover no details about the exploit; while they did report it, they continued to use the bug to enter into the end and kill the ender dragon.
  • Although the server was rolled back, players were not banned for the incident, despite some complaint.
  • Other players compared the incident to the Citadel bug — however this did not have any meaningful effect on gameplay as they were essentially unable to return to the main world.
  • This was then fixed later that day.
  • Oldfriends will know this was the dimension that you would originally be pearled at prior to the Nether in older iterations, although this had not been accessible for this iteration.

Doctor Who?

Icenia’s revamp of Drugs and Alcohol Abuse Park as the skyline passes by.

• You may have seen this pretty cryptic message calling ASN out from Docc, or likely it has become a copypasta of some sorts.
  • Tatsu stumbled upon a bunker in Arlivia with Kibbles (aka ___TheBoss___) logging in — it was reported Kibbles wanted to negotiate and admitted it was his.
  • mTfUJi also went down to confirm, and they would likewise confirm that this was a design from Kibbles and jbblocker.
  • The ASN then raided the bunker, despite refuations from the_mc_docctor, the nation’s lead player (who was additionally pearled). Kibbles was further logboxxed as he attempted to iceroad away from the bunker.
  • Negotiations were noted from Icenia as “quite silly” with attempts at vault design blackmail until it was revealed that the IF vault he tried to leak was from the creative server.
• Regardless, ASN claimed Arlivia’s territory for the time being, which was met with… a reaction, alright. Considering how much land is in this it’s a little concerning

Somehow, CDM Returned

• Somehow, Cortesia Del Mar returned.
  • This iteration is restoring the country to its original state, however it is not reclaiming its old Iaumea territory, instead claiming the original Arsenio Pact territory that has changed hands a few times.
  • However, unlike this time the country is under as a state of Icenia.
• A post later came on June 4 from Nara that Cortesia Del Mar had overclaimed a portion of their country’s land without their permission.
  • Nara regards this as especially egregious as both countries are members of the ASN alliance and should respect each other’s borders.
  • SQOpenSpellbook also clarified that he ceded the land to Nara when he helmed Arsenia previously.
  • Now while I am writing this a little too early — we are not talking about that much land here. Apparently something did cause for this to happen as hinted by this comment, negotiations fell apart behind the scenes
  • Despite this, Cortesia has said that there had been no indication a breaking point from Nara’s side was happening during the negotiations; they are still intent on acting in good faith to reach a mutual agreement.
  • However, I am writing this so close to the post’s creation that a formal rebuttal has not been delivered; the area is still disputed and I have been promised a response is coming (at the time of writing).

Around the Server

Bashkent, Khalkedonia (cr: this post on the Reddit lol).

• Several countries celebrated three years on the server!
  • Pavia celebrated with a massive get-together, highlighting their massive growth, many builds and incredible community.
  • Icenia highlighted the progression between their first day to the present day
• Of course, people had two things on their mind as they celebrated Pride Month as well, with Icenia spawning several Withers to construct a beacon wall of pride
• Icenia has pretty much shadow-announced the Olympics to happen this summer, by way of this poster from lynxgirlpaws which I guess maybe wasn’t intended
• Meanwhile, the ASN accepted the Hello Kitty Islands into the alliance as an associate member, despite the harassment the country and its inhabitants have received.
  • Interestingly, the post has been downvoted like several of the HKI’s related posts, despite the fact it was actually Chris’ post…
• In likewise fashion, Heikki was admitted into the Lyrean Commonwealth.
• Salerno brokered an alliance with Ila’Kyavul, establishing a direct military alliance between the two powers.
• The typical “one account” policy, for the first time, had some funny side effects:
  • Oozora_PD originally logged in as themselves; however they lost that particular account. As per policy when logging onto a new account, they were renamed Oozora_PD but caused issues with NameLayer, and it took time before it was renamed to HacksonTheEpic.
  • But while they were joking around, they pearled a couple of fellow Yoahtlans before getting killed themselves. Quickmia noticed this and immediately asked him if he’d like to become a mercenary for hire.
  • (This would obviously not happen, but I’m only reporting this because it was requested and was funny.)
• Alaska’s former territory was announced to be split between several nations. — it was changed in a minor way a few days later.
• Commonwealth’s North Africa territory changed its name to Kozelma, sparking riots. It’s not the first time the country has had troubles.
• The Temporal Empire has announced “Initiation Day” to celebrate several players becoming citizens of the new nation — sort of like a US naturalization ceremony
  • Meanwhile, PhysicsGamer is getting married to Truidencian CosmicPathogen7
• The IHL is about to embark on a very long season with 12 weeks of play across 13 teams! Exciting times!

Metagame Highlights

• PresidentOfYes12 has done an excellent job compiling several videos across Civ’s history into one central playlist.
• If you’ve been active in Civ general chat, I’ve been kind of hinting about making a Civfriend flowchart, but of course, I am not doing a great job at keeping up my own work ethic.
• Zalvv has released a new OneDest Macro that allows players to automatically type OneDest compatible /dest commands without having to go in and change anything!
• I personally can’t believe we’re at claims map 37 three years in, a huge lift from TheJmqn after all these years.

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The Fun Stuff

A render of Kronnstadt, Kaltsburg (cr: deyan). Honestly, I thought it was just flat land but now that it’s populated it looks great!

Builds

This section is going to pretty sparse because I’ve accidentally wrote it last, but there are several pictures that you’ve seen sprinkled around that have also been new throughout this year.

• Legitimately surprised a Hatsune Miku build, here in Fempire, hasn’t showed up in Civ sooner (cr: xxbananahunterxx)
• I highlighted MtA last week, but jaybird just made a brand new batch of pics
• Faunamart has been doing some excellent detail work for their modern stores (cr: Ironscale)
• Really good arch-itecture on this rail bridge in Kaltsburg (cr: Zinvictan)
• Thank god Adria is back with new additions with this new plaza (cr: Seekinq)

Cool Content

• If a Civ formula 1 can operate as well as this ad, I guess I’m sold
• Are Civ propaganda posters back? King Volution looks more like George III here
• So maybe the Olympics were shadow announced but hey, the poster looks fire
• I have no choice but to put this Pavian movie memorializing parrots into this section, since the (legal) use of ReplayMod here is really well done
• Another great propaganda poster from Estalia’s rail system
• I have to commend Commonwealth about doing a very smart integration of the Pride Flag in their own

Memes

• these OBSIDIAN boxes were never DESIGNED to have REAL WORLD uses
• So when are we making a trojan kitty
• This really poorly drawn map of Ceres claims makes me want to see an entire map in this style

Non-Civ Content

Throughout April and May, there were and technically still are four shows I was excited for, releasing at the same time, so stackranking them:

• Andor is easily first, some of the best written TV has to offer this year. To think this is literally the Star Wars universe, thers is a lot of depth in this show that really makes it the best written. The character development, staging and entire storyline makes we just want more.
• Even though we’re only 5 episodes into this Game Changer season, every episode has hit it out of the park, from Taskmaster to Drunk Traitors, standup, and Joker cosplay. They’re doing something great here.
• The Last of Us season 2 is fine, I haven’t played the game but it is clear there are very obvious flaws that this show needs to overcome and still didn’t. I know the message is “revenge is bad”, but I felt it got hammered home and was forced to feel that way…
• I didn’t want to put this at the bottom but Doctor Who season 2 / 15 has some pretty decent highs but incredibly low lows. While there are some episodes in the midseason that were of really good quality, RTD cannot make a season arc without bringing back some Classic series fan service that frankly, I don’t care about.

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Poll of the Week

Mount Augusta’s voter tree (cr: me, built by jaybirdino).

Last week, we had 54 responses.

Public Awareness without the newsletter

I do find it interesting that many people felt like they knew what was going on — that’s kind of rare for a Civ server, even compared to before. Either some of the other newspapers picked up the slack or the world was more inactive than it had been before.

Although I guess I may have worded this question relatively poorly — I think what this newsletter excels in and specializes in is what happens across the server, which I guess is something I’m trying to emphasize a little less these days!

Who would you advertise to?

This feels pretty understandable to me; I feel like the Civ genre is aimed towards other Minecraft players in general looking for a new experience; and usually because of it you pull people that you know along with. We’ve definitely de-emphasized the political aspect of advertising lately; this is quite evident as Solitaire and CivMC has rarely advertised outside of r/worldbuilding and r/mcservers, in my opinion. Rather, we focus on highlighting the longevity of the server lately through builds rather than the political concepts that this server can introduce these days.

The seven people who said they would advertise to family and friends though, are crazy, lol!

Other Civ Media?

I’m working on tutorial videos and play through videos for the server right now.

Badly needed, thank you

I want Video News back! Bring back imperial times!

I would love to see more of the radio-adjacent media once we flesh out the icecast server. Legitimate radio news would be a godsend for worldbuilding and discourse.

imperial news, codey we need you.

Need my CivMC Podcasts

Nations hosting more in game governmental events in game compared to discord. Also recording of these events.

It’s really funny how these days, the market is quite diverse in how you consume your text-based news outside the server, you’re spoilt for choice between this and whatever news comes around the subreddit. I will say that video and audio production, in my perspective takes a lot more infrastructure and can’t necessarily move as fast as text in the journalism sphere, from my own experience.

But honestly, it would be nice to see a long-lived audio/visual experience of Civ news or events, because I think this may be the gap I see all the time.

And I want an ingame game. Think gwent from Witcher (This is random but I want it)

There’s already Civ-exclusive games, where is CivTCG, Lodish?!

Vote Now!

Queer Cry for Help

Pavia’s Town Hall Gardens. Well, I gotta fit in the pride flags in here somehow.

Thank you for reading this week’s newsletter!

In all honesty, I was expecting this newsletter to be delivered on Monday, June 2, however there were numerous circumstances that didn’t make it happen on the anniversary itself. For those who were expecting the newsletter to be on a schedule, I kinda apologize — but my promise is two newsletters per month. I hope it’s OK it happens on a Thursday!

For the newsletter nerds, I’ve also started uploading pictures to postimages.com rather than Imgur. These should have no expiration and should let these images be long-lived, and let these entire newsletters survive in their entirety — most old newsletters from 2022 and 2023 are decaying because of dead images.

You should expect another newsletter to appear during the week of June 23.

That’s enough logistics talk personally. I can’t thank you all enough for your support through the many ups and downs I’ve had over the years. I can’t believe we are at three years and I’m still writing these. This newsletter has come a long way since its inception — newsletters today are probably around 3x the original length it was originally intended! I’m glad that from start to finish these newsletters are an entertaining read.

If you’d like to help with making these, don’t hesitate to reach out. I always appreciate additional support!

Until then, I hope you enjoy your time on Civ. And as always…

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