CivWiki Newsletter for June 23, 2025

Good morning and happy summer from the Pacific Northwest!

I hope you all have survived this last heatwave if you were in the east U.S., otherwise hope you enjoyed the first few days of summer! Personally, it’s nice having these sunsets happen at 9:15pm because the days just feel so long. I guess it’s all downhill from here.

There was so much that happened over the course of a few short weeks; honestly it’s kind of impressive in my head. But does this signal the start of the perennial summer war? I truly don’t know, as you know we didn’t even have a big summer blowout last year as far as I remember. I guess Hateno counts but does it really? There was inklings of it but the normal warmongering events hasn’t actually resulted in wars yet. Very interesting.

Regardless, are we ready for the news?

Featured

Featured Image

This week’s featured image is my personal quintessential summer getaway, Margaritaville, located off the coast of Heikki and Lambat. Although it’s not really actively being built up anymore, it’s always still fun just chilling down in the tropical sun in these chill ocean breezes, along with fun carnival rides and a great tropical vibe. It’s a personal favorite of mine, and something maybe not seen much anymore on Civ. Great work, MaybeGravy!

Featured Article

This week’s featured article is a repeat of September 26, 2022 and August 19, 2024.

Loveshack was a micronation on Civcraft 1.0 and 2.0. Fully located within the borders of Mount Augusta, the country was an anarcho-queer monarchy focused on spreading the dogma of love, freedom of sexuality, and supporting the self-determination of all nations. The nation’s main reason for existence, however, was simply to roleplay as a micronation. Much of its territory was divided in provinces, with small provinces focused on its palace, courtyard, and even a barstool in Prince Toastedspike’s favorite bar.

Despite its small size, Loveshack became involved in some diplomatic issues during its tenure on Civcraft, The longest war involved the French Mount Augustan province of Vanier, where continued military aggression eventually resulted in Mount Augusta recognizing Loveshack’s sovereignty in 2014. Loveshack was also involved in conflicts with Orion, attempts to annex Grundeswald, and accession into the U3P, a military alliance in the +,+ quadrant. To this day, Loveshack remains the only successful attempt at a microstate in Civ, simultaneously being recognized officially and taking a lighthearted nature to culture and international relations in Civ. (Full article…)

This week’s featured article image is an ingame screenshot of Loveshack’s palace in Civcraft 2.0.

This Week In Civ

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The News

Ace Attorney: Taking Stock

Across the bay in Blue Cove, Icarus.

Well, I guess it would be funny if this was an Ace Attorney sequel.

On June 7, 2025, Blatlas requested a Class Action lawsuit against Tusk Armory on behalf of its shareholders for several reasons, in short engaging in concerning, unaccounted business activity which was against the Monument Bank Stock Exchange’s terms of service.

• A trial such as this one had not been attempted on Civ before; usually trials in Civ are aimed at legal matters, not economic affairs. Think of this as closer to a government filing a suit against a merger for antitrust behavior.
• Of course, no country has really made any laws against securities fraud in Civ before, so this trial was relatively unprecedented, and Zhirall, the Icenian judge who accepted this suit, also recognized it as such.
• To make an extremely long trial short, Blatlas brought up a considerably large amount of evidence towards the court, with various allegations of fraud and stock manipulation, a breach of contract against Monument Group and Tusk’s shareholders, negligent and sometimes obstruction of accounting efforts, etc. It was extremely thorough (usually even longer than the average newsletter.)
• At the time of writing, the trial is currently going through defense witness statements and will eventually go to cross-examination. Tusk Armory has shown to be willing to settle this case out of court, however no terms have been set.

If They Ain’t With the Kru

A render of Krondstadt prior to Kaltsburg’s coronation. (cr: deyan)

I am grasping at straws for this extremely dated reference at a terrible diss track.

The Kru Alliance announced their claims, seemingly overclaiming several nations on the north continent.

• Even worse, this claim looked incredibly poorly constructed, and it didn’t seem that there was much thought into this.
• This came under heavy criticism and was more likely thought as a satire post.
• However, a second post later came seeing that they were actually serious about doing this; threatening Pavia for 25% tax.
• Of course, this is absurd because first, this agreement was made unilaterally, and, like every Civ player knows, there is no tax that exists on Civ.
• Pavia, of course, responded in kind, with bank teller Bertha seemingly unacknowledging their existence.
• Kru then published a new version of their claims seemingly expanding to most of the continent, of course once again asking nobody and having no proof for any of their claims.
• However, that’s the last we’ve heard of them for about a couple weeks now.

Even weirder, nobody actually knows who these people are, because they have literally never revealed themselves in game, despite the fact that something tangible on the server exists and they have supposedly raided nearby Taijing.

For outside invaders, maybe people don’t realize how much effort it actually takes to really “take over a server”. There is a reason why server invasions rarely go very well on Civ.

The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend

A Hatsune Miku statue within Fempire (cr: xxbananahunterxx).

Olexia was a new nation founded by CryptoClixy.

• Both Fempire and SPQR were relatively hesitant about allowing them to settle due to Crypto’s reputation of saying edgy comments; this went relatively under the raider since the nation’s announcement was from a friend’s alt.
• They found themselves accepting a job to break Carter out by “bridg[ing] from mainland to punk portal”, where they would be paid 300d (honestly quite low!). As funny as the plan was, they were caught trying to build the bridge and were unprepared for combat and left.
  • I guess that price was worth it when you realize it was a dirt skybridge…
• LOTUS (namely, ThereWalker) eventually pearled much of Olexia, releasing them later and forcing them to relinquish any claims in Impendia.

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Deserves an On-Air Feature

Shiroyama Harbor, as seen from the island across the harbor. Not far from here is Cortesia Del Mar’s city in progress, Montefiore, where the territory dispute from earlier came from.

These are events that technically span multiple posts but, in my view, are not worth doing full analyses over like the previous entries.

Last edition, we saw a relatively minor border dispute go public as Cortesia Del Mar and Nara argued over claimed land just north of Shiroyama.

• The countries eventually reached an agreement earlier last week, with Cortesia Del Mar also paying a fee to settle in the area.
• There weren’t many comments, but in general it seemed like this agreement was a diplomatic success compared to the near-fallout in relations the last time this conflict was there.

Jaydon was quietly demoted as a superfriend this past week.

• There were reports he tripped snitches on Volterra vault, eventually reporting that he was in duty mode as superfriend.
• Admins reported he was not on official business and revoked his superfriend permissions, with Volterra pearling him shortly after, as well as taking reps. (I later found he was pearled during negotiations while on Volterra rail.)
• Jaydon later stated he had “no good reasons” for being there, basically edging it up to a mistake. He said he would not share this information with any party.
• However, Jaydon was not banned as would normally be an offense for this, something that has confused everyone (even Jaydon himself). This has caused some backlash on the admins, especially due to the circumstances surrounding the incident as well as existing precedent.
• Although unrelated, a humorous fanfic created by Gjum came out of this incident.
• However, as a consequence of the ban, the ASN have made their citizens aware that they would not be welcome in LOTUS territory (which they would announce in a few days anyway).

Even More News Stories

Rowhouses as seen in Rivia.

The Commonwealth (once again, not the Lyrean CW) and Hyperlandia had a minor conflict regarding a land dispute.

• Early on Jun 9, Hyperlandia declared independence from the Commonwealth.
• This is despite the fact that they were essentially taking land from Commonwealth without giving them a heads up and were just creating a new country.
• However, despite attempting to keep going, after reassessment from Commonwealth and general perception on this post, they eventually withdrew their claims and would settle somewhere else.
• The Commmonwealth eventually allowed them to resettle on the islands after graciously giving them up.
• Ironically, this happened just hours before the Kru Alliance fiasco you saw earlier during this newsletter.

• Natls, toontasker and _Cicero_ raided areas of Ancapistan, supposedly because it was overclaiming areas in HKI. Although I haven’t seen a landclaim of this (maybe this?), this raid has supposedly gone unchecked from an outsider point of view. Either that, or I probably didn’t look into this issue enough.
• Relatedly, HKI was annexed by Toontown, which likewise is a part of Volterra, so now HKI is part of Volterra.

ChrisChrispie was banned from Discord for a short amount of time earlier this month.

• His account was reported as being under 13, violating the terms of the service on June 13.
• It is currently unclear how this was found, but it’s probably because someone reported a joke message about being young. Do not do this, Discord takes his seriously.
• Eventually his account was restored later on June 16.

On the Ticker

The harbor at Adria, Griffin at sunrise with several areas of note in the picture.

Well, this is the one-liners section to catch people up on minor events.

• Meanwhile, the International Hockey League has been going pretty smoothly — however,
• Khalkedonia has dropped out of the league, and will be eligible to join any other team.
• Many of the team’s games have been blowouts — particularly this past week’s Salerno-Danzilona matches with a 22-0 and 23-0 blowout.
• Additionally, I have to point out CivRadio which has been making continued improvements in their infra, now located on a new website at civradio.uk!

• I don’t have the full story, but the Imperial Unity Party, which won the last Imperial Federation elections not a few weeks ago, disbanded and split into a few separate parties, including the SDP and Federalist Party
• I did not have a chance to report the final anniversary gifts, but Hakr_ revealed a six-part map art of the CivMC admins created by iinkuu!
• Xa_n is picking up Transylvania where it left off in the form of Fortina, a new nation, however, several people were concerned about a large Exclusion Zone located in the southwest of the territory.
  • Xa_n assured that this was not a vault and he had been attempting to contact Nara for approval.
• Nara announced the Nara Free Exchange, offering diamond and iron exchanges
• Similarly, LOTUS announced the first floating, commission-free exchange located in Fempire.
• Kaltsburg celebrated a coronation of Deyan as the King of Kaltsburg on June 20.
• Pavia held a ball to celebrate the summer solstice, with several players gathering for occasion.
• Yoahtl and Aspasia (another nation that Dark_FFC created) signed a Cemelle Agreement, committing the two to mutual defense and economic cooperation.
• Withervale — I mean Gregorvale is working on a Fighter’s Guild using a gaunlet-type system
• I’m not researching the full story here but I have to include the creation of Hockeyland following an excessive delay of an upcoming hockey game from prior weeks
• ChilfroySigibald was announced to be leading Volterra for the foreseeable future as Grand Marshal.

Metagame Highlights

• TheJmqn has updated the “settlements” layer on the CivMC map as it’s been out of date for t a while
• Likewise, Gjum has also been updating the map website to overhaul the nearly 7-year-old UI. Yes, that UI has been around since CivClassic.
• Okx is working on a new version of CivModern with a built-in map feature, as well as some other additional utilities. He has also told me Husky has been helpful while Orinnari has not been helpful.
• Tuomasz_ and company is still working on civmap.com, and there’s still new features being added.
• The new alliance chart from VilyanZ continues to look a little silly!

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The Fun Stuff

Builds

So, all of the images you saw this week in the newsletter in this giant newsletter were:

• The harbor of Adria, Griffin
• A grand pathway to Castello Marciole in Rozzano, Anisso
• The Hockey rink in Lambat, Pavia
• Rowhouses as seen in Rivia
• The ship harbor at Shiroyama, Nara
• The view across the bay in Blue Cove, Icarus
• An overhead render of Kronnstadt, Kaltsburg (cr: deyan)
• A statue of Hatsune Miku in Fempire (cr: xxbananahunterxx)

Among some of the others I would like to show from various build channels:

• Adria built an entire Acropolis! (cr: Seekinq)
• Yukihana Post Office in a little quaint area in Yoahtl (cr: Ironscale)
• A view of Kitsune Peak in Kaiyaukuta (cr: LunarModule1997)
• An area in Delos with a far view of a town (cr: Max_imil)
• A huge megastructure located in Ila’Kyavul (cr: Lehnerfpga)
• A giant stone castle located in Groveheart (cr: Gidein)
• A renovation of the New Callisto town square in Imperial Federation (cr: _Banana_Blu_)
• An updated area of Bloom’s train station (cr: 1Kayotic)
• A great view of Petergrad’s streets in the Commonwealth (cr: SturdyShelf)
• Some great landscaping at Tranquillus Park in Mount Augusta (cr: fishsticks47)

Cool Content

• Tophat uploaded this video of a sunrise in Khalkedonia
• A really well made map of the boroughs that currently exist in Commonwealth
• Really good graphic of an SSDC propaganda poster from lynxgirlpaws

Memes

Looking down a grand pathway to Castello Marciole in Rozzano, Anisso (cr: szepess? Idk it’s from this post).

Kru Alliance Adjacent Memes

• I love when a newfriend nation yaps and yaps, and giant boss guy says no
• Greed trumps
• Unfortunately the Kru Alliance cannot pass a Rice Purity Test
• If I had a nickel for every time LOTUS and ASN teamed up together in one month, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice
• As per usual, Kru completely dismissed Bertha in a very childish fashion.
• Is this the plot to Despicable me 4
• Me when I claim Icenia

Uhh I don’t know, more shitposts

• Having personally been to the Philippines, yes this lag is possible
• yes, bankrupting pavia will obviously be possible by having more bank accounts for MB to inflate numbers
• insert example of a sentence here
• Here is the previously mentioned fanfiction of Jaydon/Hakr_, surprisingly coming from Gjum, although how much do I bet it came from ChatGPT? a lot.
• Why is this 90% of the political content on Civ
• “what’s hamilton”
• Side note, how big is the venn diagram between “Civ players”, and “musical nerds”
• It is true that Civ players are all pigs
• When you have no idea what the hell is going on in Civ
• You know I would understand this meme way better if Kaiyaukutan politics was even just slightly more visible and understandable
• Most effective weapons that have ever existed
• I don’t know if I’ve seen reddit comments with worse quality than this

Non-Civ Content

• Yeah so, well I got a Switch 2. Sure, I splurged a little bit on it, but I kinda wanted to play Mario Kart World OK? I’ve been having a lot of fun!
• Summer in Seattle is a lot of fun, I went to the Fremont Solstice Festival and it was extremely fun!
• Baseball nerds, I’m very excited the Mariners have catcher Cal Raleigh (also known as the Big Dumper) leading the league in home runs!

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Poll of the Week

The hockey rink located in Lambat. Pavia plays their hockey games there!

Last week, we had 48 responses.

Which Quadrant is the Best?

I am not sure if this due to brigading or everyone legitimately thinking that the northeast is the best; it may be because there are two major population centers in Yoahtl and Pavia but I don’t want to extrapolate on a hypothesis! Regardless, it’s nice that the rest of the quadrants are in relatively equal standing, meaning everyone else really think it’s not great.

Voice Chat Channels

Yeah, I guess this makes a lot of sense. After all, most people on Civ are citizens of a nation anyway, and most of the activity happens there regardless of the nation. People like to keep things relatively secret.

What’s interesting though is that despite CivMC general always being active at all times of the day, it’s definitely the least on this list besides meme channels (which nobody really cares about). Even CivMC VCs always fill up when Something Happens^TM.

What makes your nation special?

I guess it makes sense to segment these by nation in this case? Unfortunately there are a lot of responses but once again I am picking samples, mainly from those which had more than 1 response or was interesting.

Pavia

• Extremely chill with lots of opportunities
• The unique government system of dice days ending terms always feels cooler than typical democracies

Exyria

• It’s purple

Icenia

• It’s the international hegemony and old and based
• It’s essentially a geographically discontiguous federation of groups that could each survive as powerful and relevant independent nations in their own right, but instead integrated very closely with each other for the common good

Khalkedonia

• Because of our tightknit community, it started as a small friend group and continues to be one even a year later, and through massive growth
• Tophat doing 19 jobs at once while we shitpost of course

Yoahtl

• 15 years of history soon and a very robust democratic and court system because of this.
• …most of all it is rich in culture…

Ila’Kyavul

• Beautiful community, lots of history to our nation from past civ iterations, a lot of us used to be kinda be enemies and now we are good friends. We have good newfriend retention. I feel like we are one of the most lively and active nations on the server right now. Almost always have multiple people online.

Vote Now!

Solstice Cry for Help

Players gathering for the Solstice Ball in Pavia (cr: Cinnabyn).

Thank you for reading this week’s newsletter!

I understand this newsletter cadence may not be as ideal for any regular Civ players, but this is mostly to keep news updating and my sanity still alive. Paraphrasing the words of others who are writing news right now, “damn this shit is hard”.

So I really appreciate everyone sticking around if you’ve really read to the end. Super appreciate it, considering how much news just ended up jam-packed into this edition and several I simply just didn’t have visibility into.

You should expect the next newsletter to be around July 7, 2025.

Until next time gamers…

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