CivWiki Newsletter for August 5, 2025

Good morning and happy Tuesday from the Pacific Northwest!

I’ve had a busy few weeks so this is why I haven’t posted very much — also because the mods forgot to pin the last newsletter to the top of the subreddit…

I think many people still don’t particularly know what a newsletter is, I ran newsletters for folks across the server to catch up with news across the server, along with a plethora of fun tidbits to keep players entertained and informed across the general Civ community, which can be hard with so many nations and discords. I also throw in some fun history, highlights, and polls. I used to run these every week, but I’ve pared it back to around once or twice a month.

For those who’ve even paid attention a little bit to CivMC over the past week, there are a lot of things that happened and I’m sure many of you were waiting for this newsletter to understand anything about the ongoing war between Kallos and Exyria. I hope this will help, as long as your attention span can last that long.

Are we ready for the news?

Featured

Featured Image

This week’s featured image is of Pavia’s Town Hall Gardens — after everything that’s happened over the past few weeks and months, I’ve leaned more into very quiet, relaxing places across the server, and one thing I love to see is more landscaping across the server. Pavia’s Town Hall Gardens has been one of those amazing places. Undergoing a renovation towards the end of last year to refresh the garden, it’s a peaceful welcome area separating the busy train station from the bustling town hall and Main Street. I’ve found it a nice place to laze around on a summer Sunday afternoon, one might say, a great place to take a nap.

Featured Article

Monument Bank is a banking service provided by Monument Group, headquartered in Pavia. Founded in April 2023, the largest bank on the server has become a mainstay in Civ economics and revolutionized the banking process throughout Civ. Previously, a banking system on Civ was not viable and so Civ economics largely relied on an ad-hoc bartering system, involving dropchests or in-person stores. Monument Bank’s main innovation was their Discord banking bot, Bertha, which enabled semi-asynchronous deposits and transfers through virtual deposits and transactions outside of the game (although it still requires some manual intervention for withdrawals).

Much of the banking activity occurs in Pavia City, however they have since expanded to 17 branches across the server, with the first branch in Nara being opened in early 2024 and merging with the Bank of Icenia in March of the same year. While many Civ stores have physical storefronts, it has also proliferated the ability for out-of-game transactions to occur easily without relying on dropchests. They have also sponsored several events such as the first season of the International Hockey League. Today, the company holds over 600,000 diamonds in assets and over 1,000 clients across the server and a vital part of the CivMC economy.

This week’s featured article image is Monument Bank’s flagship branch in Pavia City.

This Month In Civ

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The News

The old Eddie Murphy capital in today’s Cortesia Del Mar territory.

You said you wanted lore, huh? Get ready…

Continued Player Surge

Not that it matters for many of the articles on this newsletter, but CivMC has continued to see record high player counts this summer.

• Peak times are still consistently hovering around 125 and reaching 150 at certain points of the day. That was especially true on Sunday, August 3, for reasons that I’ll discuss in a few bulletpoints.
• While Civ usually sees a surge in the playerbase over the summer, we were lucky to have a major simulated Civilization video come out this summer, as well as a string of videos on analyzing these types of events. People usually come here because of these, and from anecdotal evidence people have come to stay since they like the server.

There’s really no end state to this story, I just hope that the surge of people are having a great time playing Civ.

The Color Purple

Kallopolis, in Kallos’ former territory in Columbia. While this area was not involved in the war, the surrounding territories have had significant history in prior wars.

Please note that I have attempted to only take from public sources from these screenshots provided, although nearly all of this information has been vetted from private DMs.

Tensions between the Lotus Alliance and Kallos heated up over the course of a weekend. For context, Kallos made a announcement post of their departure from the alliance almost a week prior to this conflict (which was surprisingly well-made, although I guess for KnotNSA this is par for the course).

• On July 26, dredd_kiji “raided” the Temporal Empire.
  • The cause however, was confusing. Both agree that this was in part because of some interaction in CivMC, however both have basically reduced it to a “nothingburger” interaction.
  • Conflicting reports either say dredd raided the country, others say it was light grief.
  • Whatever the case, dredd_kiji and i_rs later supposedly had a “friendly fight”, with i_rs pearled, but quickly released with items returned shortly after.

This story would have (or rather, should have) stopped here but would later turn into a snowball of events:

• Dredd attests that they wanted to head to i_rs to help build their country in XiaoHongShu, sort of as an apology for their incident the previous day.
  • For context on the next events though, XiaoHongShu (which for those who were seeing this unfold in real time on Discord, is what XHS stood for), is part of Fempire, which is likewise part of Lotus.
  • Finally, Kallos and dredd in particular had a falling out with Exyria, a different nation in Lotus, due to dredd leaking vault designs last month, and supposedly was dubbed POS.
  • However, it seems as if dredd had access to groups within the territory.
• Tophat appeared and logboxxed dredd while in XiaoHongShu’s infrastructure, and eventually was convinced to log in to be willingly pearled in exchange for a shorter sentence.
  • However, it was later rumored that ThereWalker and Exyria were suggesting much higher sentences than expected (although Spenduh would later state, in the link posted, that the final negotiation was “extremely generous”)
  • As a result of this, a couple of minor protests occurred with Renge__, better known as druid getting bountied after they obbybombed an in-progress vault hole in Exyria; they would later pearl Hisja and JoshHillman after various attempts to claim the bounty on July 31.
    • Observant players may realize Hisja is actually not part of Lotus or Exyria, but of Salerno. They became involved as they were upholding a military alliance treaty with Exyria established four months ago.
  • Due to these considerable escalations on several sides, a ceasefire was shortly established but over the course of a week as negotiations broke down, it became clear war would continue.
  • It is generally disputed how this ceasefire ended however, while some say it was Kallos engagement and others say it was ThereWalker griefing Kallosian nether infrastructure. Regardless, the ceasefire did end eventually later that week.

A new crop exchange in Exyria. I’ve been sitting on this picture since May and finally have a chance to use it. (cr: Wandrum/ThereWalker)

• Because of the continued negotiations resulting in a stall, accusations of lying/gaslighting, and supposedly a general maltreatment of i_rs internally in Lotus, i_rs betrayed Lotus policy and free dredd’s pearl without consultation, and be pearled by ChilfroySigibald within Volterra vault, on Aug 2.
  • This would confusingly not be considered a friendly pearl yet — Volterra had not entered the war but were loosely allied with Kallos, but they will enter later (ed. note: after I explain a couple things)
• With dredd now free, toontasker made a small test ground tunnel (in Civ speak, this is simply just a strip mine-like tunnel) towards the Exyrian vault hole on August 3.
  • They were met by several Lotus and Salernite PvPers within the tunnel after hitting an Exyrian iceroad, and after continued conflict and a successful counter-tunnel, retreated.
• On the same day, a second ground tunnel was launched from Exyria, aiming towards a small Kallos bunker in Paradise, one of their exclaves.
  • Volterrans also formally came down here (although this was along with several other spectators, such as Cissonius who took this picture)
  • However, Volterrans did become involved as they eventually helped dig the tunnel and later pearled IowanTheGamer, another Salernite.
    • Volterra had been involved with Kallos in the past — Chilfroy and Toontasker cooperated with the pearl of Jaydon the previous month, and so Exyria would continue to have conflicts alongside and likewise the two countries would continue to operate.
    • As Volterra was a member of ASN, Exyria was previously assured that no ASN members would be involved in this conflict; despite this, the rest of the ASN has made it clear no other nation will enter this conflict as long as Exyria and Lotus are not involved.
  • Anyway, with the pearl of TheIowanGod the Exyrian side retreated, not after DockerImage self-griefed their own bunker as an extra measure.

And with that we’re all caught up (ed. note: if you consider all events up to Sunday night. As of Monday, there was a skybridge on Accra — another LOTUS nation — as well as another ice road, the latter of which where PFP_Nexl was pearled, and power_utter was pearled as I was about to publish Tuesday morning, however, this writeup is extremely long already and I didn’t want to cover anything past Sunday since I wouldn’t have time to actually finish writing today).

Now, there are a few things that I was unable to incorporate within this writeup, which were key reasons on why this war has been hard to parse:

• These last couple of tunnels were done while server was at max players resulting in low TPS (see previous story). This is the first time a fight such as this under these conditions has happened in a while, which not only made it tough to engage but also a poor experience for everyone on the server.
• There has been an increase in the number of “war spectators”, which also lead to actually engaging in wars (see: Volterra entrance above) this has lead nations to enact policies (such as Estalia, although I guess this announcement is a roundabout way for showing this) to regulate these processes. I will be completely transparent as I have not gotten this exemption myself from Pavia.
• Both sides have blamed numerous issues while conducting with each side — with Kallos accusing poor handling and maltreatment while Exyria claims with overreaction and lying. Of course, both sides have also engaged in relatively toxic behavior, and other out-of-game affairs not covered in this writeup.
• There was a flurry of information that both was not communicated publicly, or other false information was being proliferated (one somewhat benign example was that CDM was supposedly involved, likely due to a report of Yodabird being involved in extremely early events).

While most of the above is generally par for the course on Civ wars, it has felt that each of these has blown this particular conflict way out of proportion this time (or, maybe folks have been so used to not having a major war on Civ since 2023.) I have also left a significant amount of detail out of this writeup for clarity, and there is so much information (and misinformation) involved in this war that it has been hard to figure out.

Anyway, I guess what I’m trying to say is, this conflict sounds stupid from afar, and actually is stupid after doing the research and writing 1,245 words on what you’re reading right now.

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Minor Lapse in Judgement

The former territory of Warmia in Volterra.

On Saturday night, longtime Civ players were shocked following the log in of one “poortea” and “Adderall”.

• Oldfriends will know these players as former Rhode Islanders who have been formally banned as part of the association ban list, generally known as a worst-case list of players “where association with any users on this list will result in a ban for you as well.”
• Usually, these people are only landed on the list if they’ve done rephrensibly horrible things that I will not name. If you’re the cat that wants to get killed by curiosity, though, here’s the reason why people land on this list
• Admin Hakr_, shortly after the incident posted a message that supports the hypothesis that this was admin action, where he changed the display username to both of these individuals (since they were not logged on at the same time). He further made an announcement apologizing for his actions..
• Shenanigans from Hakr_ are not unexpected; previous April Fools saw him as the culprit to send several Withers across the server, although (ed. note: opinion) this would reduce trust in the admin team for this example of behavior.

Around the Server

Copper horses prancing around the town square in Icenia’s Derne City (cr: Anvil).

Oh boy, time to run through a huge list of things everyone will skim past because there’s so much stuff under here, and nobody will actually care about anything because the bigger writeups were above.

• Some admin banwaves occurred over the course of July and August.
  • Several players as part of Anor Londo X, a state of the Imperial Federation, were banned for VPN association — while not resolved quickly, there is definitely proof this has been resolved.
  • Another general banwave occurred at the tail end of August, although it is generally unknown who consists of this banwave.
    • The only known person that I could find so far and is known is Jaydon_, who abused superfriend perms earlier in June, however we of course do not fully know the reason why as it is policy for CivMC admins not to disclose this.
• Clebonia was raided by Pavia following a scheme to raid the city and its Union Hill district and undermined its general authority, with several Pavian officials later raiding and recovering the stolen goods in Clebonia.
  • Clebonia officials also accused Thyme nation of griefing earlier in July, with similar but also convoluted pushback from SSG and Winterbourne.
  • Clebonia officials claim this was an act only from private citizens, but Pavia refutes their claim. They further cite SSG for cooperating with Pavia to orchestrate the raid. SSG also refutes this claim.
  • Further “research” would later find that the amount of wealth of stolen was relatively low for modern Civ standards.
• Meanwhile, Pavia also elected Seekinq as their newest Prime Minister and Deathbysepsis as city mayor, in a full shakeup of government positions.
• Khalkedonia and Hylia signed an agreement agreeing both countries to mutual defense and a new rail line.
• Noted “anti-statist” “advocate” Adrianthe34 was pearled by Volterra after griefing a rail. (ed. note: which was supposed to achieve what, exactly?)
• So I guess MetallicTophat is under a 120d bounty for stealing dirt? And that’s worse than stealing sand?
• I am not reading into this crashout of a post against Orinnari because this is not an in-game affair, but also because I’m so tired of stupid arguments like this happening, even if it’s Orinnari and it is especially not worth my time tonight
• Similarly, I will not read into this post as well, although I will highlight that this one is a genuine apology that I feel is very good and honest from lara
• Cortesia Del Mar and Kallos formed the Azure Commonwealth as a “cooperative bloc” towards “civil development” to encourage further economic development.
  • As such, this is not a military alliance — Yodabird has specifically said that CDM did not enter the war.
• Monument Group posted their Q2 earnings, showing a strong revenue increase. They also opened a new Monument Bank branch in Heikki, in incredibly quick fashion

Metagame Highlights

There is actually no way this is the IF, part of the Duchy of Neu Vasterian in Voldi. (cr: Warendrop)

• TheJmqn has a now relatively out of date poster of the current war
• Want to give a major shoutout to Shadno, Husky, Steelhand, Skandic, and everyone else who has been pitching into making the existing CivWiki page about the Kallos-Exyria war with extremely limited public information. Already absolutely dreading the war name discussion that happens every time
• There was a series of posts talking about what’s the superlative nation/item in various categories, a la posts like these designed for engagement
  • I sort of feel bad shutting this down, but it was kind of a thing that this was so poorly constructed since so much of the starting few squares were obviously easy Pavia wins, and that kind of de-legitimized this whole campaign. I personally feel newfriends need something better organized for understanding the game’s culture.
• At least this is a nice map from Banana_Blu showing how little claimable land exists left on the CivMC map.
• Meanwhile, VilyanZ posts the ever-complicated venn diagram of alliances
• TheJmqn posts a quite controversial suggestion to add a “sentence” feature to automatically release pearls at a certain time, which is surprising since one of the worst parts of postwar pearl management is releasing them after

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The Fun Stuff

New renovations of buildings along Winterbourne Bay (cr: Nekroz09).

Upcoming Events

I used to do this one but I haven’t been following, but there’s a few things to highlight soon despite the war:

• NotSoSmartL is hosting a classical music program featuring various Operatic pieces at the Wisteria Theater in Pavia, on August 6, 5pm Eastern / 9pm UTC
• I assume Salerno is still going to coronate its King, realmichael, but has been postponed to a later date for reasons I probably already explained above
• Icenia is still preparing for its Olympics, set to happen in September.

Builds

• Salerno has some amazing renders of their island nation (cr: Banana_Blu)
• Neo Sol’s incredible neo-brutalist skyscrapers are looking pretty slick (cr: EngineeringBean)
• Yeah, I’ve already highlighted Winterbourne, but what a glowup this has gotten, Steampunk theme really fits for them (cr: Nekroz07)
• A new building for the Shiroyama Map Art Museum? Count me impressed! (cr: meenos/Xcios/VilyanZ)
• SPQR has been building like crazy with an entire new district as well (cr: alberb96)
• Interior of the Kaltsburg cathedral also looks pretty good too (cr: Nintentoby)
• Icenia’s downtown near D&AA Park has been completely transformed since the last time I was there, incredible work from (cr: SneedChungus)
  • Other towns in Icenia are also seeing some love, including Icenia’s new city, Derne and more expansions in Bloom (cr: Anvil, Xcios, respectively)
• Meanwhile in the IF, there are some exciting things happening:
  • Blackrock Castle in Karydia Imperial is looking great, sort of like a Hyrule vibe (cr: AcronymT/VictoriVictoric)
  • Voldi which actually looks actually incredible with Pavia-scale castle builds, and also here from the ground (cr: Warendrop/LandoPotato712)
• Speaking of Pavia…
  • A new and updated look all the way down Main Street gives way to a bunch of new shops (cr: CedarValiant)
  • A great look at the now-incredibly built up Union Hill (cr: BasicallyAGungan)
  • A look at the grand canals across Adria, Griffin (cr: Dizmes)
  • And an overview of the newly renovated train stations in Pavia (cr: Dizmes)
• Some great shots of the finally completed Parliament house in Commonwealth (cr: whisky_1)

Cool Content

This is usually the part where I talk about content found across the server for semi-out of game affairs, mainly artwork, maps, etc. quite literally just looking for good Original Content.

• Seems like this is an OC poster from TheJmqn so honestly it’s pretty good even if war is bad
• Meanwhile I feel like Codey’s posters are very cool, a modern take on some great classics
• Codey’s Papal State recruitment poster also looks really cool, even though Steve is missing a face
• OrangeWizard posted a visual essay touring around the world for his first login a while.
• PresidentOfYes makes his annual plea to make videos during a war and basically brings back some incredible bangers of PvP videos from years and servers past, what an upstanding CivWiki historian
• Mentioned this previously in the post above, KnotNSA / Lasady posted this incredible video for Kallos to leave Lotus which is so ironically high quality that it wraps around to being really good
• Some nice blog posts from PikaLegend_ showcasing their first days in Arx on CivMC
• Asgeir has a really nice map of the Imperial Federation — honestly way clearer than previous maps and very colorful
• JPM is looking at making a Civ VI map somewhat replicating CivMC’s landscape. Can you recognize it? (I can’t!)
• PresidentOfYes has been continuing doing incredible research on the HCF War on CivWiki if you’re not aware, and may eventually make a video since this intro is pretty good
• Incredible video on entering Montefiore from Yodabird19
• Last but especially not least, an incredible map of the Bedford Commons from zzaarr! Pavia has an incredible map tradition and this one is no different and spectacular.
  • Similarly here is also one of Pavia Main Street, which is also similarly extremely high quality

Memes

This is the part where I call out especially funny memes — but not low-quality posts.

• Woah that’s amogus — oh wait that’s just toontasker
• There’s no way they’re gonna sack Pavia for the THIRD time
• wow do i actually agree with Christopher pie for once
• its low quality but good PR posts are the foundation for good discord pvp
• how will toontasker affect lebron’s legacy
• Actually a pretty decent edit of Monty Python
• Even for me this meme doesn’t make sense in the context of the Clebonia situation
• Actually a really funny meme about the statist regime
• “free thinkers” living in “Icenia” can’t match this main street
• so you’re telling me to quit
• reminder to join civ poker night run by Tusk Armory
• Can’t wait to ally with the nothing ever happens alliance to basically condense this entire slop newsletter down into “Nothing ever happens”
• Was this during the time when dissing the ASN was actually in?
• Did someone say IF rail spaghetti?

Non-Civ Content

• I’m gonna be so honest, this newsletter was an actual slog to produce and write, and the only thing that has kept me from actually quitting Civ altogether prior to this newsletter has been:
  • playing Stardew Valley 4 hours a day on the weekend (no farm pic, I am still busy writing)
  • The Mario Kart World OST, I am listening to Yoshi Star Galaxy as I am typing this message out and there are so many stupid bangers in this soundtrack
  • The Mariners finally actually having a semi-decent shot at winning the division

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Poll of the Week

The coast of Petergrad, North Africa located in the Commonwealth.

Last week, we had 49 responses. Despite the lessened impact as the last edition’s newsletter did not get pinned to the top of the subreddit, it’s interesting that this still had the response it usually has.

Land Bans

The question here was “Are land bans effective?” This is because of several measures from LOTUS against ASN members which resulted in a complicated list of rules for bans.

Interesting that this is split down the middle, however, this question could be generally regarded as ambiguous, so I will withdraw any analysis I would have for this poll.

Are You Enjoying Civ?

It’s good to see that the vast majority of people are enjoying Civ. Additionally, it’s healthy to have a good balance between this game and real life, since it can be difficult to separate your in-game struggles from real life, and vice versa. I find it helpful to touch grass, especially now that I lead a very healthy life outside of Civ, in my opinion.

Current Projects

I made this poll nearly 4 weeks ago, so let’s see if some of them are doing anything:

i have concepts of a plan for a city

Oh well…

I am working on gathering the iron, obsidian, doors, trap doors, and levers for a surprise attack that will make Frensins Western Alliance skybridge against Lexington look like a cobblestone shitter bridge.

Alright who’s the deranged one in chat

Not in-game but I’m working on a big art project for Yoahtl’s 15th birthday! Look out for it in August :)

I will!

buildings for suramir and all around the world, expanding shell co, protecting vaults

Adelover is that you??

Exilus is finally getting a better trench :)

Hopefully that came in time…

A copper factory at our harbour ([Maybe] my best build design?) Pics soon!

Right now I am finishing the [Infrapontem] canal network and have begun vertical urbanization of a large historic pit once dug (for a vault maybe?).

Working on the beautiful nation of ARx!

acacia harvesting in the IF.

turn of the century style brewery

Vote Now!

Let’s bring out a few old favorites from the archives here…

I’m So Exhausted Cry for Help

A newly built district in Rome. (cr: alberlb96)

Thanks for reading this newsletter! I really appreciate you getting all the way to end here, because if you can tell, this was an absolute slog to write. (If you’re curious, this is 5,194 words, with 66 images attached across the newsletter)

I want to thank butter_villager, Spenduh, dredd_kiji, DockerImage, Cicero, Husky, Shadno, Tophat, Bronnakus, Plrog, femboysilly, Kingstell, VilyanZ, SoundTech, BritishWanderer, SteelHand7, Cissonius, Tvman, FE_Flags, and of course, OrangeWizard for helping in various capacities in this newsletter, they all provided invaluable information for supplementing a fairly large amount of this writeup and/or provided general encouragement. Yeah, I went through that many people to attempt to provide the best information I can, and not only was it not easy, but it wasn’t easy to write in the most lack-of-bias and somewhat complete fashion I could, and it’s obviously still not done, I have missed a few events from Monday the 4th.

On a personal note, it’s likely that I’ll probably take a break for a few weeks after the bulk of the war reporting is over, possibly months. This last war specifically has made me learn this news grind is legitimately has finally gotten too much to handle. Newsletters like these outside of the Civ community (which of course, begs the question why call it a newsletter) aren’t usually run by one person but every time I ask for help, there is usually is a lack of people willing to help stick it out for the long haul and take some work off my load. It also personally doesn’t help as I also haven’t been as forthcoming to recruit people in a more streamlined fashion.

I’ve passed on a few weeks recently, because I simply just haven’t felt the want to write, seeing there’s too much work, or I’ve been too busy irl. Newsletter nights like these, where I’m sort of rushing to finish this at the end isn’t good, I’m actually writing this at 1:30am local time, and I have work tomorrow. Maybe I’m just ranting and whining, but maybe it’s also time to drop the pen and keyboard for a bit.

Regardless, I want to thank you for reading, and I hope you learned a little bit of something today. Thanks, and until next time…

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