CivWiki Monday Newsletter for January 2, 2023
Good morning and happy new year from New England!
If you’re new here, welcome! This newsletter is intended to provide a summary of the week’s news and happenings throughout the entire Civ community. It’s supported by the CivWiki, a player-run wiki that documents history and information related to Civ. Hopefully, this newsletter provides you with a slice of life of what Civ looks like.
I hope everyone had a relaxing time with your Civvas, friends and family over this holiday season, and had a relaxing day off from playing Civ and touching grass (or snow).
Expect a shorter newsletter this week, as I had family over and I am also writing all of this the night before! I hope you enjoy this week.
Ready for the news?
Featured
Featured Image
This week’s featured image is Regentsburgh, in the Imperial Federation. A quiet day in the city, but it’s in a much improved state than before. You’ll see that the town’s expanded quite a bit; the under-construction fortress on the left side has expanded a ton, and the town in the middle has perfectly transformed into a great snowy village, just in time for the new year. Great stuff, and can’t wait for more.
Featured Article
This week’s featured article was contributed by Des23.
The Aeginan independence movement was comprised of two separate attempts by two different dictators of Aegina to unilaterally remove the country from its sovereign nation, the Danzilonan Federation (DZF), which was dominated by its most populous country, New Danzilona (NDZ), on Civcraft 2.0.
Spurred by the expansion of Aegina’s borders and his own grandiosity, the first attempt was done by it_needs_bees between August and November 2014 and resulted in his pearling and permanent banishment from the DZF. The second attempt at independence was done by Inscourge, who was a former newfriend citizen of Aegina who returned to try to revive the city, in March 2015. Instead, he plotted to use mercenaries to grief and overthrow the government of NDZ. His plot was foiled by Danzilonan allies, resulting in his pearling and subsequent ban from Civcraft for altban evasion. (Full article…)
The Danzilonan Security Force and allies breaking the Aeginan vault, August 2014.
Featured Writing
For this month’s extra featured writing, I’ve asked from several notable Civ figures across the community one question.
What did you learn from Civ in 2022, and what do you hope for them in 2023?
I’ve gotten several varied responses from the four people I’ve asked. As a retrospective on the community, I’ve shared them on another blog post here.
Here’s a sneak peek of the responses I’ve gotten:
I hopped on this “hate everyone” train late in classics and I hate that I did. Give people a chance on this game, even if they’ve been opposed to you at some point. Often times it comes back to help you out down the road.
It’s the fact that perfectly good and reasonable people tend to naturally group up into their little corners, and assume only the absolute worst from those outside. […] As for all of you, I suggest you all try reaching out to those guys you hate and talking it out, they’re probably not half as bad as the image you’ve built in your head.
But the cracks began to show, as not only was server performance terrible, we had realized, but the meta that was developed was not tenable for months on end. […] Now, after all the trials, retrospective, and redevelopment, we stand on the precipice of the launch of a server which, while staying true to the civ formula, we feel will drive the genre to new heights.
It is this sense of community that makes Civ a special place, we sit in our corner of the internet roleplaying our ideal nation states, hosting Olympics, diplomatic affairs and just hanging with our pals that we feel like we’ve known forever (or maybe have!) and it’s that in particular that makes me so glad I stumbled across this niche genre back in 2015.
If you’d like to know who each of these people are and more of their reflections over the past year, head along to the additional blog post for more!
Current Events
Icenia’s newest glass store from TolypeVelleda, as two adjacent and very nice brownstones along the corridor to Drugs and Alcohol Abuse Park. It looks like a Lego Modular Buildings Set, I love it!
Most of the news here is based on CivMC news, only because this is the sector with the most news right now. When CivReign launches, this section will be greatly overhauled to provide news on both servers.
Thank god that I don’t have to summarize a long and extremely boring newspiece this week, right?
Lyrean Community & Northeast
- Several happenings going on in the Pavian government:
- Crown Prince Gobblin has replaced the Marshall of Pavia with the Admiral of Pavia in his privy council, as well as a decree to allow economic contracts to be made between different parties.
- Pavia is also releasing a series of census reports, meticulously edited from Semiographer hitobashuru. You can see some of them here! Crossposted from the Desk of Domi.
- The Pavian Coast Guard has also completed construction of the HMS Unsinkable on its harbor.
- The beloved Lambat Community Store has closed due to declining sales, with a cafe set to be built on the site. The country’s warehouse was also broken into, however the perpetrator has been pearled. Crossposted from the Lambat Post.
- Overkill209 was pearled by SPQR after destroying ice roads in SPQR. He was sentenced along with a supposed accomplice, Naed87.
- Construction of the Great Overland Railway has continued into Homeland and Altepetl, along with the election of bgbba to the Yoahtl council uncontested. Crossposted from the Yoahtl Times.
- A player named warkocz posted on the subreddit his idea of “the Guerilla”, a group committed to rejecting urbanism and advocating a “return to Monke.” He was said to be focusing on Impendia.
- However, he was arrested by Kallos officials mere hours later, after DockerImage was notified he was griefing Cordoban builds.
Imperial Federation & Southwest
- January elections for the Chancellor of the Imperial Federation are underway.
- Pandastical has also made statements about CoolChacha97’s legitimacy as a candidate for chancellor., citing a lack of knowledge and militaristic behavior.
- Coolchacha97’s response has been nothing short of continuing this trend, as a comment from JuniorTide recognized him as another warmongering face in CivClassics.
- Pandastical attempted a flight above the Imperial Federation, however unfortunately fell.
- Commonwealth King Bowella and Imperial Federation King Cupar exchanged visits to each other’s countries, signalling a friendship in the southwest. Crossposted from the Federalist Papers.
- Estalia has finished construction on the market at 0,0 after a night of digging the northern rail tunnel with Pavia and months working on the 0,0 market. The country is looking to sell 0,0 plots, starting on January 6.
The Northwest
- DrBaconHair initially declared himself the leader of the Temporal Isles and renamed it to Basaltington City, after he pearled PhysicsGamer, however rescinded that claim after he was pearled with his associate Jamiemie.
- Physics followed up on this, making a post to call on Basaltington City to back down. Observant viewers of the subreddit will know this is a parody post of Icenia’s calls for Temporal Isles to back down.
- And as you all know, this is a meme, so it’s not worth wasting too many words on this.
- A “coaster” was planned to open in Icenia this past week, however after protests from the Homeowners Association, the launch was scrapped.
- Icenia is also in the process of electing its next slate of councillors, re-expanding the council to seven members.
- In a slight reversal of roles, Mount Augusta was the one doing the vandalism as ComradeNick erected a flag on the city of Kallopolis.
Alenarith & Southeast
- Mount Augusta has passed several votes, mostly reclarifying property ownership and other ornamental affairs. All have passed unanimously.
- Jeeper3 has also been appointed the Cup of Commerce after expressing interest, and has resigned from his judge position. Other notable appointments have been Topher3001 as the Cup of City Beautification, and Socialistbelle as the coveted Cup of Balls.
- The Jeeper3 building has also been constructed, offering newfriend apartments and shop locations.
- Jeeper3’s judge seat (it’s Jeeper3 all the way down) has also been won by Mallace after running uncontested.
- Des23 recently made several lower key server advertisements for CivMC, especially one relatively successful one on r/worldbuilding. You may have seen a slight increase in posts from her advertisement of semi-confused newfriends, and this has seen an effect in growth!
- Gensokyo had a group picture day along with watching Knives Out and Glass Onion, back to back, on December 29. Honestly sounds like a great day.
- Truidencia is also in the process of electing a new Landsraad, with way more people
Server Administration News
- Civ+ admin Amelorate has released a video tutorial on chatting on Civ.
- Civ+ has also added Topbrew, a new brewing plugin. More details on their discord.
- CivReign has recently announced the highly anticipated launch of their server, on Friday, January 27.
- As a logistical note, I will also be reporting on happenings in CivReign, as I will do with most servers.
- CivVie launched December 27th. However, due to lag and a rogue exploit on the server, the server was pulled offline the next day.
- At the time of writing, the server has not implemented a bugfix for the exploit yet.
- There was also considerable debate about whether admins would be playing the server, but to decrease corruption and follow the general Civ trend, would not be contributing.
The Fun Stuff
The Western Gate in the Commonwealth, the entrance to the main city, built by Enna. Welcome back!
Builds
- Finally starting to see some new builds with the Jeeper3 building in Mount Augusta. ComradeNick told me to say that “shit is coming down and new shit is and will continue to be coming up”
- TolypeVelleda has been working on a nice glass shop in Icenia, and it’s a perfect example of city architecture with these brownstones, going to be seamlessly built into the architecture!
- Pavia is still continuing to look amazing in whatever time of day it is, thanks Jaydon
- OakShelf was actually surprised at the completion of the West Gate in Commonwealth this week, and it looks really good
- I know I haven’t highlighted it as much as I should have, but Plupsnup’s farming complex does look super organized, and looks really cool now
- Haha someone changed the Sneedville sign to Weedville in Icenia! Get it? Because we’re all weedouts?
- Just in time for the new year, more renders from Griffin highlighting the wonderful town…
Multimedia Projects
- How the hell does TheJmqn keep pulling out these CivMC Claims posts? We’re on #12 already?
- God I love Griffin and their own Christmas cards
- The series of Reconstruction Era endings finally comes to an…end (oh shit) with the eighth and ninth completing the series
- There were a couple Sid Meier’s Civ-inspired posts of all the people and their traits this week, one from kaprediem about Lambat and another just of Hg_80. Very creative!
Advertisements
- Ever since Monument and CivMarket merged, regular d/i updates have returned! The exchange in Pavia is seeing a slight increase, steadily increasing throughout the weekend. It’s currently 13.25i/d at the time of writing.
- Topher is still looking for tenants for his tower! Ask him on discord, located perfectly in the heart of Alenarith near Mount Augusta.
- Estalia is holding an auction to sell the shop plots at 0,0, on January 6. More details in their discord.
Metagame Highlights
- OnceDoceTrece is kind of formulating a really complicated tech tree for a Civ server. Will it go anywhere? We’ll see!
- GTAIV is looking at the legality of sharing Distant Horizons cache information, to better create cooler renders
- JuniorTide asks who would be your Top 5 people to play Civ with?
- Icenia really has a lot of people for a Friday night
- OakShelf realizes the need for a more comprehensive new player’s guide at the top of the subreddit!
- Bgbba has argued that it’s not really needed and people should funnel into the cities for people to explain it.
- While not necessarily wrong, there are several different philosophies for newfriend onboarding; forcing a certain perspective I don’t think is prudent.
- Whatever the case, this is always an ongoing discussion on newfriend retention for our silly little corner of the internet.
New Year’s Cry for Help
Griffin’s recent New Year’s card, wishing for a happy new year with fireworks in their square.
Thank you once again for reading this newsletter! A huge thanks to Des23 who handled the featured article this week, as I’ve been very busy this past week and did not have time to write one myself (also additionally not having good article selections this week, definitely off my game…)
I saw a lot of people wish happy new years for everyone in Civ, whether an enemy or an ally, so it’s nice to see the community be nice altogether for once!
Another huge thanks to Ahri, Cortwade, BritishWanderer, and ChrisChrispie, all four of whom devoted their time, effort, and Discord DMS to the difficult prompt I gave this week. I want to thank them for lending their thoughts about Civ this past year for the newsletter. If you want to read their full thoughts (and didn’t read them above), take a look here.
Finally, if you’d like to see your information on the newsletter, please submit this form here. I’m most in need of Featured Articles, and provide slices of life about Civ events on the Wiki itself as well as on the newsletter. If you could help a poor man out, that would be great! It only takes a short amount of time to contribute.
I think that’s all I have for this week, so once again, as always…