CivWiki Newsletter for January 8, 2024

Good morning and happy “first” Monday of the new year from New England!

As we turned our calendars ahead, it’s sort of typical we don’t see a lot of news or happenings in Civ, so you’ll see that the next few weeks of these are somewhat frontloaded, with a few features and specials to fill for the lack of general news content.

This year, I do want to try on some larger projects, some related to Civ, some unrelated. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the newsletter will lack in quality or quantity, but there’s quite a few things that I want to start and then actually complete this year, so come with the expectation that the newsletter can sometimes differ between weeks. I know that many readers are already very understanding of this, but for newer readers this may come as a shock ever since I omitted the “Monday” off the newsletter heading.

Meanwhile, I just got nearly 12 inches of snow in my backyard over the weekend that was fun!

Are we ready for this week’s news?

Featured

Featured Image

As we start off the new year, why not start with something we think about quite often, the Roman Empire! This week’s featured image is of Roma in SPQR. I’ve been meaning to slot a picture of them in for a while. Unlike many other nations, their supersized builds are excellent for a place where detail is all the more important. With a giant stadium and classic Roman architecture lining the giant streets, it’s a great tribute to the classical style. Great work and I will be thinking about the Roman Empire for months to come!

Featured Article

The Kingdom of Amicitia, better known as Amicitia, is a nation on CivMC focused on diplomacy and spreading kindness across the server. Initially beginning as a tribe in the early days of CivMC, they eventually moved and developed several islands in the Southern Sea, which would become the Lux Capital. They brokered friendly relations with Mount Augusta and became one of the founding members of the BUILD alliance. Despite their involvement in minor conflicts with Nassau and playing a supporting role in the Doom City Conflict, the country has enjoyed a continued peace.

Although the country has a King and elected Prime Minister, the country has a tight-knit playerbase. The country also produces a large amount of literature, ranging from The Sapphire Wave, the country’s official media service, to the creation of several in-game books. The Lux Capital and its associated islands have a steampunk and Victorian build style, as well as continued builds and development despite their small land footprint. The country continues to be active and be an excellent diplomatic partner.

This week’s featured image is the Lux Capital in Amicitia.

Editing Palooza Winners

This Week Last Year

Featured Writing

Like what I did last year, I asked several people for thoughts on Civ during 2023. Here are few excerpts from their thoughts:

Civ has continued to improve and is always wonderful to come back to after a long break and a refreshed attitude.

I think that of the past year a large amount of it has been dominated by the back and forth between Icenia and GS, and I’m hopeful that we can finally get back to a state where military concerns don’t take the forefront.

There’s been a plethora of things added to the game that give it more depth such as brewing and fishing, and the map is finally looking more peaceful.

I’ve requested reflections from five notable players this year.

Read more of their reflections here…

The News

Around the Server

An imposing grand hall in Volterra, posted by HurinThalion.

Story-Driven News

Here’s a few stories that just require some amount of explanation for the new year:

• On January 2nd, SQOpenSpellbook announced he would be declaiming Arsenia, along with withdrawing from the BUILD alliance. This coincided with him getting unpearled that day.
  • According to ShadySauce, SQ was planned to be released following negotiations and Doom City was planning to release him on January 8, although SQ nor Butter_villager, who was handling the negotiations, were aware that this was going to happen.
  • Several players broke into the incomplete Doom City vault; they met no resistance as all Doom City players were busy outside of the game.
  • Arsenia land, SQ says, was declaimed as they did not want other BUILD nations to be attacked on their behalf,
  • Several countries, including Amicitia, Nara, and newfriend settlement Elysium claimed the newly unclaimed land, which SQ approved.
• DarkFFC was pearled by SPQR on January 5.
  • Throughout autumn 2023, DarkFFC infiltrated and stole heavily from several newfriend-associated countries in the northwest of the map. These included Kar Kazdun and Jomsborg — both of which were short-lived, but relatively promising newfriend nations.
  • These allegations were backed up by Sakana-otoko of Mount Augusta.
  • Upon Kar Kazdun’s accession into Vinland, Dark communicated to Vinland leadership that he aimed to keep the land for his own benefit.
  • SPQR, a strong ally of Vinland and Kar Kazdun, ambushed and pearled him; and announced Dark would be prosecuted under their jurisdiction.
  • DarkFFC responded that “All that[sic] is just lies”, but did not give any substantial evidence to refute these claims.
• Three Icenians were temporarily banned for not reporting the presence of VPN alts.
  • ggmrap had admitted to JuniorTide, Xcios, and Forged that they had been alting as IsGuuut but were eventually forced them to out themselves and ggmrap to the admins. ggmrap was banned for VPN alting, and the three were temporarily banned.
  • Ironically, ggmrap was a raider who acted in concert with chosentwicelol, another raider that Icenia was actively pursuing. Additionally, this is the second time ggmrap has been banned for VPN-related charges.

Quick Hits

• The Monument Group released their Q4 2023 financial report, with revenue up by 160% and a record high earnings per share.
• Icenia elected a new Senate for January, with Quanton Biscuit returning as speaker. Cammo, one of the senators elected, was also selected to be the Secretary of the Interior by vote, forcing a second vote for a new Senator which is currently ongoing.
• Lambat announced that SambonusG would be appointed Prime Minister on January 18, and serve as co-head-of-state. There are also some electoral changes to make it easier for new citizens to be onboarded.
  • Lambat also completed its Grass Age Stadium, an area for races.
• CaptainColton was reelected as the Chancellor of the Imperial Federation, with Gidein elected as judge.
• The Imperial Federation also welcomed Elyras into the country after previously agreeing to be a vassal of the country.
• Amboise conducted a build Cyberpunk-themed build competition over this past week.
• Arcandria reannounced its claims, with many leaders being controversial members in the community; they hope to reform themselves as they continue the country.
  • However, a second claims announcement was poorly received after they were notified it was overclaiming former Edius, an old nation of Oceanstar’s.
• Winterbourne encourages players to build houses to populate the city, contact Prime Minister Nekroz (@nekroz3201) for more information.
• Walkers provided an updated look at Suramir Market at 0,0, for those interested in renting a space in the lavishly built market.
• Nara is offering players to reconstruct old buildings in Shiroyama to be rebuilt on their groups.
• Baile announced that AugustusVex was appointed governor of Kuyea, one of their northern provinces, along with the creation of a mall in the underground, and the introduction of a new currency.

Metagame Highlights

• CivMC published their Code of Conduct on January 3, with SoundTech explaining that it “encapsulat[ed] our ideals for the server, and the healthy community we strive to foster and serve”.
  • Initially it came under some criticism with a small addition clarifying information that could be bannable “outside of the context of the game”, although it’s been relatively well received.
• CivCubed announced they would sunset their “1st” beta iteration on February 6th to iterate further and improve the server’s mechanics, with a world download and “beta 1 thank you” forthcoming.

The Fun Stuff

A star fort in Griffin, built by Seekinq.

Builds

• Amicitia creates a cute little tree in their town to replace their Christmas tree
• x1025 posts a small showcase of their interior design
• Volterra’s big great hall has incredible detail
• Griffin has a new star fort and embassy row, which look incredible as per usual.
• Nalora and Groveheart Village have an incredibly refined build style, worth checking out
• The Romans also visited Nara and took some spectaclar pictures of the country

Cool Content

• Vinland shows off a full map of their territory, which is really elegantly styled
• TheJmqn has released the 23rd edition of their claims map, along with a small graph of their sizes
• A bit late, but I like Yoahtl’s Christmas card!
• Amicitia and Baile both release their New Year’s greetings

Memes

• I wonder if the Gun nation will add some guns
• The irony of funding raiders when you didn’t realize they are raiding you
• This is to further insinuate that we are joking about the above meme
• If you were going to joke about attention issues you might as well have just made a tiktok of killing comradenick’s house
• I don’t think I’d want to go to school if I lived in Civ

Poll of the Week

I want to apologize last week for putting out pretty ambiguous questions. I was kind of rushing it out last week to spend time with family, but I hope the idea of it was still present. The questions was about whether Civ improved as a genre this year, from gameplay to interpersonal to personal relations.

The first question was Did Civ, as a game get better this year?

The second question was Did the playerbase get better this year?

The third question was Did you get better this year?

I think it’s overall nice to see that people think that the genre as a whole is getting better and people personally are getting better. There hasn’t been a lot of significant changes to the genre this year, albeit not even since 2017.

I think the one standout though is that a good number of people thought that the playerbase didn’t get better this year, or it actually got worse. This year probably had the most wars out of any Civ server due to the continuous cycle of wars from Icenia and Gang Shi, not to mention the community has been relatively on edge all the time this year. I hope that the cycle dies down soon, but I really hope that the server as a whole becomes less warmongery and satisfied in their place in the world.

In the future though, I should combine these questions into one graph.

Vote Now!

Snowed In Cry for Help

A New Year’s celebration pic from Truidencia.

Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter! I’m still trying to save my non-Civ content for later sometime next week, and I know people are clamoring for more football news. I have a lot of writing and editing still to do for unrelated reasons this week, so just trying to cut down on the process as much as I can.

But a huge thanks to ComradeNick, RedDevel, bgbba, Shadno, and Bronnakus for delivering reflections this month, as well as BritishWanderer, OreStraya, reffelruz, Lodish, tybug and a whole number of people who helped out make this past week relatively smooth for me. I hope the first couple of these weeks brings you an amazing, fresh and wonderful new year.

If you haven’t read some of these players’ perspectives for the new year, you should do so now! They put their own hard work into it as much as I did.

Until next time,

EDIT CIVWIKI

• < < < Last week’s newsletter (December 28, 2023)
• Submit a featured article - Advertise your nation!
• View and post comments on r/CivWiki
• View a shortened version of this newsletter on CivWiki