CivWiki Monday Newsletter

A (mostly) weekly newsletter for Civ servers supported by the CivWiki


CivWiki Newsletter for January 8, 2024

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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?


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

The featured article this week acted as the winners of the CivWiki Editing Palooza! Each were chosen for their quality and their quantity of their edits. CivWiki and the Monument Bank will be handing out awards to the following players for their excellent additions to CivWiki:

1st: Amicitia (1st prize, 128 diamonds) - created by jjon

2nd: Peter5930 (2nd prize, 96 diamonds) - extremely expanded upon by reffelruz

3rd (tied): Mercutio (3rd prize, 24 diamonds) - numerous additions to their history by Favbot and SonicFrost

3rd (tied): Icenia (CivMC) (3rd prize, 24 diamonds each editor) - ChrisChrispie and Faeriesong for their considerable additions to the country’s history sections.

As an extra bonus, each of these winners will also be featured articles within the coming weeks. I would love to run another CivWiki-related competition in the future, so keep your eyes peeled!


This Week Last Year

On January 2nd and January 9th of 2023…


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:

Quick Hits

Metagame Highlights

The Fun Stuff

A star fort in Griffin, built by Seekinq.

Builds

Cool Content

Memes

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!

Please note that all information submitted is anonymous. A red star (
*
) means that this question is required to submit.
When do you think the next Civ war will begin?
Select all that are applicable.
Do you want to see more wiki-related editing competitions in the future?

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,


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