CivWiki Monday Newsletter

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

CivWiki Newsletter for February 5, 2024

• specificlanguage

Good morning and happy Monday from New England! Welcome to the first newsletter of February 2024!

I know I always get very deserved praise for writing this newsletter, and I really appreciate it getting “best contributions on CivMC”; sometimes it’s hard for me to recognize the massive talent that I’ve been given with this even if this entire newsletter is a glorified reposting mechanism. But I’m very glad that it’s provided significant value to this underrated genre.

It feels like this last month kinda flew by already, huh? We’ll see what happens within Civ soon enough. Ready for the news?

This week’s featured picture is Blue Cove in Icarus at sunset. It’s interesting that I’ve actually never featured this before, but I’m getting around to more of the places around the fringes of the map this time around. The tightly packed buildings around the lake make for an amazing vertical city. I’m a little reminded of those detailed little Italian villages in the Cinque Terre, it’s a great build, and I hope to see more of it in the future!

Featured Article

Nipplerock is a recurring country in Civ run by Gantoe. The country claims itself as a “powerful threat”, but it is mostly known for its intentionally jokey nature as a country. Its leader is well known for self-destructing TNT in large populated areas and showing as propaganda. Its continued longevity and commitment to “terrorist” acts have been lovingly joked throughout the Civ community.

The country has a longstanding feud with Hexcorp since Civcraft 2.0 after being defeated in their home turf during the Battle of Talahassee; continued campaigns against the organization continued when it was part of The Commonwealth during CivClassic. The country has also “defeated” other nations such as Tierra de Conciencia and Pacem in past iterations. Although Nipplerock does not currently hold territory on CivMC, Gantoe continues to carry out TNT raids in populous cities.

This week’s featured image is Nipplerock’s flag.

This Week Last Year

On the week of February 6, 2023,

  • Estalia embarked on a Gong Night last Saturday; on the agenda was to grief Gensokyo’s gong followed by an attempted pearling on Danzilonan Red_Steel.
  • Continued griefings in Cordoba by Gang Shi resulted in the pearling of five Cordoban citizens.
  • PhysicsGamer, was pearled in Valyria by a coalition of Kallos and Pavia.
  • The Commonwealth, Reggio Argeddina, and Iopa, a Molokan territory, created the League of Imperial Powers, committing to mutual defense and economic support between nations.
  • Both monarchist and republican factions reached an agreement to restore the republic in Lambat, ending the Lambatan Civil War.
  • CivRev 3.0’s beta launched with a map of the world, sporting numerous gameplay changes. More information on their discord.

Columns

Don’t think that columns were just a week-long experiment — for it to be a column, it has to be multiple! Once again we have SpeedyJustice returning to give some additional thoughts about the Civ journey that everyone talked about this past week.

On CivMC and The Greatest Adventure

I think a lot about what made Civ so meaningful to me. I reflect often on the times we share together online are times we spend making stories and memories together, weather it be the meticulous work done by e-lawyers surveying every bit of data and evidence to free their legally questionable clients, or venturing into enemy territory, surrounded by massive complex man made fortresses of obsidian that scale as far as the eye can see. I’ve had so many adventures here, met so many characters and interesting people, many of whom have become great friends of mine.

I used to bemoan the fact that I could not possibly due these stories I’ve had justice, saddened by the reality that so many of these adventures were “you had to be there” situations with too much required knowledge being needed to understand what made those stories so special to me.

I think back to a moment in 1985’s “The Polar Express” where the main character wakes up Christmas morning to unwrap a bell he received as a gift from his adventure in the North Pole that night before. The bell could only be heard by those who believe, and over time his friends and family became unable to hear its ring as he grew up and his acquaintances around him followed.

My stories here on Civ may never be able to be understood by others, and I have reached the conclusion that its okay. These stories will always stick with me, the adventures i’ve gone on and the friends I’ve met have become some of my greatest memories over the past few years. I may never be able to share these stories with others and have them understand like I have, they may never get why the journeys I’ve taken are of any significance to me, and yet to me and those who were fortunate enough to share those experiences with me.

The bell still rings.

As always, if you’d like your thoughts in this newsletter, reach out to me @specificlanguage.

The News

Taijing in Baile, a new imperial Asian-themed settlement in the snowy north.

Server Updates

On February 3rd, CivMC re-released the 1.25 update, the long anticipated fishing update. It originally came out around Christmas about 50 days ago, believe it or not, but had to be rolled back due to continuous crashing issues.

The changelog is similar to the initial changelog of the update, so I’m not going to go over them, but the most important are:

This update deployed following a short delay, although some players have reported downtime on Kira relays, which is unrelated to the global chat group commands above. Fixes for this are forthcoming.

Around the Server

Metagame Highlights

For those not in the know about CivWiki, Miraheze, our host, merged with WikiTide recently, another host which was splinter product of the whole quitting fiasco last summer. Over the past week, the team moved all data from UK-based servers to the US (which did result in some downtime). For those in the US, you may find that loading times are a bit faster.

This should not result in any meaningful changes with the exception of copyright now being dealt in US terms. Personally, I don’t think this matters for Civ, but as always you may file a ticket on the CivWiki discord to request to remove information, for example, if you deem that copyright has been breached.

The Fun Stuff

Looking up around the Grand Canal in Adria.

Builds

Where in the world will specificlanguage visit next? You never know!

Memes

Non-Civ Content

Finally, this section returns after a few weeks off of me trying to write outdated things from last year!

Poll of the Week

Last week, we had 55 responses to the poll.

Although I’m kind of glad I ran those specific questions for the poll last week, it was such a downer of a poll. I tried to keep it more positive this week, but gosh darn it, you guys pulled through to make it sad anyway.

The first question was, “What kind of community events do you want to see more of?”

I don’t think it’s surprising that we need a big event to bring the server back together like the Olympics. Sure, small events work but something well organized and something anyone can participate in might being server population up for a longer period of time.

I put something new as an option — but obviously we don’t know what people actually want. I think if it’s something innovative on the scale of like a World’s Fair kind of deal, that would be really cool. But I honestly don’t know, you’d need to be a Civ pioneer, imaginary, and ridiculously strong-willed to think of something and organize something big and new and convince everyone to participate in, two of which I’m probably not.

The second question was supposed to be an antithesis to last week’s question on why people want to quit, but “Why do you continue to play Civ?” I didn’t run a graph for this poll, as it was entirely response-based.

Let’s start with the good news: it’s still good that the main reason people keep playing are:

It’s fun, it’s not like other civilization servers…

…it is still far more dynamic and engaging as a political experiment than any other “political” servers…

Civ is the only game I’ve played that is completely shaped by the community. That is awesome!

I find it extremely reassuring that a good majority of the playerbase have stuck around because of the main selling points of Civ: a dynamic community that builds its own politics, events, sub-communities and more, not to mention the unique expressiveness that is found nowhere except the recreations of r/place.

It’s very obvious that there’s also a bunch of responses that look like:

I play to chill with friends

I can’t give up on my friends… Not yet…

There are a few people who make it worth it…

Nostalgia for old moments and memories, the desire to create more and make friends…

Which (hot take) I think is good, it’s a great thing to have good friends by your side. That being said, the problem is that several people had the same response:

Spite

The aspects of roleplay that made Civ unique is quickly dying and grindset playstyles are heavily favoured over that of actually building a city.

bronnakus has my child hostage

Ok, maybe not that last one. There’s a lot of people that are playing because of spite, or responded as they’re banned, or talked about how they long for the old days of roleplay and grindset playstyles.

It’s a case, where (cold take), Civ is a great place to find friends and build a community, but as you stay longer the harder it is to pull away. But why play out of spite on Civ? If you’re playing to spite someone, in the long run people will not care if you continue playing the game or not. Spite is such a terrible reason to keep playing Civ, go touch some grass or play competitive Valorant if you’re trying to torture yourself like that.

Vote Now!

Well, let’s hope we something more positive this time…

Please note that all information submitted is anonymous. A red star (
*
) means that this question is required to submit.
What are the most difficult Civ plugins/mechanics to teach to new players?
Select all that are applicable.
What's your favorite memory while playing Civ?

I’m pretty sure I’ve asked this last question before on several polls pre-Newsletter, but this might be interesting.

Grammy Cry for Help

A glowing tree made by Jaker within the depths of Dalgon.

A big thanks to the return of the Newsletter Mafia, which includes RedDevel, BritishWanderer, Gjum, and Lodish who significantly helped with this week’s edition. Also a big thanks to SpeedyJustice who stayed up on Sunday night contributing his part to the newsletter!

A few times, I know that many players say what I do here is way too good to be made for Civ, but I appreciate everyone’s sentiments once again. I’m pretty thankful for all of your support even if I sometimes beat myself up over thinking bad things about my own life; I guess that’s somewhat common for Civ.

I am working on a couple of secret projects right now, but I really appreciate everyone’s support on keeping this newsletter up. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for your readership and support, however I’ve been able to run this.

There’s no reason for doing that above, I just wanted to say it.

Anyway, I believe that’s it, I’ll see you all next week! Until then,

EDIT CIVWIKI