CivWiki Newsletter for March 4, 2024

Good morning and happy Monday from New England!

Thanks for all the good greetings on my trip, I had a great time. No joke, I was publishing the newsletter on airport wi-fi at 5am last week.

I’m sure you had a good couple of weeks without me, and I think from here on out you might see a more weekly structure from the newsletter. There was quite a lot that went on these past couple of weeks, and I know you’ve been waiting for this one. Without further ado, let’s get ready for the news!

Oh, but you might want to read to the end on this specific newsletter if you’re a regular reader…

Featured

Featured Image

This week’s featured picture is Shiroyama Harbor, which is part of their newest additions to the area. Interestingly, it’s been a while since I’ve highlighted Nara, but this is picture is well worth it. The whole Arsenia conflict allowed Nara to expand their northward river into a bay, which allowed for amazing Japanese ships to dock within spitting distance of the city. I really love the execution on this, and can’t wait to see what else they’ll do with the new space. A huge shout-out to intentgames for this picture, and I can’t wait to see more.

Featured Article

The Mount September Ice Road Conflict was an incident between the UDF and the Augustan Federation over defensive infrastructure on CivClassic. The dispute initially started over an ice road built during the War of the Coalition which overlapped plans for a vault in Mount September, along with other grievances from Icenia over the community of Mount September, particularly minemaster933. A court ruling in Mount September in late August found SirTwiggles of Imperial Truidence guilty for trespassing on NebulaSSR’s bunker on Icenia’s ice road nearby. UDF interpreted the ruling as being unable to use the ice road without consequence.

After a continued public argument against UDF and Augustan Federation officials, several fully armed UDF officials appeared at Nebula’s bunker, ready to attack. Although they continued to confront each other, no PvP conflict was made, despite the misnomer. Both sides made peace and players from Kallos and Mount September helped clean up the damage. The conflict came at a time when the last major war (the Infinity War) had concluded a year before; Punitive measures were placed on Mount September citizens, and started the general unravelling of the Augustan Federation outer allies such as Lambat. The image that resulted from the conflict remains an iconic picture of Civ, and the incident itself shows a success of diplomacy on the brink of a possible war between major powers.

This week’s featured picture is a confrontation between UDF fighters (left), and NebulaSSR (right), defending his vault.

This Week Last Year

Why did all this juicy and now completely relevant news come one year ago, and where is it now?

The News

Let’s see, how much did I miss this past couple of weeks…

Server Updates

Pacem’s main square. I did stockpile this picture several weeks beforehand, thanks for asking!

On February 25, 2024, CivMC released their Transport Update (1.26). Depending on where you’re counting, this is both the fastest update since the re-release of 1.25 (22 days), or the length of an average update since the initial release of 1.25 (69 days, nice).

As the title suggests, many of the changes focused on transport, specifically faster rails and horse travel.

• New copper rails are available, which allow transport that is about 3.75x faster than normal rails.
  • This however comes with the issue that players must maintain their rails to maintain this speed.
  • This also introduces a slight buff to rails that are above ground.
  • More information is available at the CivMC wiki!
• Horses were also made faster to make them viable as a transport option.
• Map art copyright features are now available, which prevent filled maps from being copied. Make sure you keep one copyable version somewhere! (from MrJeremyFisher)
• Revamps to the intro book were made, from a reusable /introbook command (that gives a non-unique intro book) as well as a complete rewrite of the book. (from MrJeremyFisher & RedDevel)

Among notable minor changes, this included:

• /ep showall now adds a toggle to include or not include banned players that took up a significant part of the screen (from Walkers)
• Various changes for JukeAlert optimization, including conditional rendering, improving time formatting, and making /janame feedback nicer
• Fixing primary owner transfer on NameLayer
• Fixing NameLayer GUI showing pages improperly

As expected however, several issues occurred following this update:

• Time shop relays as well as base rail speeds were broken as well as horse stats being reset on restart. The latter two were fixed the same day while horse stats are still being fixed.
• The entire server went down unexpectedly on February 27 unrelated to the update, as the server crashed for unknown reasons. The crash forced the admins to do a small rollback, while a bug fix was implemented for pumpkins and melons growing at vanilla rates.

Around the Server

We don’t see a lot of pictures from Icenia, but here’s a rainy day among the skyscrapers of Icenia, taken from Drugs and Alcohol Abuse Park.

• After three to four weeks, I think it’s pretty safe to say that Estalia and Pavia have left the Elysian Pact, even if processes are still going. There’s not much to say besides the following points:
  • Most Elysian Pact infrastructure in the non-Estalia/Pavia countries (SPQR, Volterra, specifically) has been taken off groups by their respective residents, although some still remain during the take back of the Elysian Pact groups.
  • For context, Estalia left following the rest of the alliance’s easing of relations with Icenia, Pavia left almost immediately after Estalia did a mass group removal from the Elysian Pact because of the former; both countries had issues with the Elysian Pact’s politics for a while.
  • The five countries still remain in contact, but are no longer formally allied. Hopefully this reporting is fair to all parties after such a very public incident started a very private breakup procedure.
• Meanwhile, those that remained in the Elysian Pact established the Ascendancy of Sovereign Nations, a new alliance with Icenia.
  • The alliance would provide economic cooperation, stability, proactive and shared defense, among many other pillars.
  • SPQR and Volterra noted that this alliance is SEPARATE from the current iteration of the Elysian Pact, and they would have more to announce in the near future.
• Icenia completed its March elections, with Xcios and JuniorTide being elected, and Xcios being appointed Speaker of the Senate after their ban a couple of months prior.
• The Bank of Icenia announced they would be merging their accounts with Monument Bank on March 11. It’s mostly due to the downsizing after Okx became an admin. They hope that this merger will improve relations between Pavia and Icenia.
• Monument Bank also announced a slew of things while I was away.
  • The bank opened a new branch in the Imperial Federation, specifically in New Callisto, their fifth branch overall.
  • They also released their financial report for February 2024, showing a massive increase in floating exchange capacity, equity, and asset diversity.
  • On the merchandising side, the Monument Group announced a partnership with Moria Mart to act as the physical storefront in the overworld as they primarily sell Nether goods.
• Mount Augusta… god I thought the drama was over
  • If you’re not very aware (which, I completely don’t blame you, I don’t know much about this either), recurring idiot and relatively annoying troublemakers Highroll and (more annoyingly) Coolchacha97 were made cupboard members in Mount Augusta.
  • This act singlehandedly raised the Mount Augusta “attention meter” up; among one event was Squidhasthebad raiding and pearled Coolchacha on February 19 after pretty much daring him to for Sloth. Doom City and Mount Augustan players came to help free him.
  • The more visible event was Mount Augusta judge JakeTheMonkey getting recalled after he assisted in the raiding of Coolchacha — although this was a separate event about a week later.
  • Now, that above section was a hard pill to swallow, and there’s definitely more yelling from every side about this. But I’ve personally decided to ignore the comments that quickly devolve into stupidity and even racism, so let’s just move on.
• Nara put lives in danger a couple of weeks ago by holding Drunk Hockey at this lava-filled arena built by meenos.
• SPQR elected DarthChini to his third consecutive Tribunate with 16/23 votes. They also announced they would shake up the election process along with the construction of new projects and initiatives.
• Princess_Bow announced that MaNaMi, their daughter in Baile, was pearled by Ibis_Man but released and announced their safety.
• Meanwhile, Baile announced that they would be transferring of the diamond as their primary currency and onto the Baile Mark, with a government sanctioned exchange.
• It’s weird to say, but it’s almost been a full year since the passing of NoOneTruePunk; Metallic has celebrated this with Punk brews now being available at the Winterbourne Punk memorial.

Metagame Highlights

A great view of Shockton City over the marketplace.

• Owain_X announced a new Civ server, CivRush, intended to be a short-duration event that gets hosted in a small map, along with new mechanics, mobs and items.
  • The server’s first event is intended to start this Saturday and end the following day, focusing on radical PvP changes.
  • Join their discord for their first iteration here!
• In CivCubed, janet blackquill is back at work, starting with porting over strings into the server texture packs along with cutting back on cumbersome ores and alloys.
• CivMC has also clarified their botting rules after serving a large amount of bans, notably for placing and breaking blocks.
• Xcios’ latest Reputation thread continues the tradition of the “gerfer typo” shows a lot of Icenians near the top. Brigading? Probably at least in the early hours…
• In an effort to travel to meet newer nations and scratch a build itch, SirBoss is offering to construct some public buildings in other nations, for pretty much free, and people should comment if interested.
• Some of you might not look at the #promotions channel on Discord, but Ascant made a meme of debris mining on Civ, got some good reach and apparently got a good amount of subs off this one video alone.

The Fun Stuff

This one is of the grand transformation of Adria, Griffin. It’s kind of incredible how much got added in the past two years.

Builds

One interesting quirk this past couple of weeks in CivMC was before/after and timelapse pictures, and we’ve got some really fun ones this week.

• Icenia’s timelapse shows the country’s mass sprawl throughout the server
• And likewise, here’s Lambat’s initial spark and then relatively slow growth over the server
• Of course, we can’t forget Pavia’s quick growth and incredibly useful and natural worldbuilding make the area amazing
• SeldomSh0ck shows off an amazing comparison picture of how much jungle they cleared in Shockton since its early days.
• Meanwhile, Griffin also digs out some screenshots that are also similar comparisons which are incredibly transformational, including their tall buildings, main squares, and the grand canal

Anyway, here’s the normal builds section we were looking for…

• Ok, well, instead of a picture here’s a video of a stroll through Lazuli Tower in L-City, Lambat
• Paddington_Bear has been hard at work improving Nassau to be an old vintage, run-down resort in the mountainous deep woods
• I will unironically be denounced by Transylvania if I didn’t show off their townhall restoration
• The featured picture this week, Shiroyama’s new bay expansion, came with a slew of other amazing pictures which look amazing
• In Q’barra however, it isn’t just about jungles but how about some great progress in the savanna?
• RedDevel took a picture of Shiroyama’s death arena
• It’s funny but also impressive how big the Yoahtl Olympic center is as they highlight their amazing Hockey stadium (pictured left)
• Asgeir’s cross-federation rail bridge into Thule is really high and “scary”, according to Potato_Duke
• Withervalian Council is now in session with a clean build from Vulcan1776
• Koojikii’s bakery in Shiroyama, even if it’s a rainy day, still looks like a great piece of architecture

Cool Content

• jbblocker has made a really well-made cinematic of the continued run of Butternut/SEC conflicts, I can’t really deny that this just extremely well done and worth all that time.
• So I showed this in Metagame content, but I’ll say it again, Ascant’s video of him grinding out debris is very relatable but also was pretty well-made
• Oh yeah, he also made this meme last week with Civ virgins finding out on what the hell the political compass is.
• Well, while it’s not specifically news, flamingsofa’s announcement for Mihira Beacons is extremely well produced, as simple as it is.
• Vinland posted another map of their provinces, with a much simpler design that feels like it belongs in a government-sanctioned atlas from the Cold War. And I’m saying that it’s a good thing stylistically!

Memes

• These are very accurate presidential candidate comparisons for nations except the second one here might be less accurate
• this icenian president flag is less of a good flag and more like the average us state flag
• boy i love working in an abusive nation
• Transylvania is confused about what a rollback entails like they’ve literally never experienced one before
• the icenian “campaign” looks like one of those things you’d see in like Baldi’s basics or something
• Hey mom, can we have Temple of Notch? “We have Temple at Home”. Temple of Notch be like:
• I think people can enjoy a vintage Squareblob meme that was dug up by Gjum

Non-Civ Content

• Baseball season is creeping up again (you know what that means!) as spring training but who cares about that, Shohei Ohtani got married
  • If you (somehow) want to get into baseball and join literally the five people who care about this section in the newsletter, try taking a look at this guide! (Just don’t pick the Dodgers, there will be a lot of people that will hate you)
  • Unfortunately, no updates on the app that I’ve been showing off recently, mostly working on backend features so no crazy things. Just been a bit busy and trying to recover from jet lag!
• For the 0.1% of you that have a quizzing gene in you, or if you’re that one person who keeps playing the New York Times Connections game, then try playing BBC Two’s Only Connect, probably one of the toughest quiz shows around, of which one round is literally the Connections round. I love watching this thing even if the season has already ended, for those looking for brainteasers, this is your show that does better than Jeopardy!
• I have been playing the hell out of Splatoon 3’s DLC, Side Order. It’s not perfect by means, it’s basically “We have Hades at home”, but it’s still fun to play!
• So here’s a cat in shitty quality from Transylvania
• And here’s another cat that’s cuter because it’s in higher quality and playing with a bottle cap from Nara — no, that’s not him eating a mouse, although he did do that too

Poll of the Week

Last week, we had 77 responses to the poll.

Our first question was specifically about upcoming Olympic hosts, and which one would you rather have host.

Yeah, it’s a tight one (that’s what she said). I was in Yoahtl voice chat that week, and they’ve noted that they’ve been working hard to set up a very long-awaited version to the olympics. Likewise, it was only then that I heard that SPQR were also gearing up with the addition of Vinland. Just wanted to see what people had thought about something like this, since both have heavily highlighted their sports offerings in recent months.

There’s surprisingly a good amount of people that would have neither host; not sure if it’s grievances against either country or they’re trying to plan their own Olympics that I didn’t know about.

Our final two questions focused on rail infrastructure, specifically routing systems, and which players prefer.

In many nations, routing systems are a somewhat minor but very impactful point of contention, as those in charge of certain systems are passionate about their decision.

• Some nations, like Pavia, prefer to have single-origin lines, like Pavia with their many CUB-aligned rails.
• The proliferation of the OneDest system in the early months of CivMC allowed many nations to just hop onto the system with little effort.
• Finally, there’s the GOR-style trunk line which uses RailSwitch but to relatively minimal effort.

In general however, it doesn’t seem like that much people care; trunk lines are a little less since the burden is placed on the user for going in the right direction, I would suppose, but nothing is too crazy.

There are a good amount of people who think RailSwitch is dumb though, which I think is a slap in the face to Okx, who developed the plugin in the first place, LOL.

Among some respondents on their decisions were:

It’s important to remember that onedest still allows for direct rail lines to function normally and be onedest compatible. People often act like the two systems are mutually exclusive and one is more superior than the other, but the two can happily coexist if well designed.

Moving from a “dumb” to a “path finding” rail switching plugin could solve many issues. RailSwitch is hard to understand since new players expect the plugin to do the routing for you. This would also reduce the situations where new improperly built junctions break the OneDest system. But this is just one more thing on the already big #codeityourself pile, and with the current system mostly working well enough there are more pressing issues.

It would be nice if the map included more end to end rails that exist rather than just onedest ones.

And a lot of people are just like,

Just build iceroads, smh my 5head

I rode my horse on every rail i could think of, still. OneDest is preferrably better

Which leads us to…

Everybody Vote Now!

Important Announcement

My home in Pavia. Well, it’s quite new, but it’s my home.

After months of hard work, I have the pleasure to announce (but probably to most readers’ displeasure) that this iteration of the newsletter will end regular publishing in September 2024.

I’ve said multiple times in previous months that I wanted to eventually stop publishing due to burnout and my general lack of involvement and interest in Civ these days. However, this newsletter has given me a purpose throughout the past year, and once I found a direction IRL, I resolved I would eventually stop publishing to focus on a brighter future.

After months of hard work, I’ve finally gotten something off the ground IRL — for those interested, it’s a graduate program. I’m saying September as a stopping deadline because that’s obviously when the graduate program starts. Although I could have made this could be sooner — as I’m also in a relatively later stage of consideration of a job position — I determined regardless of my future outcome September would be a far enough deadline where I could scale down over the next few months, no matter what happens.

Now, don’t get your hopes down too quickly though.

• There’s still 6 months worth of my newsletters left! I’ve got some pretty big plans to finish out this project so keep an eye out.
• I’m probably still going to hang around the Civ community after that, I don’t think things will change there.
• I’ll probably still write about CivWiki and/or random programming stuff and/or sports even after this goes away.
• I really think someone else will be able to do this job — I think the real trick on this is not only time commitment, but connections and decent enough writing, which in general I think is a pretty low bar. I think there’s enough people that are just as connected as me who are a force for good that would be willing to take the mantle.

This is why I really hope that I think while this iteration of the newsletter will end, newsletters as a whole will not. Sure, it’s a good amount of work, but I believe this is such an integral part of the community and is something that anybody can do that it’s very possible this will not go away anytime soon.

Please Don’t Cry… for Help

The killer hockey rink in Shiroyama — with a lot of fish flopping around.

Ok, like I’m pulling a Tom Scott and setting a deadline for myself. Fun fact, he actually announced his departure literally six months beforehand (and supposedly a year, but I can’t find a source) and despite that everyone’s seeing this as a shock, so I’m expecting everyone to be like “holy crap, this guy’s leaving, Civ will die!” Come on guys, I don’t think it’s that big of a deal.

So, you’ll probably forgive me when I say,

• If you want to see your nation featured on the top of this newsletter, I WANT TO HEAR YOUR SUGGESTIONS, whether as a featured article or a screenshot.
• If you want to write opinion stuff, for the newsletter, preferably op-eds, I want to hear from you!

You’ve only got a few more months when I can publish cool stuff under my voice! In either case, message me your pitch at @specificlanguage, my DMs are always open.

Thanks for reading once again, and I will see you next week. And as always…

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