CivWiki Newsletter for March 18, 2024

Good morning and happy Monday from New England!

I’m legitimately running out of headers to start a newsletter because of how hard it is to introduce it these days. Even for me, spring break has already come and gone so there’s not even much to talk about there. We are continuing through a pretty substantial period of peace, so most news has to do with business. That’s something rare, I think, in the grand history of Civ so far, and it’s very interesting to see political news take an aside to business and economics, even if mostly powered by one country.

I do find it nice being in a sort of Associated Press-like position, although I think the vision for the newsletter, at least these days is moreso like a BBC News-meets-Vox sort of vibe. Whatever, I’m super glad to be in this position as the longest-running news organization on Civ.

Are we ready for the news?

Featured

Featured Image

This week’s featured image is of Pavia’s Main Street. No, I didn’t decide to phone it in this week; I don’t think we’ve legitimately seen any new pictures of Pavia’s Main Street in a while; the Monument Group’s new shop on the right hand side is now accompanied by a big main square and tons of shops are rotating in and out of the market all the time. It’s a vibrant place unlike anywhere else on the server, and it’s a great place to hang out on Civ! No, I swear this isn’t an advertisement.

Featured Article

The Kingdom of Fish was a nation on CivClassic, founded as a successor state of the Kingdom of Wyvern on CivUniverse, and Kraken and Nymph on CivClassic. Aimed as a friendly, casual and buildfriend nation, the country hosted a number of builds in its hilly coastal setting that made it a quintessential fishing village. The country’s leaders were made up of players from the succeeding nations. In its early days, the kingdom made friendship treaties with Acadia as well as holding a fish festival during July of 2021.

In summer 2021, council members the__druid and JayTeeR raided Acadia’s vault and were pearled by Kayla in the Crucible vault. Seekinq used the opportunity to push the nation’s policy closer to a build nation, along with joining the Plus-Minus Concordat to promote defense and a stronger economy throughout the region. Today, most residents of Fish are now members of Griffin on CivMC.

This week’s image is an overhead render of Fish, during its last days on CivClassic.

This Week Last Year

The News

The Feline Wilds Farms, with New Felicity and the Walls of Aethia in the background.

Around the Server

• IbisMan was pearled the previous Sunday.
  • He was chased by matt4fun9 all the way from the Imperial Federation up to Icenia, where he was then dispatched by Shadno soon after.
  • Incredibly, matt4fun9 continued to chase him without radar or location mods and still guided all combatants at the correct time.
  • IbisMan was wanted by Icenia for various crimes within Icenian territory, not withstanding obbybombing as well as killing citizens. He’s also wanted by several other countries for trespassing vault space and raiding, among others.
  • Jubilant celebration was made across a lot of discords that day, as he was wanted for quite some time.
• Icenia won their second match in a row in the IHL last week, with a 11-5 score against the SPQR Gladiators as they continue their way through the loser’s bracket.
• C4mmo also announces several improvements to rails around Icenia which reaches more destinations faster.
• With the Bank of Icenia fully merging into Monument Group, as a single entity, Enforcer15 was elected to the Board of Directors in an advisory position.
• There was also quite a lot of news in the Monument Group world as well!
  • The changes mostly have to do with handling Securities, Trading, and Shareholding for external companies who wish to offer shares in their own companies.
  • As a result, Artificial Industries announced they would be switching to the Monument Bank’s shareholder system.
  • Moria Mart also announced their initial public offering of 100 shares after a surge in revenue over the past couple of weeks.
  • The announcement also came with a reduction in withdrawal fees and the hopes to bring more Monument Group branches in Vinland, Pacem, and Exyria.
• Winterbourne announced more additions to their family — not surprising considering they’ve been doing some family reunions more recently
• Yoahtl announced that Yergo would be the new Alcuahtl of Yoahtl, ushering a new gay era for the country.
• Volterra announced the election of their latest Senate, with SeldomShock becoming this month’s Lord Paramount.
• The Papal States claimed most of Mali, supposedly with the approval of Commonwealth and Nara.
  • I asked the Commonwealth players if they actually did, and they said they had literally no idea this was happening
  • When asking Swordmaster of Nara, they said they already had declaimed the territory so they “granted” it. In general, this announcement was just confusing to everyone with the way it was handled.
• CivMC admin Okx announced a small rule change that allows bots to read passenger data, although stopping short of allowing players to read horse stats through mods.
• CivRush announced awards for their first mini-iteration, which included Troll_Bebek getting 15 kills, Okx being named most intimidating player and Greltam being named most helpful.
  • Although information hasn’t been announced yet, Owain has given information in Praxis about CivRush’s survey on using 1.9 PvP, and decided to do so for his next iteration.
  • Wingzero also expressed that he hoped to use 1.9-style PvP on CivMC, but was met with staunch opposition — they have since left. PvP update maybe?

Metagame Highlights

• TheJmqn posted the 25th claims map, showing not much change in lands in this current period of peace
• ComradeNick gives some insight about the nature of group and national identity on Civ, and asks players to think about how much depends on friendships, alliances, etc.
  • ProgrammerDan has a very thoughtful response, in my opinion which is incredibly close to my personal viewpoint.
• Another post was also made asking how much PR actually matters to a nation
  • While most people in the poll say that PR is an incredibly important view, ComradeNick takes the view that it’s not actually so important.
  • I do think that is kind of a jaded oldfriend viewpoint, as even today public relations is important for the overall reputation of a country, especially for a new player. If PR was not as important as it was, then the server is just 2b2t but probably worse.

The Fun Stuff

A picture of Baile’s main town from Gobblin and the surrounding lake.

Builds

• Gobblin visited Mount Augusta and found some gems amongst the chaos of crazy builds
• He also visited Baile and complimented their way of using relatively inhospitable land to make something great
• ryanmatt10 shows off a story and one of the oldest structures in Nara, the Puzzles Bar in Shiroyama.
• Koojikii’s house in Shiroyama also offers a nice little cozy resident in the middle of the city
• Meanwhile, a food cart in Baile
• There’s definitely not enough words to express how much effort has gone into Pavia’s Main Street, but of course I can only give them this much space every month or so
• The Feline wild farms in the Imperial Federation have a sort of winter-themed, Middle Earth vibe that I can really get behind
• TheCrazyGrape makes a beautiful render of Pacem’s main square

Cool Content

• So I guess the correct course of action is to put a picturesque picture of Fox at Winterbourne Castle in this section… it is cool, though, I only wish there was shaders on this picture
• Well, it’s not a build but it does have funny picture energy
• meenos shows off some new map art of a great windmill, I love it! It’s available at the MoMA in Shiroyama. Now I actually need to figure out what that piece of art actually is…

Memes

• Is this an accurate representation? Civ memes usually don’t get it right
• Well, I guess this is a better representation of Ibis’ pearling lmao
• I think Pavia’s deal is just flat out better than Fempire’s, y’all need to get a compelling campaign out, which might include giving people a kiss on the cheek irl
• Hakr_ really almost bamboozled me with this quitting post template
• My own trip had me talking about femboys more than once so

Non-Civ Content

• Oops, I don’t have a lot this week, but for those willing to wake up really early Korea is hosting the first games for MLB this year on Wednesday and Thursday!
• On the offchance that some Civvas are subscribed to Dropout, Sam Says 3 is a legitimate emotional whirlwind that breaks its players. Yes, it’s Simon Says, but imagine it being truly emotional scarring. Much worth the $48/year.
• I don’t talk about Hearthstone a lot, but I really appreciate the music for all their boards, especially as they’re celebrating their 10th anniversary. I actually made a meta spreadsheet back in the day, so you know I know my stuff.

Poll of the Week

Last week, we had 55 responses to the poll.

Our first question was about what kind of alliance feels like the best:

It is very obvious throughout Civ history that a large military power alliance, such as the Entente on CivClassic, have proven effctive and always dominates a server’s political dynamic. I hoped to look at some lesser seen ones like the friendship treaty which gives some security, as well as a protectorate which may not be stated so much, but gives some support in a growing nation, and I’m glad to see both have their places for diplomatic conduct on Civ.

Regional and federation alliances sort of give that same niche, but it is more difficult in scaling, not many people today know about the Council of the Medi Sea or the Lyrean Community these days, and federations are all but gone with the lone exception of the IF (although, they almost did implode!). I do think though that informal alliances are much more important than people think it is, with Civ backroom dealings being common, these always play factors whether you like it or not.

Our second question was about the ideal iteration length.

This doesn’t seem like a fun graph. When you have an iteration that is intended to run long term, and attracts people who love this sort of thing, I think that it’s not actually a useful metric. I’ve probably got a better question related to this, probably about how long people think CivMC has left as an iteration, but I want to run another poll first!

Our third question was about what other content people consume while playing Civ — or really what they do while doing menial work. Comments were so similar that I turned this one into a graph.

The most common responses were just generally music and voice chatting, streams/YouTube videos generally corresponded to documentaries, video essays, interviews, etc. There was no prevailing music genres; either had to with relaxing music like lo-fi or jazz, or were legitimately a meme by sending me literal children music, or the “chief keef” copypasta. Thanks guys.

Although, I’m kind of surprised that nobody said anything related to Dungeons and Dragons, because my friends love to do that sort of thing when playing Minecraft.

Time to Vote!

So this week’s poll is going to be a lot different, because one post that got memed a little bit last week would actually be relatively interesting…

Before you vote, please complete this poll, and record your results. (takes ~15 minutes)

I think you can kind of see where this poll is going, hopefully I’ll have a big analysis section next week — if I can manage it. Please try to keep to the format above, although if you don’t, I’ll still try to do some filtering out. And no, your chief keef copypasta will not make it in this time.

Snoozing Cry for Help

Pregame festivities at the Cane Dome before the SPQR/Icenia match for the IHL.

Thanks for all your support this couple of weeks. In a way, I really like to think this newsletter gave me the push to get into one particular graduate program (although, it remains to see if I’ll accept that one). Sorry that I’m being very vague about it, but this is a personal thing that I don’t want to reveal quite yet!

Anyways, thanks to Swordmaster, Flags, and BritishWanderer for some additional news support this week along with Varkanos and Sdorr for entertaining me in Volterra voice chat last night while writing.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next week, and as always…

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