CivWiki Monday Newsletter

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


CivWiki Newsletter for March 18, 2024

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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?

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

On the week of March 20, 2023,

The News

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

Around the Server

Metagame Highlights

The Fun Stuff

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

Builds

Cool Content

Memes

Non-Civ Content

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)

Please note that all information submitted is anonymous. A red star (
*
) means that this question is required to submit.
Put your results from the above poll below, in the format of red/orange/yellow/green/blue/purple (e.g. 83/87/76/85/79/73)
What nation is your primary area of residence? (You can also say None.)

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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