CivWiki Newsletter for March 26, 2024
Good morning afternoon and happy Monday Tuesday from New England!
Ok, yes, I’m quite late this time around and it hasn’t been as referential as I did before — but while I can’t tell you the reason why I’m late, it’s a very good reason why. Even though there wasn’t a lot of news that needed to be put into this one, I really appreciate the help of BritishWanderer who was willing to sacrifice a couple of hours of time in VC to work on this with me.
So, with that being said, let’s not waste any more time, are we ready for the news?
Featured
Featured Image
This week’s featured image is Pacem’s main square — well, it’s not like I haven’t featured it quite recently, but the architecture is so good in the city that I always love visiting it every time. However, unlike previous times I’ve featured the country, they’re definitely ramping up development with their city becoming more populated with new businesses and buildings, and I can’t wait to see their country this time be as crazy as it was on CivClassic.
Featured Article
This week’s featured article was written by specificlanguage and BritishWanderer.
The Fempire Union is a nation spanning three iterations, going back to Devoted 2.0, focused on a democratic centralist government. The iteration on CivMC sits in the snowy half of the continent of Impendia. After continued conflicts in their region throughout the first year with Bergberg, The Generic War, and Gang Shi, they founded the BUILD alliance with Mount Augusta & the Imperial Federation.
Although themed after the Soviet Union, their philosophy is also focused on inclusive policies and unity. As a result, their builds range from a style of constructivist to Baroque, with quirky structures and a colorful palette dotted in between. They also focused on infrastructure with long ice roads and rails to connect their country to other nations, particularly during the wars. They also participate in the International Hockey League, competing as the Fempire Punks. To this day, they continue to be a bastion of friendship and inclusivity across the server.
This week’s featured article image is of Mosskow, the capital of The Fempire Union.
This Week Last Year
On the week of March 27, 2023…
- NoOneTruePunk, a prominent player in Fempire, passed away this past week. Many players on CivMC and CivReign have offered sympathies for them.
- Gang Shi pulled off an elaborate scheme to pearl Kibbles, a raider crew that threatened to terrorize Yoahtl. It involved situations with the SEC and obbybombing Cortesia Del Mar.
- Courron announced an undiscovered island in the southeast area of the map; however the inhabitants of the island, named Verdant Isle, requested that the island be left off maps for preservation purposes.
- Protests continued in The Commonwealth against the North African secession, focusing on the implications of leader OakShelf’s interpretation of religious documents.
- Pavian Crown Prince Paagf I died this last after surviving only one dice day; the dukes elected his son, Paagf II to take the throne.
The News
A render from jasonbord of Mount Augusta, and like, it’s kinda crazy how big it actually looks, you know?
Around the Server
- Volterra and Estalia agreed to exchange chunks of territory bordering each other, one of their first diplomatic rapprochements since the breakup of the Elysian Pact.
- King Jalhf and Jarl Southw3st were married in the Imperial Federation last week, although ImmediateDescent denied being pearled for “non-consensual marriage practices”.
- Icenia’s Secretary of Defense, Drekamor, notified Icenians that Estalia had banned Icenian citizens from their territory. This was coupled with advice to avoid public infrastructure within Estalia such as iceroads and rails.
- Icenia and Exyria announced a Non-Aggression Pact, committing to open dialogues and mutual relations.
- Icenia also announced a Non-Aggression Pact with Pavia, committing to many of the same things as before but with added twinks.
- Pavia announced the death of BritishWanderer V, after being found dead by a member of the Pavian nobility.
- Monument Bank announced changes to their Bank Teller system, giving tellers the ability to customise their own withdrawal fees.
- The Moria Nether Company concluded their initial public offering of share sales, which was held on the new Pavian stockmarket. This IPO raised 3,500+ diamonds and valued the company at over 35,000 diamonds.
- Lysika_Lanteriel posted three claims posts, one each for Ez2Clutch, DockerImage, and Dredd_Kiji.
- Although the latter two posts did not gain any traction, Ez2Clutch’s posts gained significant pushback and claims.
- Nara Taisho Blatlas posted a litany of claims that ended in Nara requesting extradition of Clutch’s pearl, and Icenia President ChrisChrispie also made claims following Clutch’s attacks during the Generic War.
Metagame Highlights
- CivMC pushed a minor update on March 21, with some bugfixes for optimization purposes. This included a fix for players that did not see their chat group on the sidebar when joining.
- Owain_X hinted at their next iteration of CivRush, which would be a desert-themed map. He’s hoping to add some unique features like a sandworm, à la Dune, along with some brutalist architecture.
The Fun Stuff
The Assembly Hall in Withervale, in the Imperial Federation. Shoutout to them for discovering such a hidden gem!
Builds
- prawny331 shows a beautiful overhead render of Shiroyama and the surrounding area, really shows how much the city’s grown.
- jasonbord is back, with a great view of Mount Augusta
- …and then I quickly convinced him to make a render of Pavia, not once but twice! very soon after which I know Brit is very thankful for. Can’t wait for these to show up (and get banned) on the front page of r/Minecraft
- BritishWanderer shows that the scale of SPQR’s Coliseum truly cannot be overstated
- There are never enough angles of Griffin I can show that are truly beautiful
- MaybeGravy is working on something brand new amongst the Avatar-like hills — Jaydon’s render also made it look more like Pandora
- However, Jaydon didn’t only show off MaybeGravy’s stuff, but also gave a big render of Yoahtl’s expansive Olympic Complex
- Groveheart Village in the Imperial Federation keeps its rustic charm with new streetlights
- Shockton has a newspaper stall in their city reporting real news! Check it out, it’s very cozy
Cool Content
- This isn’t a “build”, but it could very well count as one, it’s CivRush’s map archive viewer, which looks so good it’s basically Civ Google Maps
- Well, I guess PvP videos count so here’s The_JKH fighting ThereWalker with SlothInASuit
- This poster for Tusk Armory, despite its meme title, is actually very well put together
- PhysicsGamer shows off a unique dynasty lineage diagram connecting many nation leaderships on the server, it’s a somewhat overlooked concept I kinda want to see expanded further
- I’m like 99% sure I posted this before, but ACCoker’s final video of his tours on CivMC is as fun as I remember
- I didn’t put it in the news, but that’s because Taijing Enterprises’ new logo actually slaps so hard
- VilyanZ posts another alliance connections diagram (probably the cleanest looking one so far), along with an alliance map as a supplement
Memes
- AugustusVex dares Metallic to break this stonecutter and Metallic accepts the challenge
- I can’t wait to get totally Paddington_Beared on Monday next week
- I think it would be funny if in the future reputation posts are just post claims posts like Nick’s and Toaxbis’
Non-Civ Content
- Brit dogsat recently, and whilst on a walk through the woods, stumbled upon Kilmahew Castle - a ruined castle nestled in the woods since 1290!
- If for some reason, you like having good music put together to make utter garbage that wraps around to being good again, spec’s been listening to Musical Tangents, which also probably has the best musical comedy beats I’ve had a kick out of in a while
- For those not into Baseball, as we approach Opening Day (and for once, I’m rooting for the team against my local team on opening day) — the big story is actually Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter under fire for gambling and extortion — which is crazy to hear in this day and age but I swear I’m not making a gambling app
Poll of the Week
Last week, we only had 42 responses, but there were about 6 people who did not submit valid responses for various reasons, mostly because they were missing some or all of their moral foundations responses.
To keep this section relatively short than what I think many of you expected, I’m only going to analyze the average of all respondents, not only for identification sake but also so I don’t have a massive amount of graphs. However, for nations who want an average of the nations total, then contact me @specificlanguage.
Without further ado, here are the averages that you guys came up with!
Care: 75.277
Fairness: 79.888
I think we’ve seen a big increase in these values on Civ compared to before CivMC, especially on something like pearls where it generally hasn’t been long sentences except for severe cases, of which many have already been handled by the admins. Both of these values go hand-in-hand, and it’s definitely reflected in these two stats here. This is especially seen more recently with many countries willing to cooperate with each other on alliances, NAPs, what have you. Nearly everyone scored over 60 on both of these items.
Liberty: 62.916
This one I think was a bit interesting — the website marks this as having agency over their lives and balancing influence from government. With Civ having a pretty laid back system of government in general unless you’re in a role-play heavy country, people are happy being a little bit more independent, and it’s reflected here.
In-Group/Loyalty: 52.055
Purity: 53.083
Authority: 45.5
These final three have similar values in terms of conforming to rules, defining “in-groups” and having a “snobby” mindset, which I’m glad that Civ has relatively shaken off in recent years. We’ve seen a lot more nations come to the forefront that are newer and bring a new set of cultures into the Civ landscape, so it’s great to see a great variety and not exclude people too much based on their world standing. Of course, that’s not always the case, but one can dream.
The results in general like say that this a pretty typical profile for “Left-Liberal/Social Democrats” or “Progressive Socialist” (depending on how high you think Liberty value is), which I think is a pretty good assessment fo the average Civ player’s morality in real life. Yeah, that’s right you crazy socialists roleplayers, there’s no way it would feasibly work in today’s society.
Vote Now!
I can verify that RedDevel personally asked the first question.
Average Cry for Help
I’d like to give a massive thanks to BritishWanderer for hanging out in voice chat for three hours on Tuesday to help me finish this barely complete newsletter — seriously, we started at 11am and three hours later, it’s finally finished. He helped a lot from generating ideas for the polls as well as writing a difficult featured article this week, so massive props to him.
I also want to thank asgeir, southw3st, zeus1776, Vulcan1776 and gabrielmaenn15 for showing me around New Callisto and Withervale, Seld0mshock and YammyAwesome for showing me around Shockton, and Butter_villager and Jindosh for showing me around Exyria. Really appreciate everyone of you guys for letting me explore your city taking pictures, even if I didn’t use all of them this week.
Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next week, and as always…