CivWiki Monday Newsletter for April 1, 2023
Good morning and happy Saturday from New England!
Yeah, it’s not Monday, but who cares. There’s several people that pointed out last week that I need a stupid break from all weekend trauma, so from now on, I’m happy to announce that the newsletter will now be permanently on Saturdays! Just found enough free time in my schedule to be able to write this a few days in advance so that I can actually do things on time.
Ready for the news?
Featured
Featured Image
This week’s featured picture is Dirt’s pyramid on CivMC. Hakr has done a great job constructing this amazing tribute to Ancient Egypt and has garnered a lot of traffic, as you can see in this image. It’s probably one of, if not the most beautiful sight on the server on the whole server at the moment. He’s done a great amount of work just grabbing the necessary materials getting this, let alone build this entire pyramid without the thing falling victim to gravity, so I’ve gotta commend him for this. There’s definitely more in Dirt, but just want to say that this is extremely commendable and god bless him!
Featured Article
This week’s featured article was contributed by banyough and Metriximor.
The You’re a potatoe incident was an event on CivClassic 2.0 that turned everyone on the server to a potato. The outbreak started in Lambat with Metriximor and banyough rotating a seemingly perfectly fine “potatoe”. The situation became funny when Metrximor went into third-person, which resulted in a hilarious point of view.
Due the hilarity and subsequent popularity of the potato, it became so revered that an entire religion surrounding the potato came around it, with Metriximor and banyough becoming known as the “High Priest of the Potato”. CommradePotatoe was also involved as the holy vestige. A cult emerged as the religious people became “potato bombing” different cities for their holy crusade. Eventually, because the potato bombing became so deadly as they purposely only used poisonous potatoes for their crusades that the admins had to delete all potatoes from the server as a whole. (Full article…)
This week’s featured article image is the POV of you as the potato.
CivReign News
What a…flattering koi pond in Gensokyo…
We’re Finally Advertising!
- It’s exciting that after much anticipation, TTastic has announced they would begin advertising on r/Minecraft.
- This comes after much anticipation following CivReign’s launch; because of declining numbers on the server, players have been desperate for advertising to bring new players into the genre.
- However, just like the server, they kept changing the advertising messages even as they were being posted. Somehow even the picture on the post on r/mcservers just kept changing.
- Eventually this resulted in no benefit whatsoever as the r/Minecraft mods recognized the post as legitimate advertising and deleted it as they so often do.
- Server reactions have been extremely critical, with many saying they’re extremely saddened they’ve started advertising despite continuing issues with several things, like
- Even though have accepted that despite its incomplete state, it was more important to bring in more players to keep the server thriving over fixing bugs. After all, they did realize that that’s what AAA studios do nowadays.
Other Dire Consequences of Post-Launch Balancing
- Everyone knew that the CCTT was doing something wrong when they announced that there were actually hiding 90% of the steel economy right under their farms.
- A new decree in Laurentia for dereliction turned into a full protest in the city as aggressive gentrification tactics are making vintage areas of Laurentia become bulldozed over.
- Problems emerged in Courron after holding a highly encouraging flag vote this past week, Courron officials announced there would be no official flag for the country.
- Many were anticipating one of four beautiful designs but unfortunately none of the Lords, Barons or Counts believed any flag was sufficient enough to represent the country.
- Revelations from the Brigantines have only made everyone more confused about who they really are. Are they actually just the Mehri in disguise? More at 10.
- Out of nowhere Gensokyo’s schematic importing finally worked after weeks and weeks of torture. In other news, it does look like Topaz has considerably less wealth than before, maybe something happened to their vaults.
- Breweryrn had a freak accident as the country has much of their brewing materials raided. Unfortunately, they also lost their snitches. Not like they were actually doing much raiding with their constitution yet anyway.
- Last Tuesday in Yamato saw the emperor overthrow the shogunate, then the shogun overthrows him back and moves to Kyoto and makes a new government. And the emperor can still dress like an emperor if he wants; that’s fine.
- Everyone knew this was coming; Mount Ida has been merged with Mount Augusta. They said it had been a long time coming, with JeyHey saying the names were just too similar and Mount Augusta just has that much staying power.
- Mount Augusta also announced that ASomb would become the mayor in CivReign, angering some pro-Nick members who imagined that CivReign would be part of the “nicktatorship.”
- In Sovia, Pirater is coming back. Many hope that it will end the long struggle of world policing and actually get back to meming.
- Norlund’s carrot festival is cancelled, it’s getting replaced with a potato festival. They are in the north, afterall.
CivMC News
Instead of highlighting amazing pictures, why don’t we take a look at the average building on the server at the moment?
Wingzero’s Reign of Terror
- CivMC’s owner, Wingzero’s free time has recently occupied with a second chore: creating brand new anarchy server.
- While he still intends to put Civ plugins on this yet-unnamed server, Wingzero has mentioned that he wants to “bring in the casual players” from 2b2t and other various anarchy servers that have been stealing the attention.
- Even worse, all players that have been banned from CivMC were also given promises they would not be banned for this upcoming server. They reasoned that they needed as many people as possible to fill the server, so they allowed anybody to run the server.
- Due to the foreseen overload in product development, it was only telling that GordonFreemanQ returned to Civ development to contribute code to make sure it goes smoothly.
- In response, player reactions have been surprisingly encouraging, but many are concerned that the release of the anarchy server would detract attention from the already deteriorating server population.
- However, Wingzero [addressed that there would be heavy advertising for CivMC as a whole on the server.] He said that there would only be a 5-minute playtime per person before getting kicked on the server, and only 1 person could play at a time with an anticipated long queue.
Other Horrible News
Northeast
- Very shockingly, Gang Shi has reached an agreement with the Elysian Pact for the country to join the alliance.
- After seeing that Warmia joined the alliance as well, Estalia approaching the country, saying that it was time to rein all the crazy nations causing drama to prevent another Rhode Island.
- Wilson admitted it was worthwhile to rein their shenanigans in for the time being, and believed that this would be a perfect way to do so.
- Lysika has said that despite their conniving schemes, Estalia realized it would make 100% sense to bring the best PvPers together to prevent another server-wide war, instead of hostile attacks.
- Real concern set in as Monument Group’s Q1 2023 earnings call was highlighted by the announcement of buying Nord Co, based in Lambat and Yoahtl.
- The upstart company that undercut many big companies to great success was saddened by the hostile takeover. Seeing as VilyanZ was unable to afford the high shop rents and restrictions in Pavia’s city it became inevitable and filed for bankruptcy just last week.
- Nobody realized that it wasn’t Gobblin’s account that was compromised, but that every other Pavian discord account was compromised.
- You can’t tell because all of the discord accounts are just pulling from ChatGPT, however. Gobblin will only give you a correct response.
- They realized that after building so many things, that they weren’t even keeping their accounts safe.
- Fempire has made femboys not only legal, but mandatory. I mean, it’s in their name after all…
- Under the leadership of Seekinq, Griffin has decided to finally move into the Industrial Age and start developing vaults & botting. They’ve really been lagging behind in Civ VI and their culture score isn’t doing too hot either
- Centuria, SPQR’s capital has been lightly obbybombed by the Kibblecrew on their way back from Cortesia. Nobody really noticed because they were on reddit arguing about some Elysian Pact thing or whatever
- Kaprediem was kidnapped and sent to Quezon City, triggering another Lambatan civil war as Empress banyough retook power in the country.
- Winterbourne’s Princess Bow has made yet another statement saying to not do.
- In the Phoenix Coast, more mergings occur as the Lesneria-Wlazestan continues to annex Weirdscraftland and Edius too as we keep the pattern going. Gang Shi is looking on with a weird, confused look.
- Next Thursday, Yoahtl’s newest pigeon migration is going to Ohio, along with bgbba’s highly anticipated city review. I hope the pigeons don’t shit on the city.
- Grand Imperium is not having a fun time as of late, but at least they have a nice hole in the ground that is totally not a problem
Northwest
- Zolo in Icarus announced that he’s been overthrown by the Not Logging In Party, although quite ironic they made him a threat he couldn’t refuse
- Early on Friday morning, Southshire finally announced that they would be renaming to Northshire, I mean, it’s really stupid that they settled in the North, right? It’s like saying North Africa is south of Commonweal--- oh…
- Icenia Sneeded and Feeded too much and now everyone’s the President of Icenia. Isn’t that nuts?!
- Over the last few months, Physics is still waiting for his sentence, but you know he’s basically yelling for Pavia to just walk into another war
Southwest
- Commonwealth’s OakShelf trial continues to cause problems in the region as OakShelf has removed any and all Commonwealth imagery from North Africa — it’s angered both Bowilla and Goat supporters as it’s basically ethnic cleansing
- Imperial Federation has continued their imperialism on the server, annexing Otonabee finally taking over the rest of the southwest quadrant with a “hostile takeover”, but they’ve also said the territory is going to Ohio as the state continues to conquer the contry. It’s fabled said the only thing that can stop it is Michigan.
- Videos from ErrorL have signaled that the country will get no subscribers ever
Southeast
- In Mount Augusta, the 11th anniversary went well, except that there are only 11 buildings total in the city, so I’m announcing that I’m going to derelict Mount Augusta
- Septembrians have rumored they would make Mount September again this September, but I’m not entirely sure if Squareblob will return which is the bigger question
- Dalgon’s dwarves, as it turns out, somehow dug their hole to an Aqua Nether portal on CivReign. Not sure how that’s logistically possible as that’s on another server…
- Yesterday morning, Yodabird said that “I should be able to dedicate more of my own time again to domestic development! Great things are coming.” I guess that means he’s working on writing another constitution.
- In Lustiania, banyough has apologized for being inactive, but Lambat is going to annex the country as Empress banyough is the leader of both, making it twice as inactive as before!
- Nara’s casino is finally getting into the sportsbetting competition, and they’ve first started betting to see when these god damned spleef matches are getting finished. This newsletter is brought to you by DraftKings…
- Great new builds from Truidencia except they’ll never make it to live since they’re playing HOI4 so much.
- New this week, Eddie Murphy and the Arsenio Pact got overthrown again for the first time this iteration, after getting overthrown 190 times last iteration. I guess there’s a first for everything.
- On the south end of the continent, Venne is doing some raiding, but I guess they’re raiding their own city so I guess I will play the HenryDraton who imperializes the city then?
- Wednesday saw Doom City, and by extension, Doom Delivery become annexed by Estalia, mostly out of goodwill towards ShadySauce. Kinda spectacular that Laconia of all places is now Hjaltland
Around the Civ
- As of Monday, CivCiv has finally started development on basically converting the full set of plugins into mods to eventually play Create: Above and Beyond. Janet blackquill has said there’s a lot of inspiration to be had.
- New additions to the CivWiki this coming weekend, we’re going to be making every nations’ iteration page into something like “Civcraft2:Mount Augusta/Mount Augusta (Civcraft 2.0)/2.0” after much feedback from our editors.
- Due to unforeseen circumstances, Gjum announced that he would be stepping back from development on nearly all of his project. He cited a need to focus on “sneeding and feeding” in Icenia instead.
The Fun Stuff
A really flattering building on CivRev.
Builds
- I really have to give it to Dirt, that was a really nice way to take a shit on everyone…
- They really did build a Sneed Seed and Feed in Icenia finally happened, I thought that would never happen but they really did build it in the Whole Foods
- So everyone saw another West Virginia build coming, but I don’t think people anticipated the turn into Fallout 76 territory as they made a Fallout Vault instead, I hope they totally don’t become inactive
- How about another spectacular build from Pavia, because there’s never enough pictures from them?
- If I don’t include a picture from Mount Augusta, I am going to be hunted down by the nickstate
- Seeing it for the first time ever, I can’t believe that they actually replaced the Gensokyo build with a giant fucking tree from Animal Kingdom, can’t wait to see all the lines that come to it.
Multimedia Projects
- For real, the amount of effort gone into this map art from Nara is extremely commendable
- Amazing work from Henderwicz as usual, I mean I can’t possibly believe how much effort he puts into every one of his maps
- Up out of the drama, I really want to see more YouTube content from this OreStraya guy, although it seems like he needs a better microphone
- Let’s not forget that Okx and MrJeremyFisher did amazing work to keep their mods up to date with CivMC protocols
- This art from Quauhtli’n’Mia is singlehandedly keeping Yoahtl alive
Memes
- How do you do, fellow kids?
- Everyone NEEDS to look at this, they really did just make a Last of Us parody of CivMC
- My instincts say that this is cursed
- Until this happens, I’m never logging in (although I will not log in regardless)
- Sometimes it just had to come to this
- The OneDest system is a perfectly sane system and does not cause any problems whatsoever
Non-Civ Content
- Going to go ride the 6 train tomorrow and totally not get injured
- Opening Day of Baseball was last Thursday and I was excited to see an Aaron Judge home run on pitch 2, a 8th-inning tiebreaker by the French and seventy five pitch clock violations because Shohei Ohtani said one word
Sneeding Cry for Help
You are in the rabbithole now, you can’t escape.
Alright, if you haven’t noticed the date by now, then April Fools!
I was really reaching for stupid meme links this week so hopefully you found some of the jokes funny and I’m sure 90% of the links did not land at all.
I do want to thank Thraldrek for coming up with some semi-genius level ideas that actually kind of worked but probably didn’t. If you want one last joke, take a look at the first letter of all the top-level bullet points. Maybe it’ll be a secret message or something, I don’t know.
This finally completes the trilogy of me making April Fools memes every year of things semi-related to what my current project is:
- 2019 was a fake announcement of Commonwealth annexing nearby drama-prone Mount Augusta
- 2020 was a shitty parody of my Newfriend Nations series
This is probably the last time I’m going to make a parody anything major because humor is hard and it was really hard trying to think of jokes for every nation ever. Hope you had fun with my absolutely terrible humor. The real, completely serious newsletter will be back on Monday morning.
Anyway, as always…