CivWiki Monday Newsletter

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


CivWiki Monday Newsletter for May 1, 2023

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Good morning and happy May Day from New England!

I hope it’s a beautiful morning for you but it was not a beautiful weekend for me considering you guys managed to throw not one, but three spits of drama this past week. There are dull moments on Civ, sure, but when there’s something happening, there’s something happening.

Speaking of something happening, this is the 50th CivWiki Monday Newsletter! It’s been quite a ride for the past few months. I’m not going to celebrate until we get to the year mark in a couple of weeks, but it’s a milestone nevertheless.

Are we ready for some walls of text?

This week’s featured picture is Icenia’s skyline, once again. It’s been a while since I highlighted the city and I think this is a newer render from Icenia since a lot of the background pieces in the town center are things that have been added since January, so it’s gotta be new. For me, this is one of the most distinctive skylines of Civ, not just because of the density of the skyscrapers but the diversity and organizational layout of the city. Also, not to mention approaching the city from the sea is really cool too!

Featured Article

The Battle of the Crucible was a major vault attack during the Infinity War. In February 2020, Columbia discovered that NATO officials had insided the country and significantly griefed their vault in an attempt to take control. Entente and UDF fighters rushed to the vault to defend it from an incoming attack later that afternoon, as NATO attempted a retaliatory attack. Unlike most vault attacks, NATO officials began their offense at bedrock level, working their way inwards.

At the onset, only eight defenders were at the vault at the time, but fighters from Mir and later most Entente countries helped defend the vault. Several NATO attempts at breaking through defenses were made but had stalled. A fatal mistake by Bob_The_Builder allowed Entente forces to gain the upper hand; he was pearled after being discovered behind enemy lines. NATO officials eventually retreated after this occurred. This event arguably marked the turning point for the war; although the Siege of Columbia and Valyria continued, NATO fighters began to burn out due to continued attacks and would lead to the end of the Infinity War within a few months. (Full article…)

This week’s featured image is the Crucible Vault, pictured close to the start of the Infinity War.

The News

The Black Mesa Vault in Gang Shi, shortly after being broken. Picture taken by Quauhtli’n’Mia.

Market Watchdog Attacks “Chinese” State

When Chris told me about “That’s Nuts” I knew it was gonna be huge!

So I’m sure that you guys remember last week’s events with fastestgrass being pearled by the SEC. It turns out that while last week was accurate, there’s a lot more to talk about now. Please note that there were several of these events, there may be issues with the sequence of events that I’ll fix as necessary.

On Tuesday, the SEC retaliated by disabling a considerable amount of Gang Shi infrastructure. Following this, as you probably all know, the SEC declared war on Gang Shi (although the war had been going on a good while at this point.)

Continuing into the early hours of Wednesday, a SEC skybridge began towards Gang Shi’s vault. They continued towards the vault, eventually pearling PhysicsGamer, squidhasthebad, and UB40 in the ensuing attacks with help from allies.

So Gang Shi’s gone. That’s one of the three(?) big dramas done, maybe take a little pause before continuing.

The View from Hell

Gensokyo, from like a few months ago. I think I may have actually used this picture already. Thanks to Cowguypig for his pictures.

Guys, this meme is dead, just stop.

If you’d rather only be looking at geopolitical drama, feel free to skip this next set of bulletpoints:

Obviously, if I were covering the newsletter normally, the above is all I’d cover. But if you’ve stuck around for months at this point reading this newsletter, you’ll know talking about Gensokyo is a touchy subject. Feel free to dive deeper into these other arguments if you’d like to lose some braincells.

At the end of the day, the last set of bulletpoints are just venting frustrations in and around Gensokyo’s behavior, and nothing really justifies the fact that they are claiming a lot of land while “inactive”. If you’d like to see more about mapping and the thorny issue that is claims maps, skip ahead below to the “metagaming section”.

Everything Else (on CivMC)

It’s the church of t! It’s an actual church (in Prussia’s section of Pavia, taken by ArtificialDriver)!

As if we didn’t have enough to talk about yet…

CivReign & The Other Servers

A windmill on Return of the Civ by nickflik and fiamatta. Sorry let me check that again — THREE windmills.

Metaversing

Transylvania’s lovely town center. Yes, ok, I’ll recognize you exist.

Hold on, we’re five headers in and we’re still not done yet?

The Fun Stuff

The Orakuru Clocktower in Nara towering above the forest.

Builds

Multimedia Projects

Memes

Non-Civ Content

Mayflower(s) Cry for Help

Phobitica and friends posing in front of a monument in Mercutio.

Thanks for reading the 50th CivWiki newsletter. WAIT, it’s Week 50 already?! I’m wasting too much time on Civ…

I’ve had a lot of work IRL this week, so I haven’t had time to post the screenshot competition quite yet, but I will do so hopefully later this week when I’m less busy and not trying to cobble together three final projects at the same time and also report on like five different drama things that happened the entire weekend. But trust me, it’s coming!

Thanks to everyone who made this newsletter possible including BritishWanderer, Creepi0n, Yodabird19, Gjum, and new additions to the staff, Xcios, RedDevel, ShadySauce and reffelruz. Also huge thanks to JuniorTide, phobitica, Oceanstar, prawny331, fastestgrass, Lagiacrus, Jaydon, Metriximor and Cortwade for providing information for this week’s newsletter. Wow, look at all those names. You’re never going to see an assemblage of that again.

If you’d like to support the newsletter:

Regardless, thanks for your support for this newsletter the 11 months, it’s been quite a ride and we’re almost to a whole year of this thing. Can you believe it?

Anyways, as always…


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