CivWiki Monday Newsletter for May 22, 2023
Good morning and happy Monday from New England! A bit shorter of an introduction today because there’s not much to this newsletter anyway, but it’s good to have it regardless.
As an FYI, I’m taking a short pause from the newsletter for a while, as I’m going on vacation after graduating school. You might see a shortened newsletter like you’ve seen in the first few weeks, or just nothing at all. I just need some time to rest and also not work non-stop like I have been for the past year and a half now.
Regardless, it’s a beautiful Monday for Civ! Are we ready for the news?!
Featured
Featured Image
This week’s featured image is Pioneer Village in Lambat City. Yeah, I guess I did highlight this before when I was running out of time, but this is because Kaprediem is semi-departing Civ so I did want to highlight a place that he’s played a part in over time. Lambat isn’t just its capital city, there’s a great mall and urban area in its western part and plays host to a lot of beautiful infrastructure rails, and buildings all across its territory from Katipan and New September. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a big shader screenshot of anything else in time, but it’s a nice remembrance of Kapre’s legacy here.
Featured Article
Varkonia’s iteration on CivClassic 2.0 was a country focused on foreign security and internal builds. Founded following the Somber War in 2018, they initially overclaimed territory held by Alpoko. Following the resolution of those claims, they eventually merged and incorporated Gabon into its territory. They became one of the major countries in the creation of the United Northern Congress (UNC), an alliance that stretched much of the major nations in the northern half of the server. However, following incidents in Mount Augusta and the Infinity War’s outbreak, the UNC fell apart and instead formed the Entente among other allies which fought against NATO.
The country had a robust constitution, legal system and law structures. Although a constitutional monarchy, the country’s senate proposed nearly 200 bills. The country was also known for its massive builds; the country’s signature tower at their town hall granted them entry into the Order of St. Marcus a few weeks after the country’s inception. Varkanos, the country’s namesake, was also known for posting elaborate memes based on movies on the r/CivClassic subreddit. Varkonia were also known for seamlessly adding defense systems, including vault construction, despite the high build quality of their own country. Today, many Varkonians are part of Volterra, while many Gabonians are part of Pavia. (Full article…)
This week’s featured image is Varkonia City as seen in 2019, taken by Mickale.
The News
Regents Row in Imperia, the capital of (what else) the Imperial Federation. I’ve been waiting to show this picture for a LOONG time and I’m so glad it’s finally on live.
A much shorter week for news, fortunately.
CivMC
- Pavian Crown Prince BritishWanderer IV passed the Lottery Act, allowing anybody to win lots of diamonds upon his death!
- Princess Bow is now Queen Bow as she was coronated as Queen Talya II of Winterbourne.
- Yoahtl elected NeoTide as alcuahtl, I previously stated he was axolotl. To be fair, it was in their announcement…
- Additionally, Exilus has been active again, and are building a new connection to Lambat on the Great Overground Railroad. Crossposted from the Yoahtl Times.
- Kaprediem announced that he would be stepping down from active Civ play. He shared some thoughts about the genre in a following post. Additionally, he previously announced last week that the Lambat Post would be discontinued.
- After voting for independence from a referendum last week in the Lesneria-Wlazestan region, Achiuwa reformed their country as a republic.
- Less than a month after electing a Diet, Transylvania disbanded the legislative diet, citing inactivity.
- Nara announced they would leave the Independent Southern Powers, citing power issues including the Dalgon incident from the previous week.
- Commrade_Potatoe has been announced as the new Director-General of Infrastructure in Cortesia Del Mar.
- Vexiograd was recognized as an independent state from the Leibniz Confederation, and also claims the war between Kroven still exists…
- The Imperial Federation has elected its first parliament, with the United Constitution Party winning six out of its seven seats.
- Icenia’s senate chose 7misun, blob, and Shadiest to become the magistrates for this month.
- Warmia has moved to left-running rails, much to people’s annoyance. There is only one other country in recent memory that has also done so, and that’s Southshire on CivClassic. (They reverted back to right-running rails on CivMC.)
- CivMC announced that they would be releasing an update today(?) for Wordbank, Enchantments, and fixes for Factory and Enchantment cost fixes.
Metagame/Other Servers
- Eddie attempted to do a mining trip in Icenia but nobody showed up for 20 minutes. :(
- He also asked the community was the most surprising thing we’ve seen in the past year. Honestly, I’m surprised I’ve ""played"" for a full year.
- Apparently people are bored again, so we have another nation/reputation thread
- Return of the Civ was updated several times this week, but has stayed put at version 1.18.4.. Additionally, its map was rolled back 2 days ago due to technical difficulties.
- RektTangle has written a lot on Civ mechanics for analysis and history-keeping. Take a look!
The Fun Stuff
SlothInASuit’s floating airship over the sea. He’s built a few before, but this one’s really impressive with the sails’ shapes.
Builds
- Here’s a cool timelapse of DonFuer’s newest hospital for war refugees, can’t wait for the next war…
- Frog
- SlothInASuit has an airship that you saw above, but how about a few bridge pillars with impressive detail
- Been waiting for Regents Row to finally get posted in its full form on the server itself for a while, good job Aetherix
- Transylvania has a lot of wood
- So what if we saw literally all of Griffin and then Seekinq pulled out some screenshots using a wide ass render distance, wouldn’t it look great?
Cool Content
- Well let’s just also throw DonFuer’s hospital build since it was essentially a video too.
- Here’s a new map of the Imperial Federation, with one notable absence in its western territory
- Low-quality 2014-ass Transylvania ad
- Holy shit why is Fox and Dino being burned at the stake in Mery
- Huge high effort of the Civball map in Deluvia
- Earyx has published two books in Nara, see their discord for more details on how to find them, you book collectors…
Memes
- Mushroom_Cultist posted a dot post (which is years out of fashion at this point), and then I assume the mods removed it for spam
- At this rate everyone asking to get a brew will never get one
- When is the Overwatch meta going to change? Oh that’s right, never because PvE is cancelled
- Somebody suggested mining via ChatGPT on CivReign discord which I can almost entirely believe is a joke)
- It’s very sad that someone asked how to connect on CivReign and was quickly met with “it’s dead…”
Non-Civ Content
If you’re wondering why I have this section anyway, it’s nice to at least say what I did with myself this week and also I need to find something to entertain myself while writing this newsletter…
- Baseball paragraph can be nothing less than I got to go to a baseball game this week! Although as a Red Sox and a Mariners fan, I kind of regret (but also don’t?) that I wore my Sox hat that day. That being said, the big difference is that the Red Sox can fucking hit. Anyway, obviously nobody cares about the baseball stuff so all I’m going to say is that Chris Sale is BACK
- But who cares about baseball, look at these player portraits LMAO
- Truidencia is celebrating Norwegian independence!
- LeBron just fell to his knees inside a Walmart
- Do you like board games? Maybe gather a bunch of your Civ friends and play Blood on the Clock Tower and see who really is the next DockerImage
- I’ve been procrastinating by watching old Conan O’Brien shows. On theme, here’s one when they had the writer’s strike in 2010.
- I’m fairly sure I’m going to dox myself by saying this, but I graduated with my Bachelor’s this past weekend!! Everything was pretty boring, but ironically the commencement speaker was so unlikeable that everyone booing him was literally the highlight of the weekend lmao.
Poll of the Week
This is something new that Xcios has suggested as part of our newsletter. Each week, I’ll release a poll and you can respond, with the responses shown next week. It’s pretty casual, all things considered, don’t take it too seriously. This poll does not record any personal or in-game information.
As it’s the first one with the polls, we’re going to do a couple of polls and see how it goes. This week’s questions are:
- Did CivClassic end too early?
- What kinds of featured article would you like to see?
- Would you like to see more polls in the future?
Click this link to respond to these questions.
Feel free to discuss these questions in the comments on Reddit!
In the future, to better accommodate these polls, a new layout which could involve a small React/Javascript/Firebase implementation may be coming in the future, stay tuned! (If I could finish this project…)
Intermission Cry for Help
Unfortunately after this epic 53-week streak, I’m going to be taking a little break from the newsletter from a couple weeks. Although it’s partially for burnout reasons, it’s mostly because I need a break from working non-stop over the past year, not just writing. I’m still going to rotate the featured articles on CivWiki the next couple of weeks regardless, and make a really short version of the newsletter on the Current Events section. Maybe I’ll post that instead and go back to a very simplified form of the newsletter so I can just phone it in these next couple of weeks.
I’ll be back for June 12, but if I don’t return I promise I’ll let you know. I’m sure I’m going to miss several spurts of drama, but who cares about that anyway. I might quit for all you care, why the fuck not.
I’m hoping to at least do newsletters semi-regularly out to a certain funny number at least 16 numbers away, so if we get to that point, I think I’d call it quits for sure.
Thanks to nobody this week, I actually wrote this one all myself. To be fair, it didn’t really require too much proofreading this week.
I’m going to extend the deadline for the Picture Competition until June 12. Get your pictures and builds in for the anniversary of CivMC!! You can also upload things you’ve built so far.
And as always…