CivWiki Newsletter for May 27, 2024

Good morning and happy Memorial Day from New England!

As summer starts up again, it is not a far-fetched view to say that we’re going to see new players, stronger activity, and possibly more drama within the next couple of months. I hope that this will continue to cover everything as we keep rolling along through these newsletters.

A side note though: my in-game presence will start to become severely limited in the next couple of weeks, but I’ll try to keep up on news within Discord in the meantime. This does mean that you won’t see any new shader pics from me, as much as I want to see it. It’s mostly that I’ve got a lot going on right now, but I’ll still be able to keep up on Discord and stuff like that.

With that being said, it’s time to look at the news!

Featured

Featured Image

This week’s featured image is a grand view of Groveheart, Imperial Federation. I’ve highlighted a lot of builds from them in the past few weeks. Admittedly, although I’ve never visited it, the builds there stick to the rustic theme and I really appreciate the build style, and it’s about time we got all of these builds within context. A brand-new build that’s been burgeoning over the past couple of months, it’s a great place to visit, and I can’t wait to see more. (Credit to Gidein for the picture!)

Featured Article

CivClassic (sometimes noted as CivClassics) was a Civ server that revived the Civcraft style of servers. While it initially launched with a short-lived iteration in 2016, its second iteration launched in 2017 and ran until 2021, making it the longest-lasting Civ server of all time. In its initial years, it intended to keep Civcraft-style mechanics, but several different admin teams in its later years performed version upgrades, delivered significant updates, and imposed new rules to invite more vibrant and exciting gameplay.

The server’s history can be marked with two major wars, the Somber and Infinity Wars, both long-lasting wars involving major world powers across a server-wide landscape. Many players and nations from previous Civcraft iterations returned after years-long hiatuses due to its classic mechanics, and saw the return of major world events including the Olympics and a burgeoning economy withg major marketplaces in cities like Mount Augusta and Yoahtl. Although its founder, TealNerd, closed the server in 2021, its final admin team would go on to develop CivMC following its closure. CivClassic’s server itself stayed up as an archive of past worlds, being dubbed CivLegacy until a sudden closure.

This week’s featured article image is an overview of Mount Augusta on CivClassic 2.0, a commonly used image when advertising CivClassic on other subreddits (cr: u/CivRenders).

This Week Last Year

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The News

A unique view across Pavia City, looking from the Town Hall down into the city below. (cr: IntentGames)

Big News

Buckle up, folks.

• Derzavia and the Yuan Empire were in a small scuffle the previous week.
  • Ambush_3105, the leader of the Yuan Empire was pearled by hekghlkegh. He claimed he was acting under nearby Derzavia in order to establish a new nation called the “United Casson Bay”.
  • VilyanZ and Tophat eventually found his pearl in a severely decayed building, with Bailean and other forces destroying infrastructure in the region. They eventually gave control of the territory back to Nevsednam.
• Mount Augusta formally announced its relocation measures, with the country maintaining its current claims but rebuilding in a new location.
  • This being said, this relocation, and also its new location, have been the worst kept secrets on this server, with leaks being present on some maps and in Discord. If you know, you know.
  • However, Sakana wrote a comment below the post that argued that “[CivMC] is not a healthy community.”
    • Although this comment has a lot of stuff to unpack, he said that “A lot of you are not pleasant people…Everyone else is the problem,” citing that the community has devolved into a state of gaslighting, misdirection, insiding, and feigning innocence when the blame is on you.
  • Comments below the post were at least hopeful for the revival of Mount Augusta in the future, but stated that this was probably one of the most friendly iterations, with many postulating this could be nostalgia goggles talking, but generally agreed that “manipulation was so much easier on this server and is a bad thing overall”.
  • I do hope that Mount Augusta does live a better future, discarding the nearly 10 years of past and issues it has and towards the future.
• AugustusVex posted about Vinland ignoring and banning him, not understanding why.
  • For context, AugustusVex was a Bailean citizen, however both CatistStudy and DSBulldogs have stated that his actions unnecessarily escalated tensions between Vinland and Baile, which promptly saw his removal from Bailean government.

Small News

• Although not reported last week, the Yuan Empire, Nordon, and Anisso founded the Alliance of The Sea, focused on mutual defense and protection of government.
  • However, Anisso declared they would exit the alliance only after a week, mostly citing inactivity.
• While this is technically internal to the alliance, it may be as well be semi-public knowledge that Baile and Vinland have been accepted into the ASN as associate members.
• Monument Group is set to lower the iron-to-diamond price at nearly all exchanges, after prices in several exchanges have all stayed at 12.25d.
• After declaiming a large swath of land in the southwest, Truidencia reclaimed some land, deeming it “crucial” to their nation’s future.
• This is a formal apology from me to Drekamor for getting him timed out of CivMC general because I actually did
• Lambat announced that they would be moving to a monarchy, with TikhalNeGedvilas becoming Prime Minister and Regent as Kaprediem will be inactive in the future.
• Sirboss asked about Kallumbia’s reception on a poll, with many indicating that they really don’t care about the country or are tipped off by the fact that they’re associated with Kallos, even if only by name
• Temporal Empire announced the opening of their capital city, Aika Nivella for May 31.
• Tortugan is announcing their re-establishment as a country, following their previous merger with Kaowta.
• Imperial Federation Chancellor Gidein published the first of a weekly set of newsletters on May 20 outlining new builds, economic changes, and political restructuring. (of course, he has to do it on Mondays…)
• Meanwhile, Aeth is preparing their return with a new schedule of their reconstruction of Imperia, the town that was formerly planned to be the new capital of the Imperial Federation.

Metagame Highlights

• It is worth noting that CivMC’s second anniversary will be coming up next weekend. No word on whether the admin team has anything in store for this date or weekend, however.
• Realms of Andora worked on several changes this week, with daily numbers hovering around the teens for the week.

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The Fun Stuff

Danzilona’s newly constructed hockey rink and one of the first fully interior ones on the server. I can tell it’s inspired by IRL arena designs, so great work! (cr: peakman2)

Builds

• While I’m not a fan of the name “Reggio Corporate Gardens”, it does look really nice (cr: Zyra_Bot)
• I already showed off the wide Groveheart image from earlier, but I’d also like people to appreciate a different view as well (cr: Gidein)
• Shockton’s new Underground Rail station does a great job with it looking like the jungle, although is it wrong to say that it sort looks like a Rainforest Cafe? (cr: seldomsh0ck)
• Lilac_Twilight’s been slowly showing off a crafting pagoda — while not an impressively large build, its detail is all the more striking, can’t wait to see what they’ll pull off the in the future
• You’ve already seen Danzilona’s arena, but gosh darn it, I really like the design of it with all of the teal colors and its interior design (cr: peakman2)
• I already showed you that this Amicitia picture has some neat shaders, but hey it’s dope (cr: Raeders)
• Eldoria is no longer just a meme and does have some builds (cr: Dark_FFC)
• I guess there can’t be a newsletter without a cool picture of Pavia, this time from Vetranio Bridge (cr: domi)
• Aeth’s building is back with a hotel in the mountains of Imperia inspired by the Hotel Bristol in Karlovy Vary

Cool Content

• The Civ Essential Resource Pack was released by Forged and Sadchamp, featuring remixed paintings, goat horns, and randomized Zombie skins.
• A new CivMC claims map released from u/TheJmqn, with not many changes this time around.
• Reggio also has released great slides to explain their corporate procedure

Memes

There’s so much low-effort spam on the subreddit now that it’s actually getting annoying. If you’re not posting something that’s truly related to the game and instead just “i’m posting this map again with minor modifications”, you’re really belonging on r/196

• I guess I have to show this queer poll in support of Pride Month, but you should know that this is low-effort content that doesn’t involve playing the game, even though I 100% support pride
• Ghas news was quieter this week, posting a picture of Jalhf and hinting at some big stuff for their “1 year” of news

Non-Civ Content

As always, this is the part of the post where I show I’m both terminally online but also touch grass.

• I touched grass — or I guess more accurately, I touched concrete next to a baseball-shaped grassy field and then watched a terrible baseball game where the Boston Red Sox almost got no hit for 6 innings. Am I just a fan of bad baseball teams or?
• If you’re a fan of crazy boardgames like I am, Smosh played Blood on the Clocktower, a very niche Mafia-like gameplay

And then, look at all of these people who touched grass with other Civ people!

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Poll of the Week

A great shot along the shores of Amiticia (cr: Raeders)

Last week, we had only 41 responses. It definitely helps for me to post these on Monday morning exactly, but of course, that’s not always possible.

World Wonders, Part 6

Because we didn’t get a lot of responses, this one isn’t quite going to be as interesting as previous wonders polls.

It is worth noting though, that at least all of these were recognized in some capacity, in a relatively even way across the board. I’ll keep these in mind as we keep going with world wonders, but these obviously didn’t reach the top 10 in any capacity.

Scientists

This is an extension of a question from ComradeSankara, who posited that “all Civ players are either political scientists or computer scientists”. While this could be true, these are two quite narrow lanes that don’t really conform to every Civ player, otherwise everyone who doesn’t bot or write Java(script) code would be considered a political scientist, which doesn’t seem right. So, I expanded the categories quite a bit to cover more common categories that fit Civ players.

By expanding to at least “architecture scientist”, it really opens the door to all the building people who don’t really fall into either of those two camps already. This question now felt closer to “which Civ school do I really belong to”, which was the intent of all the scientist additions.

Tophat in particular asked what a “content scientist” was, which in fairness was poorly defined. I did intend for that category to be closer to a “content creator”-type person, but hey, it worked in the end!

Favorite CivMC Moments

This would normally be the part where I show responses, but I think this would be better spun off into its own Reddit post. There’s a couple of worthwhile answers but a lot of people did not have anything fun to say. Although, there were a couple of them:

GONG NIGHT. PIGEON NIGHT. COASTER NIGHT. PLANE NIGHT. ALL BUILD NIGHTS.

The Christmas Party at the North Pole with unlimited brews and resistance 5 thanks to the admins. The drunk fights were very funny

Every time something chaotic happens minutes before or after the newspaper drops (sorry not sorry)

Saying ‘Take care everyone and keep being the amazing peeps that u all are ^v^’ and making someones day better (like u!)

Now, this being said, there were a significant amount of people who put stuff either saying they never had any fun on this server (then why respond?) to things that should not have been said on this form.

It would be much better I think, if this was spun off into its own Reddit post.

Vote for Your Future!

This is wonders vote number seven of eight, click this link for all the candidate showcases this time around! Please respond appropriately.

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All Together Now! Cry for Help

Several players making the jump from meeting people in-game to meeting people in real life. Can you believe I’ve only met one person from Civ irl? (cr: rt6yhjyuvy6)

Once again, thank you for reading this week’s newsletter! I’m glad to see some lively commentary throughout Civ this week in a semi-productive manner.

I already said this earlier, but my in-game time is going to be pretty limited throughout the next few weeks or so, but I want to try to keep up with the news as much as possible, so you will see newsletters as normal. But if I get facts wrong, the blame is most definitely on me.

Regular readers should know that if I somehow make an error, I will try to fix it as soon as possible if it’s a major error that ruins an entire story, but if it’s something small like a typo or tiny factual error, then it’ll get batched with bigger updates. If you don’t see a correction right away when you point out something to me (message me @specificlanguage!), then you’ll probably see it eventually corrected.

You’ve also seen a few ads throughout these weeks, and if you’d like to place one yourself, talk to me too!

Thanks to Tophat, Motoko, ArtificialDriver, BritishWanderer, Shadowvdark, Highroll, CatistStudy, dsBulldogs, Sdorr, MrJeremyFisher, for this week, and once again another apology to Drekamor. Although, an unthanks to RedDevel who didn’t respond to my DM earlier this week.

I think that’s all I’ve got for now, so until next time folks…

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