CivWiki Monday Newsletter

A semi-weekly newsletter for Civ servers supported by the CivWiki

CivWiki Newsletter for June 3, 2024

• specificlanguage

Good morning and happy…day after the CivMC anniversary! I hope everyone had an enjoyable time on the server yesterday (whoever joined to crash the server!) and got their commemorative items for everyone.

A hearty welcome to all the new players who will be arriving this summer, hopefully this newsletter will keep you and everyone else up to date on what’s going on in other parts of the world, not just those in your own backyard!

With that, I think it’s time to get to the news…

This week, I wanted to do something different for the CivMC anniversary edition of the newsletter — four different player-run events, works of art, or activities that people have done throughout CivMC throughout the last couple of years. It’s the least I can do to really “celebrate” CivMC’s second anniversary, instead of pulling out a picture of something we’ve seen a million times before.

From left to right, the pictures are:

The landscape pictures will return next week, don’t worry. Just something unique for this time around!

Featured Article

CivMC is a Civ server that’s widely known to be the mainline successor for CivClassic, and carries many innovations for the genre. Headed by much of the same team that helped with CivClassic’s final year, the server was launched in summer 2022 with a highly anticipated and busy launch. Major gameplay changes also saw the Nether being used as the ExilePearl dimension, as opposed to the End in previous iterations, along with a single account limit. The admins continue to push boundaries with new updates, events and features throughout its run.

Although the server experienced major wars in the form of the Generic War with a global conflict against Rhode Island, along with several wars between the SEC and its member states against Gang Shi, the server has also seen considerable player interaction and numerous massive builds. Among the unique aspects of this iteration compared to previous Civ servers are the standardization of global railroads such as OneDest and Great Overland Rail, the creation of the Monument Bank, the first banking system on Civ, an International Hockey League, and several major alliances across the server.

This week’s featured article image is of Pavia’s town hall and courtyard, one of the largest builds in Civ and is well-known to be a major landmark of the server. (cr: me!)

If you didn’t notice, the last couple of featured articles were Civcraft, followed by CivClassics and CivMC! A small little pattern leading up to the anniversary, teehee.

This Week In Civ

On the week of June 3 - 10…

2014:

2017:

  • CivClassic was also opened to the public (on June 2!)
  • The first iteration of CCMap was released.

2022

2023:

A message from MFC InternationalsYou crave it, we have it. Head on over to MFC Internationals for a quick roid shot or a snort of primo peruvian, preorder now by DMing @metallictophat! You maaay get a special discount if you’re a Volterran Citizen this WEEK!

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The News

A view of both Shockton and Volterra Prime. (cr: Seldomshock)

Around the Server

Metagame Highlights

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The Fun Stuff

A vibrant Winterbourne Harbour at night. (cr: Tophat)

Builds

Cool Content

Memes

So nobody’s complaining about me complaining about bad memes this time, here’s what I think makes a good meme, and then you get to compare it to these:

Non-Civ Content

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Poll of the Week

SlothInASuit’s airship above the jungle.

Last week, we had 60 responses. Is it better for the numbers when I put a controversial question on there?

World Wonders, Part 7

I know people are actively getting tired of this, so be glad this is only the second to last report of this one.

Only thing I’m going to point out is that the USA Vault, despite the fact that it is one of the only seeds on this map that was not designated as a build, was one of the top scorers and is also in the top 10, is somewhat indicative of what people on Civ do consider as world wonders, that it’s not just good builds but historical significance, even if it’s a military structure. Very cool.

I’ll reveal the “unequivocal” world wonders soon enough. I think people kind of already know what these are going to be.

Please, Spec, PLEASE stop the world wonders polls. The people demand better polling 😭

Alright, alright, you’ll be glad to hear this week is the last wonders poll you’ll see. To be fair, this saved me from thinking up questions for at least a month or two (that were probably at worse quality).

Community Heartbeat

The last question(s) for this poll were all about the community’s health, as compared to previous iterations on the server. If you’ve been sticking around, this was inspired by Mount Augusta’s relocation post from the previous week.

You’ll see why I try to do more positive polls of this nature:

While more than half of the responses were either “much” or “somewhat better”, if you looked at the open responses, I don’t think that was indicative of this result:

The presence of particular social power players is poisoning the well

I think sakana got it write in their dissection[?]. I’d rather be called slurs then try and navigate this Highschool drama like political landscape… The new meta is insiding, no one can be upfront and honest, you are punished if you tell the truth. If you compromise you’ll start to be taken advantage of and fucked over. So In turn you go on the defensive, allow no room for compromise, and you yourself become just as much of an asshole as everyone else.

Like the MTA relocation post has said, manipulation has been a tad bit easier to swallow… but also, this iteration feels more cliquey to a degree I haven’t seen before tbh… I believe major contributors to this are: “armchair civving” where people manipulate from Discord/Reddit… most punishments have either been too lenient or too severe… and finally just the general echo chamber nature of Discord causing people to stay within their circles instead of wandering out and understanding other peoples sides to the story on the server.

In general I don’t believe CivMC will end anytime soon…but I do believe that there is a chance right now to try to build bridges instead of burning them while the major problem children are gone in order to prevent the community from becoming worse.

The community within my nation has been excellent and everyday i have something fun to do and something to talk about with my fellow senators and citizens, however outside the bubble the international community is, okay at best. People usually do not visit where i live due to the far and isolated location but those that do are very fun to interact with. However the same can’t be said for said of my friends who. Whether its their fault or not, are not being treated well by the server.

I try my best to find happiness in every radar ping and person i meet, and i can confidently say that I’m succeeding in it

Newfriends try their hand at the geopolitics they saw on Civclassics but do it poorly so all it ends up being is social manipulation that has no place on the server. No one wants to challenge the current hegemonic power structure so the old players will simply continue gaslighting everyone while new players think they are 200 iq geniuses getting the leg up on the old players when in fact they are 1 bad day away from being wiped, as we’ve seen time and time again.

I personally see a massive difference between politicking and the way that people are being absolutely horrific to one another. Remembering the human seems to be lost on a lot of civ players, unfortunately.

All the above being said, though,

Civ boomers need to take off the rose tinted lenses, civmc is way less toxic than precious classics was

Since ri and butternut have been gone the server feels much less unstable

I think this response best sums it up:

Having played since civcraft 1.0, this iteration feels better than others as far as general toxicity goes. However, I think that most groups moving to communicating through separate discord channels has really fractured the community in ways that have hurt the game.

Civ moving to Discord and being able to metagame from bed has had consequences on playing the game, where it’s very possible to keep up on the game and not play (see this newsletter!) I’m sure people have their own opinions on why this isn’t that good.

Polling, but Better?

I’ve got a final line of World Wonders for you. I’ll compile the final list in either the next or a future newsletter.

Please note that all information submitted is anonymous. A red star (
*
) means that this question is required to submit.
Which of these places do you consider as world wonders?
Select all that are applicable.
How far are you willing to travel on Civ (for shopping, etc.)
What's your favorite catchphrase (or copypasta, etc.) on Civ?

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Biannual Cry for Help

Several players gathering for the anniversary celebration and constitutional convention in the Imperial Federation (cr: SlothInASuit)

Once again, thanks for reading this week’s anniversary newsletter!

One fun fact I’d like to mention for this anniversary though: the first real “newsletter” that looks somewhat similar to what you see today was published on June 6. If you’re curious, take a look to see how it was in its prenatal state! Warning, I personally think it’s really bad writing.

I know I’ve said multiple times I’m working on bringing the 2022 backlog of newsletters that were removed from the style refresh a year ago, and I’m hopefully going to be working on doing so once again, starting with the one above.

Thanks to BritishWanderer, Gjum, Ahri, Flameoguy, and Xcios for providing some support for this week’s newsletter. I’m totally not writing this entire newsletter on Sunday night…

Thanks all and have a great week! Until next time…

EDIT CIVWIKI