CivWiki Monday Newsletter

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


CivWiki Newsletter for June 10, 2024

• specificlanguage

Good morning and happy Pride Month from California!

Wait a second… that doesn’t look right…

For realsies though, I’m now on the West Coast, and staying here now. It’s actually over for newsletter cels in Europe. As a result of moving on the West Coast, the publishing schedule is going to change quite a bit. If you’re an early reader next week, you’ll notice that the newsletter is extremely early than usual, especially for this amount of content. Hopefully, this will be the standard going forward.

On the plus side though, you get an early newsletter!

Well, that’s enough logistics blabbering, it’s time to celebrate Pride on Civ! Let’s get to the news!

This week’s featured image is of a view from Fempire’s Rainbow Bridge. As I didn’t celebrate Pride Month specifically last week (for obvious circumstances), I decided this newsletter would be the best time to do so! With Fempire’s support of LGBTQ+ culture as well as its colorful rainbow bridges it was basically a perfect fit. From the background you’ll see lanterns, the NoTruePunk memorial, a giant ship, and the Rainbow Bridge’s full extent. The only thing I couldn’t quite get in the picture was the Ice Hockey arena, but it’s quite bedazzled with rainbows too! Great work and I can’t wait to come back.

Featured Article

The Entrana Republic was a nation on CivClassic 2.0 that intended to be a successor city to Pacem. Founders of the country travelled to the southeastern quadrant of the server for more populous players in summer 2018, constructing a German-like government. Consisting of mainly oak and stone structures in European styles, the country eventually took shape around Freelands, another country in the region which merged later on.

Entrana had build considerable relationships with other nations, formalizing an embassy row and completing a long sought-after rail connection to The Commonwealth via the Entrana Transcontinental Express, and built a modest XP and brewing economy revolving around agriculture. The founders of the nation eventually moved back to Pacem in the later part of CivClassic. The territory eventually became owned by Cortesia Del Mar in the server’s later years.

This week’s featured article image is a view from the wheat fields of Entrana, looking towards the town.

Starter Guide Bounty

I was talking with Jaydon the other day, and we were both frustrated about the state of how new players get started on CivMC. While some guides exist, the vast majority of these are either outdated, lackluster, or have such scattered information that it’s impractical to use.

This is why me and Jaydon are introducing a Starter Guide Bounty this summer, in order to improve the state of onboarding, and so we don’t have to do this all the time

Some nice things to have:

  • A “step-by-step guide” on what to do, similar to what I wrote years ago
  • A very simple intro guide to plugins that doesn’t overwhelm the player with too much info
  • Some nice recommended nations (although this will obviously become out of date)
  • Helpful links, as well as how to use them (because everyone doesn’t get)
  • Something somewhat visually appealing and/or easy to follow
  • Anything else that might help.

For starters, we are allocating 32db for this bounty, and this price may rise in the future. You can use the CivWiki discord or message either of us at @specificlanguage or @jaydon on Discord for more info, ideas, feedback, whatever you want to run by us!

No “This Week In Civ”, this feature will return next week.

The News

The three remaining LGBTQ+ flags in Pavia’s Courtyard outside of Town Hall. A little dark, sorry!

Sloth Antics, Part 1

The first one isn’t the one you probably came here for, but because it was chronologically first. However, this section is important for context for the following section.

Sloth Antics, Part 2

As a reminder to what we know at this point, there is a 300d bounty on SlothInASuit.

The above is pretty much all I can say about the conflict without anyone getting mad at me. Most of the evidence is locked up in DMs, and I respect their privacy.

Important News

Eire in Amicitia, a farming district on the sea with beautiful views! (cr: BlueBox97)

Bad news guys, the news isn’t over yet.

Still Important News

Metagame Highlights


Moto Ice - Ice for SalePlace an order for regular and/or packed ice today!>Over 60 CS sold! 13d/packed ice CS. 12d/regular ice CS.Click here for vendor thread! (CivMC Discord)Think Icenia when you think Ice. Discord: @motokusanagi

To place an ad here, take a peek at the ads & pricing page.


The Fun Stuff

A sunset arrives through the buildings of As’Kuyea, Baile. (cr: me!)

Builds

I would have time to research more builds this week but I did not.

Cool Content

Memes

Non-Civ Content


To place an ad here, take a peek at the ads & pricing page.


Poll of the Week

A star fort in San Pietro, Imperial Federation, a new construction project courtesy of Potato_Duke.

Last week, we had 52 responses.

Wonders, Part 8 (and the final results!)

We’ve finished working through all the world wonders! Last week’s results looked like this:

Vinland and Imperia, very good choices for the top scorers this week. But here’s how it shaked up in the grand scheme of things:

I’d like to proudly give the unofficial CivMC’s eight wonders of the world to:

(Picture credits are in order: speclang, speclang, Shadno, speclang, SlothInASuit, MaybeGravy, Seekinq, and Princess__Bow.)

Yes, it’s eight, but these were far and away the top vote getters — the next section were in a cluster below this. Also, I excluded Main Street because Pavia would just have too much stuff and I’d like some varied wonders, if it were me.

This is, of course, a pretty subjective and non-comprehensive list and was pretty much just a fun experiment so I could fill questions within the polls. Be glad this set of questions are over now!

Travel Length

Interesting to see that most people do travel a fair amount, and also interesting to see this is actually a bell curve of responses. Travelling across the server is as easy as ever and people do it fairly often. I don’t really have a lot of insights here, it’s probably because there are just a lot of economic centers in each region that have their own specializations, so people travel to these places a lot looking for bargains or special goods. Or just a tourist!

Catchphrases & Copypasta

The open response question last week was about favorite catchphrases and copypastas that people have. Let’s start off short and sweet and go with:

gm

If you’re not a regular in Pavia chat, I personally don’t know why you see so many “good mornings”. As a West Coast resident now, I personally find it extremely funny when the first Good Mornings come around at…11pm Pacific time…

Peace in our time

Mercutio’s rallying cry, as always. We should all aspire to have peace in our time, whether it’s a war, a cold war, or whatever.

They made Imperial Truidence 15 blocks higher

Of course, Truidencia looks amazing now, but in CivClassic when it was frisbee time, bgbba could not be malding harder.

addy and vanax have the respect, trust, and autonomy to do these kinds of things first, and justify it to leadership so we can disseminate the information publicly

Remember when toontasker actually used this in an unironic sense to try and salvage even the slightest bit of Rhode Island public opinion? That was fun.

In case anyone is confused, there is a tradition of having BritishWanderer make these posts, since he has the best individual relations with the community. It was likely written by somebody who would have been shat all over had they been the one to actually make the post, and I doubt BritishWanderer even read it before he copypasted it here on their behalf.

Yeah, even I used this one for ads. While this copypasta’s context has been long gone, I don’t think it’s a far stretch to say that Brit has some of the best relations with people in the community, so it’s not only funny, but accurate.

It was hard to believe that 8 months ago my life changed…Somehow, the admin of that server got her phone number… mom asked me if I could call him dad, just to make him feel more welcome…A few months later my mom came in. She was glowing. They had an announcement, they were expecting a baby!…Usually they locked the door but I was lucky this time. “Hey, dad… wanna play some Bunkies with me?”…He smiled and jumped out of bed.

We both logged on together for the first time. I was so happy to see:

Adderall has joined the server Ian_X12 has joined the server

I don’t know why but this copypasta always gets me, no matter how fast or slow I scroll for these things. Gosh darn it.

Vote Now!

For this first question, although I’m asking about pronoun usage, this is merely a poll and is not going to be reflected in any way.

When writing the news, I try to use they/them pronouns when referring to players — unless I’m familiar with a person or their pronouns are stated/obvious. But if I misuse them, please forgive me! It’s something I always make mistakes on with these long writeups.

Please note that all information submitted is anonymous. A red star (
*
) means that this question is required to submit.
What pronouns do you prefer?
Select all that are applicable.
How has the 1.20 update for CivMC been feeling for you? Any complaints/questions/concerns?

Gadzooks!

Gadzooks! There’s supposed to be an ad here but nobody paid for this spot!

Click here to see how you can advertise anything Civ-related here!


Prideful Cry for Help

A flock of birds surround x1025 at the Olympic Stadium.

Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter!

What a nightmare this one actually was. I was writing this one while zooming all over the country this week. A huge, huge thanks to the following people for their messages, whether I said I read them or not:

Phew, I think that’s it unless I left anybody out for information.

As usual, if you’d like to help me in any capacity with these newsletters, I greatly appreciate it (considering I am going to only get busier over the next few months), and you can message me @specificlanguage on Discord for more information.

Otherwise, thanks for reading, and I will see you all next week! Until next time…


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