CivWiki Newsletter for June 17, 2024

Good morning and happy Monday from the Pacific Northwest!

Hope everyone’s had a great week, I certainly had a great week in California, but now I’m going to be in the PNW for the foreseeable future. Newsletters might slow down a little bit due to my schedule, as well as having to settle my own personal life, but I’m sure I’ll find a way.

Speaking of which, I’m glad this was a nice and quiet week for everyone — I don’t think I could handle another marathon like last week. Are we ready for something cool?

Featured

Featured Image

This week’s featured image is a little slice of nature. Previously, this park in Shiroyama was completely barren except the main “cherry tree” you saw here. Today, this is an entire grove of cherry blossoms around the lake, and I took this beautiful picture a couple days ago while on a quick trip around Alenarith. Really great stuff and Nara did a great job taking advantage of the new mechanics, can’t wait for more!

Featured Article

This week’s featured article was written by Quanton_Biscuit.

The Grasslands Gambit, also known as the DGP-Gang Shi War was a major war on CivMC that occurred in December 2023. The war was notable for its significant impact on CivMC geopolitics, the short and decisive nature of the war, and a double insiding resulting in two major pearl holding vaults falling after just days of combat. The war began when the Dawn Guard Pact, an alliance formed between Icenia and Yoahtl, launched a devastating first strike against the nation of Gang Shi and its allies.

The DGP justified the first strike on Black Mesa, Gang Shi’s primary vault, in a post titled “Pearled Harbor”, citing numerous leaks from Gang Shi’s discord that described a plan to isolate, encircle, and eventually destroy Icenia and possibly Yoahtl along with other leaks describing further, server-wide ambitions. The War exemplified several interesting tactical sequences like trapping and then baiting an iceroad and repelling a skybridge. Additionally, the war set a new status quo for effective uses of public relations and subreddit posts on Civ.

This week’s featured article image is a view of the Gang Shi’s skybridge (and counter-skybridge) on Altepetl’s capital.

This Week In Civ

To place an ad here, follow this guide.

The News

Icenia’s renovation of the aptly named “Shit Island” with new flowers, and trees and such. I think it needs a new name now though. (cr: Quanton_Biscuit, Enforcer, Anvil)

Long News

• Truidencia, the Imperial Federation, and Transylvania announced the Antarctic Treaty Entity, a regional alliance focused on peace, prosperity and friendship by committing to mutual defense and cooperation.
• Interim Prime Minister Cissonius of Pavia announced on Monday various changes to to the nation, making public that Moloka & the Deepslate Isles had become protectorates, alonside the nation of Dirt being integrated into Pavia Proper.
  • This announcement included talks with Mehri regarding their potential position within the Lyrean Commonwealth as well as reinforcing Pavia’s protectorate of Lambat.
  • All of this news was accompanied by a new claims map made by Seekinq.
• Pavia held their second general elections (technically their 17th!) last weekend after PM CedarValiant unexpectedly resigned.
  • The campaigning for the position went on throughout last week, with Renew, Pavia First and UPP all posting their ‘manifestos’ on how they would shape Pavia.
  • The campaign was not without its controversy with numerous accusations levelled against ruling-party Pavia First, with them being held to account over crime and an unstocked ore exchange.
  • Despite this, frequent citizen polling indicated an increased level of support for the Pavia First party and impressively high favourability ratings for the interim government.
  • Voting began on the weekend, and by Sunday it was clear that Cissonius and the Pavia First party had been handily re-elected, with Pavia First netting over 58% of the vote.
• The Pavian Stock Exchange announced they would be regularly checking regulations of all companies currently on the exchange — and unsurprisingly all four companies currently are compliant.
• A mysterious message was posted by CivMC owner Wingzero on Friday night.
  • Those in the know may remember this was a frequently used emoji on the CivClassic discord, to delete overly laggy cactus farms on that server.
  • This was revealed by Yoahtlan officials to be their cactus farm — their cactus farm near the southeast part of the GOR would cause lag when players rode along the railway.
  • However, while the farm wasn’t deleted, excess item entities generated will be voided.
• A short update on the Sloth situation from the previous week — Exyria paid the outstanding bounty for Sloth’s pearl from the Temporal Empire. Negotiations are currently underway.
• Vinland and the Bebo Corporation had a minor conflict over a territorial dispute.
  • Vinland had reports from Bebo that “seismic activity” had been appearing near a citizen’s home with natural walls.
  • With very obvious suspicions, Vinland placed bastions near the walls, and upon removal, Bebo Inc. accused Vinland of “colonialism” over their bastion placements. (The post was removed, but attempted to outline the case above).
  • The post got major backlash over their inability to properly survey the land, encroaching an established nation, and the fact the land would be used to build a skyfarm, which in my opinion, is a major waste of space on Civ
  • A followup post assured the situation was “resolved”, although no details were given.
• Meanwhile, Vinland also announced they would be opening elections for their nobility, with seven candidates running.
• Anisso gained land after an issue with the Iris Confederation.
  • I have absolutely zero proof that a nation called the “Iris Confederation” ever existed, but supposedly they overclaimed much of southwest Alenarith, including Anisso. Not sure how accurate this is though.
  • The ATS, an alliance with various small nations across the server (not to be confused with ATE), took ownership of the territory. Along with cooperation from the Temporal Empire, Anisso regained most of its land, along with a small portion for the Iris Confederation.

Short News

• Sirboss formally opened applications for Pearl Protection Insurance — a way of obtaining insurance (wow!) if you get pearled after an initial assessment.
• A new country named Ipta was established, overclaiming the small island that currently contains Gensokyo’s train station.
• Volterra announced their new Senate, with Cicero being reelected as Lord Paramount.
• Nassau reduced their claims as a result of unused land within their borders
• Southw3st announced they would be returning to the game.
• Pacem appointed several citizens to its Council of State within various respective responsbilities.
• Amicitia released their newest newsletter, highlighting their various claims as well as departures of some of their main figures.
  • They did so after releasing this document highlighting the various claims within their territory.

Metagame Highlights

• Civ+ announced its re-launch, running 1.8 (but accessible on any later version!) and coming this Friday, June 21. Watch their promo to learn more.
• We’re happy to announce that DockerImage has won the Starter Guide bounty that me and Jaydon proposed last week! While we will be making some edits to his draft, we hope that we’ll have a proper starter guide for new players soon.

To place an ad here, follow this guide.

The Fun Stuff

San Rafael Castle, in the Imperial Federation (cr: HuntWolf, Potato_Duke)

Builds

• We don’t have a lot of builds this week because I got busy, but I want to highlight the work that Potato_Duke is doing with San Rafael, Delos’ Market Square coming soon to live, and Icenia’s renovation of their Statue of Liberty Island.

This is then therefore a call to build more this summer!!!

Cool Content

• Sadchamp created a great infographic on how to mine debris — we’ve already included it above but here’s a direct link!
• VilyanZ is not happy about all of the new alliances because he had to make this (albeit amazingly formatted graphic!) twice
• Although, I don’t think it’s updated unlike this map of the Lyrean Commonwealth from Seekinq
• Lusitania and Anisso teamed up for a good ‘ol drink in this great Civball picture from banyough

Memes

• bro i’m confused, is this the alliance graph
• Are we really trading Amicitia sun for Winterbourne freeze?
• Damn they really want jjon to return

Non-Civ Content

• Your Seattle Mariners somehow have a .581 record, sweeped the Texas Rangers and are first place in the AL West by 8.5 games, a first since 2001. They also somehow have the best lead on a division this year? You bet as hell I’m going to be yelling about them in the next few weeks.
• Stratmatt has a cute little doggo that looks so funny, it’s great

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

Poll of the Week

A look down the forest in Danzilona, along with a bridge and a couple buildings in the distance (cr: peakman2)

Last week, we had 47 responses, a little less than usual.

Pronouns

The first question was about what pronouns do people use or identify as.

I did this as a “celebration” of sorts for Pride Month, but as a side effect, it does show a very obvious correlation for those who play Civ, which many have known for a while and that it’s a very male dominated game. That being said, the diversity of those who do not identify with masculine pronouns are quite diverse, with feminine and gender-neutral having some good representation!

1.20 Feedback

The open response question was about feedback from the 1.20 update. Unfortunately, this question wasn’t a plant by RedDevel, nor did I accuse him of planting this question (although, he is officially unofficially on the newsletter staff).

Although I won’t show all positive responses, I will say that a majority of the responses had positive feedback to give, which is great to see!

bring back my […] fossils

This continues to be an issue with compatibility between versions. Probably some NBT issues that went rogue with the update. Hopefully this gets fixed soon.

reconfiguring a new instance is torture. worth it for the new build blocks tho

It has been fine but no snitchmod is tough and I accidentally let a bunch cull because it wasn’t on my mind.

Haven’t updated yet due to mods.

I actually got a lot of responses which talked about the pain of upgrading their versions, especially when they haven’t upgraded their mods using this guide. Civ mods especially are slow to update so it’s quite a cumbersome process. Can’t wait for the 1.21 upgrade!

I like it that netherite upgrade templates were added but i would like to see a use for pitcher pods. I would also want armor trims to be added.

I wish it was easier to get camels

FASTER CAMELS

Yeah, there’s a few comments that are just looking for better upgrades for the current versions. I agree, though. Vanilla features are quite sparing in the current Civ environment.

Vote Now!

We’ve got a repeat question that I did a year ago, because now I’m curious…

Cascadia City Cry for Help

A bunch of baby turtles off the coast of Winterbourne (cr: Empop).

Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter. I’m totally not procrastinating once again by writing this on Sunday night.

Thanks a bunch to Jalhf, Huskydog, SoundTech, stratmatt, Jalhf, DSBulldogs, BritishWanderer, Gjum, and Xcios for their help on this week’s edition, along with Quanton_Biscuit for writing this week’s featured article, and Jaydon and DockerImage for helping with the starter guide bounty! We’ll try to release the full thing with edits soon.

If you want to help contribute to the newsletter, I really appreciate your help! Message me @specificlanguage to see how you can get involved.

I’ll see you all next week. Until then…

EDIT CIVWIKI

• < < < Last week’s newsletter (June 10)
• Suggest a featured article to @specificlanguage on Discord!
• Submit an ad for the newsletter!
• View and post comments on r/CivWiki
• View a shortened version of this newsletter on CivWiki