CivWiki Newsletter for June 24, 2024

Good morning and happy Monday from the Pacific Northwest!

Quite a busy week for me, but I had some good enlightening talks to some people on Civ. I’m sure everyone’s been a busy bee because there hasn’t been that much news on my radar this week.

However, I’m sure that as we’re heading into summer, there’s been an influx of newfriends and new or returning nations, and that’s something Civ likes to see. Heck, there’s even a new server out! Looking forward to what summer has to offer, a lot of fun stuff coming up!

I think it’s time to finally get into the news!

Featured

Featured Image

This week’s featured image is down Volterra Prime’s main avenue, looking at the Senate building. It’s odd that I haven’t actually featured any Volterra buildings as the featured image, but it’s prime time to do it now! Although everyone knows this is their second city, the massive buildings, incredible architecture, and city planning is some of the best I’ve ever seen ever on Civ, and it’s always a delight taking pictures when I come. The city’s always expanding and I can’t wait to see more pictures. Huge credit to ItzHoover for this week’s picture.

Featured Article

This week’s featured article was written by cosmie (clementvm).

Vinland is a Viking diarchy situated on the northern edge of Impendia in CivMC. From its origins, Vinland has maintained a close-knit community, developing a reputation as a friendly and welcoming nation. This environment has facilitated early alliances, notably with SPQR and an associate member in the ASN, and contributed to Vinland’s rapid growth in both population and territory. By integrating newfriend nations and safeguarding the north from disruptive players, Vinland has strengthened its position in northern Impendia, and expanded its influence to the global stage.

Similar to its social structure, the architecture of Vinland is heavily influenced by Nordic culture, yet it is also marked by a wide range of different styles. This variety reflects the independence of citizens, as well as the cultural contributions from newfriend nations that have become part of Vinland over time. The result is a unique blend of architectural styles that symbolize the nation’s inclusivity and dynamic growth.

This week’s featured image is of Vinland’s capital, Willibald, from above (cr: Not90).

This Week In Civ

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The News

The Doom Delivery Building along the river in Icenia (cr: x1025).

Around the Server

• Icenia celebrated their Jah Day with a successful PvP tournament on June 18, with an odd incident occurred shortly after.
  • Exyria announced they were claiming the Liberty Island bridge on June 19.
  • While it was absolutely just a “for laughs” claim, a small immigration building was placed there.
  • The exclave was then torn down the following day by Icenia.
  • I really don’t want to amplify any “political” implications because I highly doubt there were any.
  • I’m sorry that I didn’t get any images of Jah Day, though! It doesn’t help that I only got home once the event ended ;(.
• Pavia announced Mery would become a protectorate of the country, immediately making it part of the Lyrean Commonwealth. It finally unites all significant members of the Lyrean Community at the start of the world.
  • Pavia also announced the Crop Floating Exchange, a place to exchange major XP ingredients for money.
  • Monument Group announced overdraft charges, removal of holding fees, and a 5% increase in dividends.
• Mount Augusta finally ties the knot on one of the most poorly kept secrets on CivMC — they’ve announced their claims, located near the Lyrean Commonwealth.
• The Imperial Federation and Amicitia announced the Treaty of Illustrious Kingdoms, a friendship and alliance treaty to garner greater cooperation, mutual respect, and frienship.
• I still think WaffleNation is a meme but if you insist a mention in the newsletter makes you a serious country you’d be sorely mistaken.
• There’s a certain thing where if you see a piece of land, claimed five times over, it just gets funnier everytime and only now do people really point it out on Kaltsburg
• Speaking of weird claims, Truidencia is reclaiming their stewardship of Gensokyo, taking over their territory.
  • The shape of the claim is quite wacky because Wafflenation and Ipta had claims in the area.
  • I’m also going to point out that Transylvania claimed Gensokyo’s southern territory in previous months, which also doesn’t conflict with everything present. Just for people to keep track.
• Amicitia announced Cormin to be their new prime minister.
• Temporal Empire is placing an unorthodox temporary claim “in anticipation of a build”.
• SPQR announced a new slate of elections, set to elect a new Tribune and all three Praetor spots.

Metagame Highlights

• Civ+ launched last weekend — although the number of players is small, it’s been consistent over the weekend. And they’re still making improvements, despite the launch being pretty stable.
• Sure, you can measure the most liked and disliked CivMC members cold, but you might as well just ask for a reputation thread
• Glad to see an oldfriend come back from way long ago!

The Fun Stuff

Hanyang, a Korean* settlement in Vinland territory (cr: EmperorAshina).

Builds

So. Many. Good. Pics. This. Week. What a week to be a glutton for photogenic Civ nations. Unfortunately, it was also a week for my wifi to have problems uploading pictures.

• Not even a joke, although x1025 visited Icenia with great shaders, I’ve literally seen this skyscraper before on the Seattle skyline
• Along with Emperor Ashina’s great view of Hanyang as a whole, the interior doesn’t look half bad as well!
• So I only recently found that not only did Not90 make a render of Vinland, but also one of Volterra Prime and Shockton, as well as SPQR’s massive Roman city
• Oh my gosh, an upload of Lusitania City from banyough??? They aren’t DEAD!?
• Not sure if this is online yet, but we rarely have good ship builds, let alone three from Potato_Duke
• I’ve never heard of Maugate before in the IF, but with this amount of builds so far, I’ve gotta visit sometime! (cr: Urzork)
• Max_imil has a great photo of Icenia’s Liberty Isle from the sea — great shaders!
• Moving onto Pavia, Owain_X has an ominous shot of Pavia Town Hall that looks like how you walk into a boss battle stage
• Kael Not_A_Grape popped off with a bunch of good Pavia pics — even though I only showed the Griffin one
• They don’t announce it but Truidencia is doing a lot of building work in their capital — it’s getting really crazy! (cr: ObtainableSpat)
• I’m also Hooving this week for some great pics of Volterra — you saw the main one above, but here’s another one in Shockton (cr: ItzHoover)

Cool Content

This week, we had a flurry of really high quality videos, and it’s rare that we even have well produced videos on Civ, if at all, so huge props to everyone here:

• Paddington_Bear takes us on a tour of Pavia, and its amazing scenery and builds. Great shaders and some great editing as well!
• Jaydon has a collage of screenshots from his seven years around the game. I don’t think even I have the computer I first played Civ on anymore.
• I know that Amicitia has this running joke of Jon leaving for Winterbourne but this is a pretty good meme!
• Emperor Ashina takes us on a tour of Vinland’s new KOREAN settlement, Hanyang. Good editing and the music really sets the scene really well!
• And the last of the five videos, TheJmqn goes outside of his comfort zone and posts himself playing the trumpet playing the Godhaven anthem! When is the Civ orchestra coming?
• Seekinq shows off the Lyrean Commonwealth’s new scope with a great color scheme and awesome mapmaking

Keep up the good content this week!

Memes

• Well, as it turns out, saying you’re not a meme makes you one, especially if your first name is Waffle
• Did someone say potato?

Non-Civ Content

• This week in Seattle weirdness (in-between apartment hunting): the Fremont Solstice Parade! Although, not everything was hunky dory. Not to mention that before the Parade, there were Painted Bicyclists. You can google that yourself. (I loved it though!)
• Remember when I said that the Mariners were 10 games up last week? Well…
• Wait a second what the hell new Lawrence album just dropped
• As I’m now stuck in good food YouTube, TIL there was a history of the French Laundry, before Thomas Keller. And it was still one of the best restaurants in the country.
• Forget going to Brazil, you’re going to Quezon City!

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Poll of the Week

Griffin from a less sought after angle that shows a wider breadth of the city (cr: Not_A_Grape)

Last week, we had 50 responses.

Timezones

This graph isn’t completely accurate however, there are 5 respondents in both Eastern Europe and ANZ regions.

As expected, a considerable amount of people are still in East Coast and Western Europe, but the amounts on the fringe timezones, such as the West Coast, Eastern Europe, and ANZ are a little higher proportionally. I’m mostly asking this because as a PNWer now, I’m behind the rest of the world when it comes to everything. so it’s harder to talk to everyone when it’s 8pm over here and everyone’s asleep. It is fun to have time to write now, though.

As this question was a repeat of one of the first polls I ever did, here’s the graph from the poll on July 10, 2023. It is kind of a big difference when you had half the responses from the year before though.

Something interesting to note is that we don’t have as many Eastern Europe and ANZ respondents as before though. This may be due to Transylvania not being as active as it was last summer, although I can’t pick out a reason for the ANZ decrease.

Why Do You Play Civ?

While we had some good open responses, I fear the quality (and quantity) of poll responses have generally decreased since last year. I might convert this into a proper Reddit post for better responses!

When asking this question, there’s usually two types of responses I get. The first is the core of what Civ creates:

[While] I don’t actually play civ anymore, but I liked playing civ for the way relatively simple mechanics come together to create complicated emergent factors that interact with a stable and informed server population to encourage social organization of diverse kinds seen nowhere else in Minecraft… [I still think] CivMC is still the most interconnected, culturally and socially robust, server I’ve ever played- and the only one that lives up to claims of representing civilization. That’s fascinating and deeply compelling.

Because it’s a unique take on the Civilization/nation building theme some servers have with many plugins you don’t see anywhere else in the Minecraft community, and because of these plugins it feels like a actual player runned server and not a server controlles wars and any other rules then cheating.

Civ is a collective legacy and the things you do and the builds you create contribute to the tapestry of Civ. What you do affects what others do, and what they do affects what you do. There is truly no gaming experience like it.

And the second is what Civ cultivates:

There are nations for every play style, and nations that fit every personality. As long as you look, you can find somewhere you’ll love. That’s how its worked out for me anyways :)

As someone who took a 2 year long pause, what drew me back is the community, and unique challenges and opportunities the civ genre grants

to f… around either in VC or local chat with a bunch of random people

I enjoy the community I found and the fact that since there is often a shared focus or goal, oftentimes it makes you feel like you are apart of a team

The unique mix of what Civ can create, along with the community that it cultivates is something that drawn me back to this game time and time again. Through thick and thin this game has been one of the constants in my life and it’s always been a fun, wild ride.

Vote Now!

We’re gonna be a little metagamey this time around:

Reorg Cry for Help

Volterra’s Senate meeting for last month.

Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter!

I think it’s not a secret that I’ve gotten more busy — more evident that I’ve been writing the majority of this newsletter on Sunday night, as per usual.

I’ll probably do a proper announcement within the next couple of weeks, but I’m trying to kickstart the process of doing a non-trivial reorganization in how the newsletter gets developed, now that publishing has been returned to a relatively stable schedule.

For those who may be interested in contributing or highlighting their region in the newsletter, I would highly suggest contacting me @specificlanguage — while it’s encouraged to have decent writing skills, the only thing required is a budding interest in Civ. This would be especially helpful if you’re in Alenarith, the Imperial Federation, Icenia, Yoahtl, or any nation that outputs a lot of news, either within or outside this newsletter.

So if you want to help contribute (and make me do less work), please let me know!

Thanks, and see you next week…

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