CivWiki Monday Newsletter

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


CivWiki Newsletter for June 24, 2024

• specificlanguage

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!

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

On June 24 - 30 in…

2014 (written by Akiyama64):

2019:

  • NATO attempts to retake Sempiternal (following the Second Siege) but is repelled by Mir the following morning.
  • Annwyn leaves NATO.

2022:

2023:

  • The Butternut-SEC War continues, with skybridges in Bloom and CaneCorp, along with removing infrastructure owned by SEC nations.
  • CivLegacy, the server that hosted map of old Civ servers, unexpectedly shut down. (You can now find Civcraft and CivClassic maps on the Internet Archive.)

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


The News

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

Around the Server

Metagame Highlights


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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.

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:

Keep up the good content this week!

Memes

Non-Civ Content


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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:

Please note that all information submitted is anonymous. A red star (
*
) means that this question is required to submit.
What kind(s) of poll questions do you like seeing and responding to?
Select all that are applicable.
What could we do to improve the quality of poll questions? How could we improve poll response rate? Do you have any poll question suggestions you want to see?

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!


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…


EDIT CIVWIKI