CivWiki Newsletter for July 1, 2024

Good morning and happy Monday from the Pacific Northwest!

I’m sure everyone in the US is taking a short week this time around because of something happening on Thursday. Maybe it’s electing the Labour party, I don’t know.

Hey, by the way, if you’re a regular reader but don’t do the polls, fill it out this week! This week’s poll is a Civ census, and it’s literally just filling out your nation and paying a compliment if you’d like. Plus, it’s fun, positive and completely anonymous!

Let’s get straight to the news!

Featured

Featured Image

This week’s featured image is of Pacem’s main square. I don’t think I’ve featured them in the top spot for a long while, and for an American holiday, it’s one of the best candidates. I always love their distinctive Victorian/1920s style, with such incredible detail and commitment to the style. They’ve recently started building a little bit more, and slowly but surely it’s becoming a great place to visit, not to mention some more shops arriving in town. I can’t wait to see more.

Featured Article

This week’s featured article is a repeat of February 6, 2023. This article just made sense, and I already wrote about it, sorry!

Orion was a country on Civcraft 2.0 focused on a democratic and capitalist system of government, with striking similarities to the United States government. The country was established at the start of the world in the middle of the northwest quadrant, and quickly became known as the most populous country on the server. Due to its easy access and low barriers to entry (which included a free plot for newfriends), the country saw several conflicts throughout its lifespan, including the raids from the Bloodcrew, Cuban Revolution, an secession crisis from Sennisten, one of the country’s borough.

Although the country had an anarchic build system, the country had several areas of cultural significance. The country had several notable builds, including the capitol (pictured), a grand train station connecting the CIC, and the Grand Olympic Stadium, playing host to the first known Olympics held on Civ servers, and inspiring future Olympics on CivClassic. Additionally, Cuban leader Farley50 lent his name to today’s Farley War, a term known for either a roleplay war between two parties or an event where players use weaker materials for fighting. Today, some of Orion’s players make up today’s Jorvik. (Full article…)

This week’s featured picture is the Orion capitol, in its capital. However, the Featured Articles list is something Farley50 was already on.

This Week In Civ

By the way, for the one person who pointed out in my open responses saying I got a fact about NetherPearled wrong last week, thanks, really appreciate it, but you should really send a correction to @specificlanguage on Discord where I get a notification quicker and can correct it in all places faster. It was copied from a newsletter I wrote two years ago, so it would be nice if I was notified earlier.

The News

A look down Pavia’s Main Street with great shaders! (cr: Codey)

Hey, just another reminder to fill out the poll this week!

Around the Server

• Wafflenation pearled ninjajackh12, a highly ranking Danzilonan.
  • Wafflehead, the leader of the one-man nation, continued to threaten nearby Danzilona in global chat and accused Ninjajack of deliberately leading him somewhere so others could kill him.
  • In response, bounty hunters came down via the Nordstream ice road system to pearl ninjajack.
  • Ninja eventually worked it out with Spenduh and BIG_MAC_645, the bounty hunters, and he was freed shortly after.
  • In response to the response, butter_villager then pearled wafflenation. His current sentence is unknown but for now, I guess you’re looking at a screenshot with C-tier Discord PvP
• OreStraya sold off 300 Monument Bank shares, as he indicated nearly a month prior.
  • I’m not going to link the individual threads, but xFier posted in multiple threads where top bidders, like JeyHey and Hakr_, were winning that their investment was not worth it.
  • Not going to argue one way or the other on this case, but OreStraya made considerable efforts to give attention to the sale.
• Meanwhile, Monument Bank made significant changes in their operating procedures:
  • They announced they would be introducing overdraft extensions as well as an increase in overdraft fees, but removing the holding account fee.
  • They also plan to give out 1.36d per share for their dividends, another high.
  • Their final announcement was to create a referral lottery, allowing referrers and referred holders to gain bonuses; with the referrer also entering a lottery. (editor’s note: you will not believe that “referee” is also a valid word to put here, lol)
• Anisso elected their third diet, with JAW985 leading the country.
• The Imperial Federation and Icenia both announced a friendship declaration with each other, creating diplomatic missions in their respective states.
• Icenia is also, once again, beginning the process to elect their July Senate.
  • They also completed a rail line to the Temporal Isles, with further expansions to the Deepslate Isles and SPQR.
• The Imperial Federation also finds that New Callisto has nearly 95% ownership of citizens in the IF, with very few actually being owned by foreign individuals.
  • They are also in their chancellorship election, so can’t wait for new leadership, again…
• Corggred made his first speech as Prime Minister of Amicitia, appointing Tophat to be Minister of Defense.

Metagame Highlights

• Civ+ announced that their beta has concluded, with their launch planned to occur on a new, smaller map on July 5.
• An influx of DMs to admins prompted SoundTech to clarify that users should not DM admins for such purposes that could be answered by modmail.
  • In responses, he also gave everyone pizza and money on Sunday.
• So there were a couple of reputation threads, as helpful as they are:
  • A nation reputation thread, although it has since been deleted but the comments remain
  • A BFF thread that asked who was friends with somebody
  • An enemies thread that asked who you’re enemies with
  • This is the “high quality” posts that people put on the subreddit these days.
• Anyway, here’s the actual high quality post on the reddit this week: this month’s claims map from TheJmqn.
• Kaprediem finds blockcolors.app which really helps finding a building color pallette on Minecraft
• SoundTech, if you’re reading this, PLEASE add a restart warning, it’s been a year and a half since we asked!!
• How do bunkers on Civ work? A very good question, many say
• Ascant is working on Agora Auctions a new marketplace platform — I guess you could call it eBay for Civ? Very interesting though!
• A new version of Snitchmod has been released for 1.20.4! (albeit, it’s still in beta, so use at your own risk!)
• SPQR has written their own newfriend starting guide, which they didn’t think I’d see… paging Jaydon
  • Also, I honestly don’t think CivWiki’s version of the Getting Started Guide should be referenced anymore, nobody’s updated it in forever, let alone the links!

The Fun Stuff

The Lux Capital in Amicitia with its steampunk aesthetic on the sea. (cr: BlueBox97)

Builds

Unironically, this section has actually become the most time-consuming section to write, just because of how many great pics there are.

• A little too late when I was compiling pictures but Griffin has some great new builds in their city, pictured is the new national art gallery (cr: Seekinq)
• You know I never realized that Dr_Bacon_Hair’s new tower is actually Vought International from The Boys, but it’s very good
• I’m sure you saw the Amicitia pic above, but their library dome is also pretty cool too! (cr: BlueBox97)
• Codey has been making some amazing renders of Pavia, clearly evidenced
• Pretty sure that this has been taken beforehand but Jaydon’s render of Altepetl still is super clean

Cool Content

• I’m breaking my own cutoff rules to highlight Codey’s news report, the Imperial Times — probably the best news report that isn’t made by me I really hope this keeps going, this is the content that I hope surpasses this stupid news
• Normally, I wouldn’t highlight AI-enhanced things in this newsletter, but this time I’ll make an exception: Owain posted an luma.ai video of Pavia’s town hall, and it actually looks quite good, let alone sort of funny
  • And then Codey actually made the thing happen in game
• You might have had a glimpse of it above but Dr_Bacon_Hair has some great art replicating their screenshots in Icenia

Memes

• Even after two videos, I still don’t think I’m any closer to saying anything more than huh?
• I make a major mistake on the newsletter and nobody points me out until a Reddit post comes along to tell me the Japanese-Korean switch reversed this time? WHAT??
  • For real though, just message me for a change. No need to make a huge deal about it and I correct it within the day.
• Rep thread be like pick a number

Non-Civ Content

• This week in baseball… oh wait oh no… THEY’RE BACK, RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!
• My Seattle exploration continues with the University of Washington, but with the saddest water fountain in existence
• This picture of Finn is how I look at Sunday night, 11:59pm

Poll of the Week

A look along the beaches of Maugate, in the Imperial Federation (cr: Urzork).

Last week, we had 50 responses. At least we’ve been hovering that for the past month or so. We might change that this week, though?

Kinds of Questions

There’s been some discourse about the direction of questions I like to give and admittedly, I am running out of questions. So I asked what kind of questions you like answering…

I do find it interesting that many people think political questions are the ones most worth answering. I rarely try to run questions like those since they can be rather divisive and try to make it more general about the game, but clearly people like expressing their opinions on politics more often. Not sure if it’s the current year or the Civ climate but, sure, I guess.

Poll Feedback

Since this poll was generally centered around poll likeability, I also wanted to see what people had to say about the polls in general so far. Fun fact, it’s been a year since Xcios gave the great idea of doing so, and around this time was the first time it was inline.

I think there needs to be a better focus on positivity in the questions. Civvas have a tendency of bringing the worst of the game to the public eye, and it’s really not a great way to get newfriends to get in and get invested.

This is what I hear the most about, despite the above. You’ve probably noticed in previous weeks that even though I try to pick the most insightful answers, a lot of the answers I get are spam, negative, or low-quality, and that’s not fun to anybody.

Having some positivity in the polls is nice, so we’ll see if that pays off this week with the question I thought of, though.

Polls would be more interesting if they asked more subjective questions that would be somewhat divisive. If the questions prompt basic or generic responses, it can feel useless to answer. Polls might see more respondents if the question revolves around giving users insights into the character of the civilized space - rather than more trivial fun facts.

This is something I really try to find a balance with how I do these. It’s difficult to find questions that are both accessible yet give a wide variety of responses. It’s tough, and questions are hard to think up.

I do know more recently I’ve been asking stuff about the playerbase themselves and not really opinion-based, but hopefully we’ll think up of good questions soon.

Anyways, there’s no improving. Polls are already good enough as it is.

Surprisingly, this is the sentiment that most people have. Poll questions are usually very tough to think about, let alone for three people, and we try our best to make this section at least somewhat entertaining.

Vote Now!

So this week’s poll is a de-facto census. Here’s a couple FAQs for those inevitable people who ask me questions:

• If you identify within a territory in a larger nation, name all subdivisions as possible to the country level (e.g. “Reggio, Mercutio”, “Icarus, Icenia” or “Withervale, Imperial Federation”)
• For nations in the Lyrean Commonwealth, only name your home nation (e.g. “Griffin”, not “Griffin, LC”.)
• If you don’t play on CivMC, add your server at the top-level.
• If you don’t play or haven’t joined a nation yet, fill in “N/A”

Firecracker Cry for Help

A render of Altepetl that’s like a square slice of cake, in a way. It looks great! (cr: Jaydon)

Uhh, I don’t have a lot of time to make a huge thing on the outro but you know, here’s the usual:

• If you want to contribute or help write the newsletter, just contact me @specificlanguage, I’m very glad people are way more willing to help this year so I really appreciate all your DMs and support!
• If you want an ad in the newsletter (we haven’t had any this week, basically), then just message me too please
• If you didn’t do the poll already please do, a Civ census is so helpful and getting as many responses as possible would be very important for this survey. Otherwise I will make a simple poll on Reddit

Anyway enjoy fireworks and/or polling nightmares on July 4! I’ll see you all next week, until then:

EDIT CIVWIKI

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