CivWiki Monday Newsletter

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


CivWiki Newsletter for July 1, 2024

• specificlanguage

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!

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

On the week of July 1 - July 7 in:

2015 (written by Akiyama64):

2017:

2022:

  • Estalia brokered non-aggression pacts between CivMarket, Butternut, and the Kingdom of ErrorL; two of three are nations bordering Estalia to prevent another situation such as the Annexation of Ku happening again. The conflict has since died down as Black_Fusion was freed.
  • CivMarket auctioned off plots for the first time last week; they expected to sell all shop plots by the end of July 4.
  • A new civ server, CivVie, wasn announced with plugins rewritten from the ground up after just over two weeks. Its beta is being released next week.

2023:

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.


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!


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

Metagame Highlights


Fill out the poll!

If you’re a regular reader but don’t do the polls, fill it out this week! To make this week’s poll the most effective, it helps when a lot of people fill it out, it’s also really short too. Plus, it’s fun and positive.

Yeah, that’s right, I’m going to keep reminding you throughout this newsletter.


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.

Cool Content

Memes

Non-Civ Content

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:

Please note that all information submitted is anonymous. A red star (
*
) means that this question is required to submit.
What nation are you from?
If you'd like, give a *genuine* compliment to anyone on Civ that has brightened your day (except speclang! I get enough of those already).

Hey, make sure you’re not giving a compliment to me now. That doesn’t count!

Please note that while I’ll be able to see compliments, I will be sending these out to their respective players, and asking them whether they would be OK to disclose them. You nor I won’t know who sent them, though.


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!


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:

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


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