CivWiki Monday Newsletter for July 3, 2023

Good morning and happy day before Independence Day from New England!

Well friends, we’ve made to the end of the fourth major war on this server and I’m not sure if we’ve learned anything of usefulness on this one. Anyway, I hope I’ve covered this relatively cleanly without too much yelling, but I’ll probably be yelled at in a Discord or Reddit comment in due time.

Keep in mind that I’m not going to pay attention to the Reddit comments as much, as I won’t be using my phone for Reddit to check for the most part. If anything, I’ll probably be browsing r/baseball.

This week’s newsletter also sees the return of the Highlights format; for a much shorter experience of the newsletter (to skip all of this stupid war coverage). If that’s something you’d be interested in, click here.

Enough blabbering from me, who wants to hear some news??

The News

Don’t Put Your Pearls in One Vault

The interior of Icenia’s inner city train station, built during the past year by Gjum and Xcios.

I’d put a Butternut image here but I can’t really get too many…

• Chosentwicelol and XxTBxX3276 were unbanned on June 27th, with them rejoining the war effort on the Butternut side.
• They then helped with the final attack on the last standing SEC vault, the Reluctance Vault in the Arsenio Pact, on June 28th. Now, how this vault got broken is pretty complicated:
  • Groups were given to members of Cliqueston, annexed by the Arsenio Pact, and was given groups quite recently by Yodabird19.
  • Yodabird had said that they were previously given groups to “[help] beef up sky defenses prior to an expected bridge”.
  • A few days prior to the vault break, the members reached a deal with Butternut to inside the vault and release their pearls.
  • The Cliqueston members said that they were frustrated by the AP with a “lack of nation building” for the region.
  • The crew, led by PolyBit, SQOpen_SpellBook, and others from Cliqueston eventually unpearled every player that was held in the vault, which was every pearled player on the Butternut side (with the exception of Ez2Clutch, as he’s currently being held in Estalia for issues during the Generic War. He already quit, anyway.)
  • However, shortly after they broke in on the morning of the 28th, SoundTech temporarily banned all players who were near the vault on either side, citing that PolyBit was using a node that was commonly used by VPNers.
  • Polybit quickly rebuffed that, saying that they were not using an alt, with admins having knowledge he was whitelisted as a VPN user. As a result, nobody was banned and nothing was rolled back, with the exception of the rest of the insiders and chosentwice, who were kept banned for further consideration.
  • The two parties were also teleported away from the vault to prevent any advantage from either side during the fight.
• Butternut forces then assisted with breaking the vault during the 28th to prevent it from being used again, using nearby Mount Augusta as a nearby base of operations, with SEC forces attempting to defend what was left of the vault.
• Eventually, the vault fell and the SEC decided to give up the vault by June 29. Some SEC fighters stuck around to escort wealth out of the vault and continue to fight a little; the most notable of which was Shadno and auqust who pearled Cqrson and PhysicsGamer, respectively, and whose pearls were moved to Pavia’s vault.

The Domino Effect

Griffin’s new settlement, Sealeo.

Now that the war is over (with, in this writer’s opinion, a less resounding finale than the last few wars), the postwar settlement negotiations begin:

• Pavia immediately began negotiations with Butternut regarding their two pearls that Kingstell had brought over, and agreed to free Spoonce, a former Pavian duke and Hg_80 in return for both pearls brought to Pavia, Cqrson and PhysicsGamer, to be freed.
• As a result of the SEC’s collapse, several areas within the member countries changed hands:
  • Mercutio annexed nearly all of Icarus’ territory out of kindness for the country, saying that “our priority is protecting Icarian civilians and allowing them to play the game in peace.”
  • Pacem annexed some areas near Petrichor that had been used for farms, pending approval.
  • Aurellia seceded from Cortesia Del Mar, expressing displeasure that the bond between the two states were broken.
  • Eddie Murphy decided to secede from the Arsenio Pact, intending to stay as a build nation first and foremost.
  • Eon also decided to become independent from the Arsenio Pact but reached a deal with Commonwealth shortly after to join the country.
  • Tortugán also declared themselves independent from Icenia, with the support of Mercutio.
  • Janet Blackquill abandoned Ma Walo and reestablished Ma Seli in Icenia, basically switching Toki Pona territories. They did not get approval to secede the land.
  • Although Zatoka was in Gang Shi’s territory, they were denied the chance to keep their claims in any form, so were forced to move to Impendian claim that they made a couple weeks prior. When are they ever going to get a good piece of land?
• Icenia made it known that they don’t intend to leave the server, and are intending to stay, but aren’t willing to take a hefty settlement.
• According to Gwua, they’ve been representing the Anti-SEC Coalition — both Gang Shi and Icenia.
  • On July 1st, they posted information about the ongoing negotiations, saying that nobody will be permanently pearled, and they don’t intend to be as harsh as the SEC.
  • They released a 13-minute video of one of their negotiations…which I didn’t get to watch since it was deleted. However, the post has since been deleted as Gwua’s account has been suspended (probably for violating content policy.)
• At the moment, the coalition is focusing on resettling Temporal Isles and Gang Shi.
• Finally, late on Sunday night, Butternut announced a slew of pearl sentences.
  • They mostly ranging up from 2 weeks to about a couple months with the exception of JuniorTide, who is set to be held for a year. Generally people are pretty content with the sentencing, and personally, I don’t think the pearl sentences are too excessive.

With the SEC essentially dismantled, we’re going to see a large change in the geopolitical structure on the server within the next month or two. The SEC had been a large political mainstay on the server, and the power structure is going to quickly shuffle around.

At least for me, I don’t have to cover this war anymore.

Happenings Around CivMC

Hey it’s one of those cool persective shifts from jaybird showcasing MtA’s new town hall (over my old plot…)

• July 1 was ProgrammerDan Day in Mount Augusta.
• Transylvania elected X_an as their newest president. Crossposted from the Transylvanian Post.
• After seeing that the SEC was already modifying their borders anyway, other countries took it upon themselves to change their territory as well…
  • Estalia annexed a large desert to their south, not to mention 1/4 of a farm
  • Nara made a territory exchange which no longer makes them Chile! Most of the manipulation though, has to do with claiming around the former Dalgon nether portal.
• Lambatan President Kaprediem released a summary of the country’s activities over the past few months, which is essentially just a State of the Union address
• Pavia’s news comes to you in four parts:
  • The state announced that the lottery’s jackpot of 400d was won by ArtificialDriver. Hopefully the lottery lives on!
  • Emperor BritishWanderer is also facing a confidence vote from his dukes, his relatively peaceful and diplomatic reign has proven to be a successful case for his continued leadership. Crossposted from the Pavia Daily.
  • Speaking of the Pavia Daily, the country has become the official news publication of the country, getting first access to resources following the Media and Publications Edict.
  • Finally, the Monument Group’s Q2 earnings report was released on July 2, with a small decline in revenue, but its overall continued stability has brought continued profits to its shareholders. They are excited about their Nara shop, expanded banking transactions, and gambling ventures to continue.
• The United Aggland Kingdom and Lon are dissolving because where the hell are all the Bulgarian fans?
• Aeros passed new legislation declaring a travel ban on its country for active or recently discharged combatants.
• The Imperial Federation has elected its new parliament for June with the Unionist Party keeping majority, but losing one seat.
  • Zhirall also stepped down from his position as senator of Imperia, naming Scream as his successor.
• Thoria was bombed by Imperial Federation fighters following a fatal suicide bombing last year. A settlement was later reached for territory, with Mercutio acting as a third party.
• Finally, a short coup occurred with SlothInASuit pearling Jalhf and briefly becoming king. This had nothing to do with the war, I promise.
• The Catholic Church settled near Icenia and was pearled by Shadno due to a misunderstanding and is pending release.

Metagame Highlights

The campus of Tricon Industries in the Commonwealth.

• This week, a lot of subreddit PVP happened by way of talking about claims posts.
  • Smaland_ball posted an article detailing countries that need to be less crayoned, with people generally agreeing that nations like the ones in the post should be lessened.
  • Bronnakus followed up the post with his criteria of what he believes is an overclaim.
  • I think the one thing that everyone here can take away from these posts is that please take the claims map with a grain of salt… Feel free to read the comments to see everyone’s take on it.
• Janet Blackquill made a market survey asking users about how they interact with the market on the server.
• CivMC admin SoundTech is looking at OTT fixes, Wordbank updates and updates to the periodic announcements you see occasionally in chat in the next update to the server. He’s also looking at increasing pearl costs to prevent players from holding onto multiple pearls at a time, a change that’s been wanted by many for some time.
  • Fun fact, those announcements that come periodically are internally called “Dog Facts”. I’m only saying this because this was on the dogfacts, until RedDevel cut me out of it… (Honestly, I don’t care too much about it, just noticed!)

The Fun Stuff

A look down Main Street in Pavia City, from timoru69.

Builds

• People keep taking pictures of Pavia so I picked someone who’s less likely to be picked this week, but Aetherix, Prometheus, and Bluedys all took beautiful shots in Pavia City or Bedford Commons.
• This is not to outmatch the Imperial Federation picture crew, with Aetherix taking shots of Regentsburgh (what you saw as a featured image today), North Africa, Vallstena and Gotland and southw3st’s render of Freeport
• HenryDraton is building Gensokyo recreations near the KOEL out of appreciation for the architecture
• Seekinq still keeps bringing the vibes with Adria’s waterfront in Griffin, along with a new settlement, Sealeo
• I have no idea where butter_villager took this picture, but I’d guess it’s a beach in Butternut? Looks beautiful though!
• Tortugán is truly building itself into a South Pacific tropical resort
• I will be cussed out if I don’t include Transylvania, but they have a lot of brand new greenspace to show off
• I think this picture shows that Mount Augusta is no longer suburban Houston and has graduated into downtown Austin. If we keep seeing builds like PumpkinPie’s over here, then it might be worth it to come…

Multimedia Projects

• Fox and Dino are visiting Griffin this week, in my opinion long overdue. RIP Melman though :sob:
• Lokilog has been pulling out a bunch of art I really like, here’s a relatively modern interpretation of Altepetl, Yoahtl’s city
• Linkuu posts some DeviantArt style renditions of the Transylvanian Diet
• IMC releases the corniest diss track I’ve ever heard

Memes

• Why are you downvoting me, I’m right?
• Based and CivWikipilled
• Quick everyone, swipe left on Forged’s tinder profile
• hey
• I know the solution! ChatGPT!
• I’m entirely sure that Janet Blackquill just carbon copied one of the frames from one of their previous comics
• Thank you for summarizing every quitting post ever
• I’m entirely believing that the Anti-Pineapple Pizza Religion is just saying stuff at this point, I can’t wait to get denounced by them!
• Fireworks aren’t going to be joyful for Shadno…

Non-Civ Content

• For the Baseball Bulletpoint^TM this week, somehow Domingo Germán threw the 24th perfect game in history this week, the first since Felix Hernández’s in 2012, from a pitcher who was ejected for “using sticky stuff” a couple months prior and only lasted barely 3 innings his last outing, and in less than 100 pitches. Oh, and obligatory fuck the Yankees
• Catching up on some TV shows this week, revisiting a little bit of the later Parks and Rec seasons as well as getting around to finally finishing Ted Lasso
• Gang Shi and Icenia both decided to take some R&R time after the war, with Gang Shi watching some Sopranos and Icenians having a good ‘ol night of Garfield Kart.
• Bron’s cat is taking a nap

Poll of the Week

We had a much better response than the last few previous weeks, with 105 responses. This is why I’ve been working for weeks to get the survey working, so that we have a large amount of users to get things done. Thanks for responding to the poll!

These graphs were made extremely quickly; I’m working to get a better representation soon. You’ll have to deal with poorly made graphs for the time being!

Last Week’s Results

Should there be changes to pearling mechanics to protect nether infrastructure from pearled players?

• 35 - “no, things should not change”
• 26 - “yes, bastions should have the same effect in the nether.”
• 44 - “yes, but pearled players should have some amount of freedom”

I wouldn’t take away too much from this question, it was poorly worded, especially since I wasn’t entirely aware of the situation in light of the question. This probably is a good question to talk about some other time, with a better phrased question later on.

If CivMC were to update to 1.20, what would you like to see changed about Civ?

• 60 - “Update XP recipes”
• 57 - “Map expansion”
• 59 - “Cave expansion”
• 50 - “Upgrades to potions/brewery”
• 64 - “Upgrades to armor”
• 48 - “Updates to PvP”
• 5 - “No changes, ViaVersion upgrade only”

This one I think is a little more surprising; I think everyone is just excited about the new possibilities for an update. Personally, I think the underhypedness of the new armor trims added in 1.20 and could bring some new potential in the PvP space. An XP recipe update could also drastically shake up the economy. My editors have said that a possible map expansion “doesn’t have enough people just yet imo [sic] to justify making even bigger distances between them”. This could also pose a problem with cave expansion, which adds the new skulker and skulk detector, which essentially act as snitches.

Feel free to talk about these questions in the comments on Reddit! (I won’t read them though).

Time to Vote!

Independent Cry for Help

The Imperial Federation’s first Parliament meeting for its July parliament in late June.

Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter!

I’m very aware that there’s still a lot of back-archives that this newsletter is missing; in my free time this week I’m planning to reupload most of them, but it just takes some time to convert most of them since it’s a little bit of an arduous task to convert all the old editions. (there’s 50+!)

Regardless, thanks for reading the newsletter for all the craziness that happened.

• If you’d like to contribute to the newsletter, feel free to write a featured article!. Xcios wrote stuff this week and huge thanks to him.
• Writing an op-ed is also an option, where you can write what’s on your mind. I highly recommend writing something about the metagame.
• Uh, feel free to donate to my Ko-fi, i guess, I don’t really care about money but it’s cool too.

Now, is it a mistake that a good amount of my newsletter staff is currently pearled? I think so. In the future, I’m looking for more newsletter staff to widen the scope of the news and perspectives that get covered (and also look for someone who would be willing to take this weekly thing over, I can’t be doing this forever). Please let me know — @specificlanguage — if you’re even thinking about helping on a regular basis.

Anyway, until next time…

EDIT CIVWIKI

• < < < Last week’s newsletter (June 26)
• Submit a featured article - Advertise your nation!
• View and post comments on r/CivWiki
• View the highlights for this week (a shortened newsletter)
• View a shortened version of this newsletter on CivWiki