CivWiki Monday Newsletter for July 10, 2023
Good morning and happy Monday from New England!
Even as heat, smoke, and storms are doing some crazy stuff to the weather, it’s always nice to return inside to the possibly-existent air conditioning and play virtual block game on funny screen.
Meanwhile, there’s a lot of coding with me this week that I don’t quite want to discuss quite yet because I’m still working on it, although you’ll see some of the fruits of that in the newsletter. For example, try scrolling down! If you’re on Desktop, you’ll see there’s a new progress bar just below the headings for this week. Isn’t that neat?
That’s enough tech blabbering from me, are we ready for the news?
Featured
Featured Image
This week’s featured image is the town center in Port o’Mehri in (well, take a guess…) Mehri. As a quaint little village nestled in the countryside between Pavia and Lambat, it’s a nice little break away from all of the cities we’ve been seeing the past few days. Many of these buildings have been relatively untouched since the start of the world, and I’m hoping it stays that way. The city as a whole looks very much like this and it all gives off this nature vibe that goes throughout the entire country. Can’t wait to visit again!
Featured Article
This week’s featured article was written by prawny331.
The Great War was a war in late 2020 on the server CivRealms 2.0 between the coalition (Carbon, Northern Defensive Pact and Rhodesia) and the USA, which was a coalition of former enemies (notably Blackwater, Olympia, Chungus and later Savaguard). The War started following the obbybombing of the trade city CivCorp, and the following fallout developed into an all-out war between the bombers and their allies and much of the rest of the server. The conflict also spilled over into the New World, with several bombers seeking to form a new state in the isolated shard, starting the Barbary War. The war saw several major vaults fall, starting with the incomplete Varathian and Bloom vaults, the Napistan vault Daybreak (in which Carbon’s leader, Convoy, was pearled) and eventually the Yggdrasil vault Asgard after a prolonged two week siege.
The fall of Asgard was devastating to the allies, losing many pearls and most of the pearls they’d obtained in the defence in the failed retreat to the megavault Heaven. The war directly led to the collapse in activity on the server, due to a large number of combatants being pearled as the war developed into a stalemate with only bots remaining active. During the war, admins also made controversial decisions, including banning Citadel bombing for a short period, creating a “King of the Ashes” rule, adding a small chance to instantly kill a player following the fall of Asgard, and banning of most of the USA. Following the war, the server’s activity never recovered, with most players returning to Civclassic or joining CivUniverse. (Full article…)
This week’s featured article image is the bombing of CivCorp.
The News
Meracydia’s new builds that have been (or are going to be) recently sold! Courtesy of Xenovolution.
A much quieter week this time around, but there’s still some funny stuff to talk about to say the least.
Happenings Around CivMC
- SlothInASuit was pearled, by Gang Shi, for attempting to skybridge the Pavia vault. They are expected to have a court trial completed sometime in the future.
- Protests have been planned, however they have been received generally negatively by the community. I kind of find it impressive that the Civ community has basically done a complete 180 on his reputation over the last couple of months.
- Gang Shi also announced that their reparations post from last week was accepted by Yoahtl, and hoped for continued peace with their neighbors.
- Solitaire was pearled by Shapha in Pavia due to an argument, but was quickly released, it has been noted as an “isolated incident”
- Pavia announced the death of Emperor BritishWanderer I (or Crown Prince BritishWanderer IV, depending how you’re counting) due to ailing health over the past week. He appointed ArtificialDriver I to be his successor.
- There is quite a large fight about whether Alba or the Catholic Church had claims to a particular claim of land. Way more than I think is necessary, but this is the Catholic Church we’re talking about…
- Speaking of the Catholic Church, the Pope resigned with their new leader supposed to be elected on Saturday
- Mount Augusta is holding an election for pucker678’s judge seat, which is shaping up to be the most competitive in months — and by “most competitive” I really mean this election is the first in a while to have more than two candidates. I wouldn’t be surprised if pucker retains his seat.
- CloneChris was elected Tribune of SPQR this past week
- Speaking of Chrises, Icenia is currently in the process of electing its new Senate; although reduced in size, many veterans from the war are coming back to govern the country.
- Thoria is basically just claiming over the CCTT, I don’t know how Plupsnup feels about that
- The Sunset Isles skip the night phase and turn into the Sunrise Isles
- In Nara, Atlas Corp and the King Corporation are merging. Ah yes, more corporate merging…
- Speaking of corporations, the Monument Group announced they would close down their building and property design branch, after declines in revenue, increasing time commitments and unrelenting demand.
- A bar crawl idea is probably the best Civ event idea I’ve heard in a while, bring your pubs into the mix here!
Metagame Highlights
- I’m at least glad that somebody is stepping up to compete against TheJmqn, maybe we’ll start seeing some Paper Towns?
- Plupsnup created r/CivVexillology, which I’m surprised hasn’t existed yet. There are already quite a few flags being shown off
- Mickale wrote a post about his own philosophy about pearling, and has garnered a good amount of subreddit PvP
- Lysika is still trying to develop his active nations map, while TheJmqn released his own claims map
Admin Announcements & Server Statements
- CivMC admin RedDevel released a form asking players to submit brews for future consideration and release. It’s happening!!
- On July 3, SoundTech announced a new exponential cost increase for holding pearls on CivMC, with a new requirement of nearly seven (but later, four) players required to keep a player perma. Players had been clamoring for this for a while, as it’s currently possible to keep three pearls with only one player right now. There has been a lot of debate over this that is somewhat unhelpful on the discord.
- If you haven’t heard much news from Return of the Civ, it’s basically inactive now as neither admin has been putting in updates and there hasn’t been any activity on the server as of late.
The Fun Stuff
Gotland, in the Imperial Federation. Also taken by Aetherix.
Builds
If you don’t see your building here, it’s probably because it’s not on live yet.
- Potasium223 is showing off a big skyscraper for the new HEGS Corp building
- Xenovolution is doing some crazy stuff in Meracydia how the hell are they building this fast
- AK shows off a picture of the beautifully crafted canals in Katipan in Lambat
- Apparently this is cr1zzpy’s rendition of Mount Rushmore in Vanaheim, with Cuppy, Hazz, Dcruzy, and TrueTone on the hill, honestly I can’t recognize them either…
- Banyough is renovating Olimpia in the far southwest and trying to make a more flowery theme I always find it interesting to see stuff still in progress
- Ghas takes a screenshot of the Pavian Train Station/Vault and Solitaire shows off his shop in the city
- Mery picture is cool but it’s because I took it
- Only highlighting Butter_villager’s beach in Transylvania again because I messed up last week and to spread the anti-propaganda as well as stop Transylvania from badgering me for everything ever
- Luigi Lane in the Commonwealth is just showing off more of Verdant Valley’s crazy landscape and vibrant buildings
- Venozia is building up with way more places for newfriendos
Multimedia Projects
- After Janet Blackquill posted mockups of fake Pavia announcement posts, Gjum decided, f*** it, let’s just make a website that does it for you
- The ChaiTea Corporation is offering its build services in Nara with a brand spanking new trailer
- I just like the design of the election results of SPQR’s
- I can’t believe I’m saying this but this Bronnakus diss track actually has really good flow
- TheJmqn continues the trend of posting Wikipedia-like makeup of the IF
- I will keep putting Civtoria 3 posts as long as they continue to make things quality
- Flootle then posts something absolutely incredible that actually doesn’t belong on Civ but it relates to it anyway somehow, and then more from HEGS, and then Nara Ice Hockey
- iinkuu posts a really good piece of art with pearls…
Memes
- …and then immediately posts LIVE CQRSON REACTION
- I mean, even I fell for the mistake of “Butter_villager” being Butternut. It was ONE time!!!
- My reaction to you badgering me
- Ok, but like calling your justice system “innovative” by “chance” is just silly
- Ah, nothing is wrong at all
- Fempire likes colored squares
- So the build isn’t on live yet but that being said, Bass Pro Shop Pyramid
Non-Civ Content
- For this Baseball BulletpointTM, SpeedyJustice wants to me to cover a stupid sweep but who the fuck cares? Just watch the All Star Game everyone, Shohei Ohtani is gonna pitch. Maybe next week I’ll do a baseball roundup to see who’s hot and who’s not going into the second half of the season
- My YouTube recommendations have been feeding me “The Password Game” speedruns…what the hell
- Icenia just played Garfield Kart or whatever and then SpeedyJustice won… is this really the reality we’re living in? I can tell that Slusshi is already denying that
- I didn’t feel right putting it in the actual game news but Hakr will be hosting a quiz show about One Piece, with a diamond prize. Embrace your inner anime!
- Soundtech is visiting Vermont, and not the Imperial Federation nation.
Poll of the Week
We saw a cumulative 93 votes this week. I knew that doing the polls inline was a much better idea than before.
I always find it very interesting to see the spread of players throughout the server and how everyone comes from different backgrounds. Of course, we know the entire server is dominated by the East Coasters and Western Europeans, but there’s always that Australian and Eastern Europe population out there that seems to be always ever present. Although we’re only seeing a marginal amount of people from South America and Asia, I always find it odd that there are very few people from Civ who play on the West Coast. Maybe they’re all just out partying.
I think it’s safe to say that I will never be linking to a discord message again in my entire life.
We’ll give the poll a break this week. Not because I couldn’t think of a question or anything, but because I think we’re all polled out. But totally not because I couldn’t think of a question to ask everyone…
Haggling Cry for Help
The beach besides Transylvania. YES, Butter_Villager, this is my apology post.
Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter! A huge thanks to prawny331 for contributing to this week’s featured article, it’s very appreciated!
Additional thanks to Gjum, RedDevel, and Red_Steel for reading over the newsletter for issues this week.
- If you’d like to contribute to the newsletter, feel free to write a featured article!. If you have no idea what to write and if you’re interested, feel free to reach out to me
@specificlanguage
on Discord. - Writing an op-ed is also an option, where you can write whatever is on your mind. I highly recommend writing something about the metagame.
- And if for some reason you want to throw money at me for stuff feel free to donate to my Ko-fi, I don’t really care about money but it’s cool too.