CivWiki Newsletter for July 15, 2024

Good morning and happy Monday from Pacific Northwest!

Where to start… I know after looking on Reddit that it’s been quite an eventful week on Civ, and there’s quite a lot to cover. I know I said I might be taking this week off, but I think I can pull one out of the hat this week.

Meanwhile, after a few long weeks of moving, I’ve finally set up shop at my apartment with my good computer set up, so you’re going to see some cool pics once again. I don’t think that’s going to change the quality of the newsletter however, you just get more consistently beautiful photos when I take my featured images instead of stealing from everyone else.

Are we ready for the news?

Featured

Featured Image

This week’s featured image is a sunrise lighting up Groveheart in the Imperial Federation. It’s my first time visiting the area and it has such a great steampunk-lite vibe with the wood structures and castles in the area. The whole town at night has a great spooky forest vibe, but with the sunrise, it has a perfect rustic charm. It’s such a great place, and honestly, a little tragic that I didn’t visit the area sooner! Hope to come back again soon.

Featured Article

The KANI Rail System was a rail routing and navigation standard for the global rail system on CivClassic. It was the largest rail system on the server and had several adaptations over the years, but was based on roundabout junctions to connect users to their destinations through nodes. Originally known as the Nexus Interchange Gateway, it was conceived as a way to both leverage RailSwitch on a global scale and renovate the rail network in Icenia and Nexus at 0,0. It took advantage of chaining /dest commands, a new feature added by KANI’s creator, Amelorate.

The system was initially created with several different kinds of nodes, including terminals and stations, and featured a central website that automatically calculated the optimal /dest commands to their destination. As the system got bigger and more destinations were added across the server, the rail system was renamed and improvements were made to its routing scheme. Competing rail routing systems, such as AURA, had improvements such as trunk rail routing, which were later implemented into its system. By the end of CivClassic, over 700 routing nodes were created. Some of its ideas were implemented into OneDest, another major server-spanning rail system on CivMC.

This week’s featured article image is a map of all known KANI nodes by the conclusion of CivClassic.

This Week In Civ

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The News

I would say r/confusingperspective of the way this is composted, but no. This is the view from Cluj, Transylvania with Distant Horizons kicked up to 20 (cr: TransylvaniaMan)

Damp Outlaws

Over the past week, SoggyHobo, Dawsonisrainy, ZibeKabir, Airakazz, and Gruht raided several nations. Collectively known as the “Wet Bandits”, they went on a raiding spree of several nations, and pearled several notable people.

• If you heard those names before, they raided Pacem the week before, and have a reputation for raiding relatively peaceful nations.
• Friday saw several ASN players pearled by the raider group, with ChilfroySigibald, BradoTomato, CatistStudy, Sdorr, and DSBulldogs all being pearled quickly.
  • Toaxbis eventually freed all players involved later that night.
• However, later that night, they pearled Toaxbis, who was fighting them in Baile.
• The Wet Bandits then made their way to Winterbourne, where they pearled Princess__Bow and Tophat, raided the country’s bunker, and attempted to steal the Northlandic gem from NoOneTruePunk’s memorial. Most valuables in the bunker were kept safe elsewhere.
• ASN forces then helped to free all three pearls in the raiders’ bunker; they along with Estalian forces are managing the situation currently.
  • editor’s note: never thought I’d say ASN and Estalia are cooperating on something…

Around the Server

Events Coming Up

• Another reminder that Yoahtl Olympic signups are due soon!, with the Olympics beginning on Friday!
• Amicitia is hosting a celebration for their first anniversary, with drinks, speeches and more from the King as well an award ceremony, on Saturday at 9:30pm GMT (cr: LunarCreation).
• Seemingly in a bad spot for timing, Soggyhobo has threatened in global chat that something might happen on Saturday, 7pm eastern…

News & Stuff

• There were several happenings in Pavia this week:
  • Prime Minister Cissonius announced an initiative to revive the Bedford Commons area, well-known for being the main area for newfriends in the country. They appointed SteelHead7 to head the project and revealed more details the following day.
  • Additionally, they sought to increase the powers of the Chamber of Commerce to evict unstocked and inactive shops., with ArtificialDriver making an announcement further detailing their initiatives.
  • Meanwhile, Emperor Paagf passed away this past week, with Griffin head Seekinq being elected to to take their place
• Wafflehead apologized for his actions over the past couple of weeks, and announced a new initiative called “Pushing Peace for a Fresh Start”, which is exactly what it says on the tin.
  • He furthered this message by announcing the Small Nation Diplo Act, hoping to build connections and provide resources to other small nations.
  • An anti-waffle party had emerged, but players have been pretty disappointed with how the community has handled the issue.
• Eldoria announced that they would be upgrading their Non-Aggression Pact they had with Truidencia into a Mutual Defense Pact. Unless you’re like me and had to figure out what both NAP and MDP meant…
• Baile erected a new RedDevel shrine, with RedDevel coming out to support!
• Icenia completed a renovation of the long overground rail heading to Southshire! Yes, it’s still alive and there are plans to improve it soon.
• Amiticia released their latest Sapphire Wave, with a couple more details on JJon’s disappearance.
• Q’barra created an introduction post for those who are unfamiliar with the territory prior to its hosting of the fishing tournament for the Olympics.
• Yoahtl held their elections for July, with x1025, ArkenX, MechanicalRift, and Solitaire7 all gaining spots, with x1025 becoming Alcuahtl this coming term.
• A post from JAW689 detailed the downfall of Anisso, with several stone-reinforcement bombings occurring the country.
• The Alliance of the Sea (better known as ATS) pearled hekghlkegh and two other raiders after threatening other nations during other conflicts including the Yuan-Derzavian War. (cr: itslara13)
• Commonwealth hosted another poker night the past Friday, and I’m sad I didn’t publicize this more!
• TheJmqn posted a map showing that all 20 senators, who voted on a bill, reached a 10-10 tie and could not decide who would be appointed judge

Economics Corner

• Monument Group released their second quarter financial results, with record highs across the board. See more in the official report here.
• NordCo announced an IPO with over 160 shares being sold on short notice, raising 1281 diamonds in the process.
• Reggio announced their entering of a Gilded Age of Architects, with a plan to increase government transparency and release financial reports.
  • They also investigated a coverup in a flight crash.
• Transylvania announced they would be opening shop plots within their main city, Cluj, for both foreigners and citizens.

Metagame Highlights

• A lesson for newfriends: just do what makes you happy and what you’re good at
• Icenia celebrated 9 years on Civ! I think it did help I reminded them of their creation event last week though, lol!
• CivMC admins reminded players about their violent and inappropriate content policy, which didn’t coincide with any real life event. Nope.
  • Icenians were timed out after posting pictures of it with ChrisChrispie’s face, but I don’t want to glorify it on the internet, so that’s why, if you were ever curious.
• A bugfix update was also made to fix armor trim duplication.
• Civ+ made two updates last week, improving minor bugs and fixed some issues.
• A short discord reminder to not click messages from PumpkinBeef (who got hacked), and also to not click links that you don’t know where they lead to. (my links are safe though!)

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The Fun Stuff

Q’barra’s savannah, with a few temples, arches, and trees (cr: Earyx)

Builds & Showcases

• You’re not gonna see it on any public channel, but I really appreciate the effort done by wandrum and company on revamping Kobylinski into a grand dwarven fortress
• I think with some distant horizons it really captures how crazy the scale of Transylvania images are (cr: TransylvaniaMan, but don’t ping me saying ‘thank you for including this image’, i get it a lot but thank you)
• Well, I guess I should probably highlight Q’barra even though it’s the third time I’ve called it out today. Not a bad thing though (cr: Earyx)
• This is probably one of the few times we get a full perspective of Suramir from afar, and it absolutely lives up to the hype (cr: Lysika_Lantariel)
• Some heavy spruce wood theming here in Maugate (cr: Urzork)
• It feels like a drone went straight through Pavia Town Hall with that video from (cr: Owain_X)
• That’s not to mention the other pics from Pavia, including a sunny view of the town hall (cr: Max_imil), a rainy day in the countryside (cr: Ansgardd), or the Vestilege Newfriend Center in Deepslate Isles (cr: Owain_X again)

Cool Content

• Here’s last week’s Imperial Times from Codey! Unfortunately, I posted just a bit too early for it to be on this week’s newsletter, so hopefully he’ll give it to me on time next week. By the way, here’s their discord
• Princess__Bow wrote a poem about their experiences and gratefulness during the Wet Bandit campaign in Winterbourne.
• Of course, I have to put TheJmqn’s map here because of how well it conveys information
• VilyanZ revises their Risk map from the previous week, with troop counts, revised territory names and region names.
• Of course, with more alliances last week it then also meant that VilyanZ was working overtime with this month’s alliance chart

Memes

• While Eddie’s post is a meme first and foremost, I kind of have to commend the low-quality/high-quality MSpaint pixel art
• Funny meme but I don’t get the home alone reference here
• Lmao can’t believe you forgot that /ep locate is a thing
• Fair but also mean
• how long can this jon leaving amicitia joke keep going? probably forever i guess
• haha guys the boys season 4 right? idk man i don’t get references like this

Non-Civ Content

• Because I’m trying to get productive at work, something you may not know about me is that I really like classical music, and I used to play a lot of violin. So, on the offchance some nerd likes this stuff, here’s my playlist this week:
  • Schumann’s Piano Quartet could be described as quintessential romantic chamber music
  • Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, except it’s played by a YouTuber but also a violinist (it’s not bad!)
  • Gershwin’s An American in Paris, cause why not
  • Debussy’s String Quartet may be too abstract for some but it’s fun for me (de bussy??)
  • I will say that while these aren’t mainstream picks, they aren’t left field picks either. You won’t watch me watching a Samuel Barber concerto…
• And the other recurring bit on this section is baseball. We’re halfway through the season leading into the All-Star Break, so get ready for me to ramble about…
  • The Red Sox winning and now catching up to those idiot New York Yankees, that’s right, who’s in the garbage tier now!!
  • The Mariners seemingly forgetting how to hit while in first place, but also seemingly still in first place after three months because the AL West immediately started to suck this year
  • Totally not having the Pittsburgh Pirates debuting probably the best rookie pitcher, Paul Skenes, since Strasburg, who’s starting the All-Star game on Tuesday
  • The Los Angeles Dodgers “crashing” after too many injuries
  • Sorry SpeedyJustice I don’t have much to say about the Phillies this time… Zach Wheeler’s pretty good though

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Poll of the Week

Suramir, in Estalia, the crown jewel market surrounding 0,0. (cr: Lysika_Lantariel)

Last week, we had 73 responses. It was 69 when i wrote this section though, so (nice).

Map Mods

This is actually quite interesting. The fact that VoxelMap’s inactivity and instability in recent years has dropped it down quite a bit, despite the fact it’s the primary map format for CivMap. I do find personally that Xaero’s Map is much easier to configure and use in general, as a VoxelMap convert. JourneyMap being second place is also very good for its customization, but is a little bit harder to handle if you’re not used to it.

Hopefully, people realize how to build tools for the other map mods, because with more people using Xaero’s and Journey and map websites not adapting, it’s only going to be an uphill battle.

In Civ, because entity reading is not allowed, a lot of people do use a radar in conjunction with their map mods, and it’s very clearly shown here.

I made a mistake with the poll so “no map mod” is accidentally a duplicate of “I used something else”, so this is mostly just a poll of those that use map mods, unfortunately.

Old Builds

As we’re now past the two year mark, it is generally inevitable that nations are coming and going and some are just past its time. What should happen when a nation has been very clearly abandoned?

In general, the spectrum goes between complete teardown, or complete preservation:

It should be made sure that they do not exist and won’t exist in the future. Cities shouldn’t be changed to show respect for their work. The rest of land should be used

Preserved until newfriends want to move into that area if it’s a full nation. If it’s just a single build in a city, up to that nation.

Declaimed and left to be repurposed (or cannibalized) by newfriends. If you preserve every little thing because it’s old and your friend played there once 2 years ago, you end up with a museum, not a community.

Nothing, As civ is a game of freedom but with catches i don’t see the point of taking the responsibility of build(s) that were in other words abandoned.

Personally, I believe that old works shouldn’t be preserved only for the sake of preservation. Cities are supposed to be alive, and designed around the people who live in them not just the ones who came before. Of course, keeping culturally significant older buildings and trying to preserve a record makes sense — but…to leave the streets empty and unused represents a greater death than replacing the buildings themselves.

Smaller nations, smaller builds, smaller legacies could easily be torn down. Crayons can always be drawn over

In general it’s more of an argument on whether they should be kept around for newfriends to use, or completely torn down. This was a wide-ranging question, so I personally wouldn’t say it accounts for everything, but this may serve as a guide with its current issues.

Somebody had quite a long response with an interesting mechanical idea:

It’s been long discussed for YEARS, but Civ would really benefit from a dormant/active maintenance system instead, similar to Rust building upkeep mechanics. Some essence stored in revamped city bastions and reinforcements can heal over time? Or without a specific material upkeep the reinforcement will just tick down within that radius.

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Hot as Hell Cry for Help

A view from Winterbourne Castle, prior to the raids. Ok, I guess it doesn’t fit the headline, but if you’re in the US this week, you know you’re in the heat bubble.

Phew! That was definitely one of the newsletters of all time. I really have to stop soloing these…

Thanks to Tophat, SoundTech, RedDevel, BritishWanderer, Codey, Toaxbis, Dark_FFC, Princess__Bow, and Imperial Times reporters itslara13, lunarcreation, and Pusheen for contributing something this week (in some capacity or another).

I hope next week I can relax, but there’s Olympics going on, so I don’t think I can. Just need to get back into a routine on these things, I think!

As always, if you want to help out on this newsletter, please reach out to me @specificlanguage! Always appreciate the extra help!

That’s all from me this week, and until next time…

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