CivWiki Monday Newsletter for July 17, 2023
Good morning and happy Monday from New England!
I hope everyone had a good week with announcements, trials, and bar crawls, because that’s pretty much an average week on the server.
You may have noticed that there is a logo on the bottom left of the featured image this time, and this week I’m introducing a new logo by hitobashuru, who’s taken design cues from the CivWiki logo as well as the newsletter itself, and I really love it. I know they’re super busy, but I jokingly asked for a logo after the whole Pavia announcement thing happened and I want to take the time to appreciate their work on it over the past couple of weeks! I’ll be introducing the logo more on the newsletter’s branding over the coming weeks.
Featured
Featured Image
This week’s featured image is the Pavian Gardens outside the Town Hall. It’s been a few weeks since we’ve highlighted Pavia but I think we got a choice one this time around. Although the imposing vault stands in the background, the lovely gardens and banners facing the train station give a nice warmth to the area that welcomes weary travellers into the nation. This was picked out by hitobashuru, and it’s a great one.
Featured Article
The Great Overland Railway’s iteration on CivClassic was an international rail line that connected many of the major cities and nations on the server. Created by Yoahtl in 2018, its initial stretch from its allies in the NCA to Mount Augusta was monumental for its time. From its namesake, the line was an overland route, unlike the vast majority of rail lines on the server. The railway has not been without controversy; Mount Augusta and the Holy Jaded Empire were wary of northern expansion as neither preferred to host foreign infrastructure in their territory. During the Infinity War, a trap was constructed under the railway by Mir to capture NATO fighters, a move that has been widely panned by SATO and Yoahtlan allies.
Although development was paused during bgbba’s ban, extensions northwards to Icenia and south to Laconia were constructed by the server’s end in 2021. Upon its creation, the line routed players automatically using Snitches; when RailSwitch became available, it pioneered the use of the plugin to route players. Today, a second Great Overland Railway is currently in construction on CivMC, currently stretching from Lambat, Yoahtl, and Lusitania, with plans to extend westward. The construction of the railway and the surrounding movement inspired many nations to rethink their transportation infrastructure and shift their rails aboveground.
This week’s featured image is the Great Overland Railway’s viaduct near New Yoahtl City.
The News
A great big look at the new apartment complex in Venozia, Venne.
Happenings Around Civ
- As of last week, SlothInASuit was pearled by Gang Shi, and starting on Monday last week a very long, very wordy, and very Hamiltonian (as in, plenty of pretty mediocre diss tracks) trial was put on by Gang Shi to determine the sentence for Sloth.
- The trial was also brough witness statements and recounts of previous events regarding the construction of his big builds. I’m preferring not to show screenshots that basically kept digging himself a hole (because the trial was too full of jokes)
- On Wednesday, Gang Shi eventually ruled that Sloth would be pearled for one week, afterwards being banned from the country.
- Warmia’s governors have been on leave for the next few week, and so they’ve essentially declared themselves a dictatorship, unveiling a new flag and then deciding to quickly change it to prevent affiliation with an unsavory group
- Warmia also took this opportunity to claim a large swath of land near the western world border, which was previously held by the Aggland Kingdom, better known as Lon. Some are confused by this move, seeing it as an unreasonable crayon claim.
- An altercation occurred in Thoria when MrCoCo_Cola (the guy who posted this) was pearled by the Imperial Federation, and have preemptively issued a ban of all IF citizens in the territory
- The Imperial Federation has unclaimed Priderock and in turn claimed Freeport
- Speaking of claims, DonFuer has claimed more land near Erimos, to the complaint of many as players already recognize the country as having too much land, aka a Crayon Claim, in the north.
- DonFuer claims it’s for biome growing purposes, although like, just sell spruce and then use the profits to actually buy things you want? XP is still kinda cheap these days too
- Speaking of economics, I’ve been meaning to cover it for weeks now, but the Monument Group diamond/iron exchange has been quite literally all over the place, with days reaching 21d+ and then back down to 12d to 15d, sometimes even within hours. This drastic volatility is a little concerning.
- The Lambat Post is rebranding to an online news service, LENS not unlike the Pavia Daily
- I hope the bar crawl went well, that’s a lot of bars on that list
Metagame Highlights
- CivMC has a brand new Discord Discovery Page, and Admin RedDevel is working on integrating new Discord features to better support the community’s growth, including a new Reddit feed for all users to see (discord link). Check out their Discord page here! I’m personally surprised we have 3k+ people on the discord…
- Admins also announced a revamp to their Patreon page, offering more tiers and perks to high tiers in order to better their financial situation on the server. Check out their patreon here (this is not an endorsement of their product)
- ComradeNick wrote another post questioning slow modmail response times, mostly regarding the few players in Cliqueston who were involved in the Reluctance Vaultbreak at the end of the Butternut-SEC conflict. Please don’t look at the comments on this one.
- JoelThaTroll is creating a new series to introduce people on the server, it’s great so far and I can’t wait for the wiki and newsletter to get mentioned (even though we need to make resources too…)
- For those interested in Civ history, Gjum has graciously uploaded Squareblob’s world download of CivClassic onto the Internet Archive, it is no longer lost media
The Fun Stuff
Ruins of Laurentia statue in Imperia, in the Imperial Federation.
Builds
The best way to get your builds here is actually building them on the server. I see a lot of people building on their creative servers this past week, but I won’t highlight them because then people can’t actually visit the place on the server! Half the effort of building these things is getting all the materials and spending time online on the server to build your design! I’m looking at you, EVDan…
- Imperial Federation has some damn good architects if they keep building incredible statues like this
- Venne is doing some great work on making their nation appealing
- I guess I have to keep funneling pictures about Transylvania huh
- Meracydia is pulling a lot of schematics out of their asses and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, if only they had the money
Multimedia Projects
- Always have fun with TheJmqn’s legislative makeup charts of the IF, it makes it look like real government.
- Anywho here’s more graphs from him about the claims map too
- ChaiTea has finished construction on an absolutely massive Yoshiwara Resort in Nara — on Creative but the video looks pretty good
- Fox and Dino are in Xinteng in Iria and are looking for some stone frogs
- It’s completely remiss to say that the entire subreddit was flooded with great drawings from butter_villager, from art inspired by the Sloth Trial, the Estalian skyline and a couple of commissions for more stuff, at this rate we need an onlyfans
Memes
- <Comment about how the last war wasn’t server killing here />, thanks Tvman!
- Late night addendum, this screwed up rendering because it didn’t realize it wasn’t an HTML tag
- This unfortunately cannot go in the art section because it’s mspaint but more importantly, it’s a CivUN meme
- This apology video is only marginally better than Colleen’s apology video
- Somebody hasn’t learned compassion in a while
- The Eon Empire is declaiming portions of land like the Titanic but it’s probably just worth it to fix with flextape
- Gentlemen, it is time to leave CivMC
- Please cue the Initial D Eurobeat music on this Great Overland…Railway?
Non-Civ Content
At this rate I need to start a blog that’s separate from the newsletter…
- As some of you might know, Pikmin 4 is coming out Friday which I’m super excited for, but one corner of the internet that has probably gone unnoticed is the r/Pikmin subreddit, and they have gone absolutely insane as they’ve recently bought several minutes worth of time on a Times Square billboard.
- We’re staying in New York because if you liked my Paramore shoutout from last month, check out Lawrence, a brother-sister duo with a funk influenced band that has such an aficionado for riffs and catchy melodies. They’re from New York and very much highlight that in their videos, and their live shows are really a treat. It’s only a matter of time until they get their 15 seconds, and they’re really good
- Of course, one cannot mention New York without THE METS BABY LOVE THE METS ALRIGHT BABY LET’S GO GET A HOME RUN BABY LOVE THE METS LET’S GO METS.
- Alright I’ll shut up about my own stuff and make you realize that if you have Reddit coins still remaining, you may want to use them before September 12. Maybe spend it on my Reddit post?
- No baseball this week unfortunately because it’s the all star break this past week, but take a crack at the Immaculate Grid, and I hope you brought your baseball knowledge
- Philippine infrastructure moment
- For my Paradox fans, they’re still working on Civtoria 3
- As I’m writing this, I hope Hakr_’s One Piece quiz goes over successfully
Poll of the Week
There wasn’t a poll last week, but now let’s do a poll this week. This time, I want to know about the newfriend landscape of Civ and how it could be improved.
That being said, this week, please only mark the top few things that you believe matter for this question. Checkboxing everything will not result in a meaningful response.
I’m sure many community leaders are very curious about how new players experience Civ and the general onboarding process, since at the moment, it’s a very hands off process for the admins.
Novelty Cry for Help
CivMC’s new Discord Discovery Page banner, highlighting Yoahtlan government, Pavia’s harbor, and the recent Butternut-SEC conflict.
Thanks for reading yet another newsletter for this week. I don’t think anybody’s noticed at all, but this edition now makes me the longest running Monday news since I just passed Akiyama64. What the hell am I doing with my life…
I want to give a huge thanks to hitobashuru for making a logo for the newsletter after I pitched something incredibly stupid to him a couple weeks ago! They really delivered and I’m very happy with how it turned out. (I hope they’re not made I threw a stroke on it to make it visible…) Additional thanks to Gjum and BritishWanderer for adding stuff.
- Do you want to research and/or write about Civ history? Consider writing a featured article! No topic? No matter, just message me
@specificlanguageand I’ll be sure to find something to write. - If writing about in-game drama or metagame affairs is more your style, feel free to message me for an op-ed in the newsletter. It can be about anything reasonably well written that needs attention.
- If you’d like to support me doing these very stupid things, donate to my ko-fi, it’s not free and I don’t really care too much about money
Thanks to everyone for reading and their incredible support. I’m very grateful to be doing this and I will see you all next Monday! And as always…