CivWiki Newsletter for July 22, 2024

Good morning and happy Monday from the Pacific Northwest!

I certainly don’t think you guys got affected by the Crowdstrike issue. Unless…?

It’s been a busy week on Civ this time around and I’m sure everyone’s tired of yet another raiding wave. Believe me, I am too just talking about it. But be glad people are being relatively informed and trying to avoid trouble as much as possible.

Are we ready for the news?

Featured

Featured Image

This week’s featured image is within a picturesque nature spot in Pavia, around Lucassio. The lake that’s the photographer (me) is sitting on did not exist last year, everything in the picture has been man-made. Honestly, I always like these nature landscapes that people have made, as it combines the best of both worlds for the landscape and how players can shape the world to make a beautiful product. A huge thanks to all of the builders.

Featured Article

The Islamic Sultanate of Istanbul and Samarra, affectionately known as ISIS, was a nation on Civcraft 2.0. Although originally founded in summer of 2013 drawing inspiration from Ottoman and Persian culture, it was adopted by Grundeswald later that year before seceding again following a war of independence in Mount Augusta and supported by the Holy Krautchan Empire in 2014. Another city, Samarra, was founded in the later part of the year and recruited a significant amount of newfriends, but were unhappy with Sultan GTAIVisbest, and had a planned uprising cooperating with Gensokyo that never went through as the plot was squashed. Despite these events, ISIS continued to have good relationships with Gensokyo and Mount Augusta, up and until the Goten Secession Crisis.

The country had a unique architecture style, featuring significant amounts of Ottoman- and Persian-style architecture, along with a government style similar to Ottoman states. The capital, Istanbul had a landmark fountain and had Arabic names for each of their districts; the country’s revival was helped in part because of Arabic communication. As the country was located within a desert, the main export was sand for XP production, to be imported into nearby Mount Augusta. Most players that played within ISIS are not currently active today, and is one of the few culturally Islamic countries that has ever existed on Civ.

This week’s featured article image is the Bab al-Qadim, or Old Gate, in Istanbul.

This Week In Civ

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The News

Night in New Callisto, taken by Ansgard. I love his stuff.

Moist Robbery, continued

The raider group’s effects have been very well been felt on the server this past week.

• The Yoahtl Olympics was unfortunately postponed due to their threats happening during Olympics hours.
• Amicitia also cancelled their anniversary celebrations, although not because of the raider group, but because of scheduling conflicts with their leaders.

Meanwhile, efforts to hunt down the raider group have only increased, although to no avail.

• The raiders have mostly been known to operate along the edges of the map, then going into major areas for a raid.
  • Players from Estalia eventually tracked them down and a fight ensued on Saturday (cr: BritishWanderer/Ahrimanne), but Walkers and Watermashen were both pearled, along with The_Orange_Lord who aided with chasing them down in Norden.
• The following day, Soggy and Dawson raided Pacem again, after obbybombing them two weeks prior, this time with better success.
  • They pearled Jumpycat & Wheaties, with Drillage joining the raider group for this fight and headed for their main vault.
• As it was generally suspected that their new bunker was in the -,- in Icenian territory, ASN and Estalian forces confronted them as they appeared in Icenia City.
  • A fight occurred, with a large coalition of players came to fight. The raider group retreated when faced with a 20 player coalition opposing them.
• Despite their retreat, nearby Commonwealth got raided later that day. (cr: Flags)
• However, Estalian and ASN forces intercepted them near the northwest world border following their raid.
  • Soggyhobo was stuck on the surface during their interception and ASN and Estalian officials blocked him with theJKH pearling SOGGYHOBO.
  • Although Soggyhobo was pearled, the other five raiders (Gruht, Airakazz, ZibeKabir, Dawsonisrainy and now Drillage) are still at large and active. Please keep an eye out for them on your snitches. (cr: dubblekoi/Codey/me, it’s complicated lol)

Around the Server

• Codey was pearled by SlothInASuit along with ZainVII and thanis0077. More information in the Imperial Times’ breaking news report from earlier this week. (cr: EmmaKnijn)
  • Accusations have been thrown around about the reason, suspecting a secession plot with Fempire (which was quickly squashed) along with a Communist party investigation.
• Columbia announced the Kallosian withdrawal, which means, yes, it’s back to Columbia for real this time. Our long national nightmare is now over.
• A new election occurred for Pavia’s Prime Ministership.
  • After another heated campaign, incumbent Prime Minister Cissonius and his Pavia First party won re-election for another term. Despite coming last in votes, Renew also announced they would be working with Pavia First for another term.
  • Cissonius then announced a cabinet reshuffle following the election.
• The Antarctic Treaty Entity made a massive expansion, with Eldoria, Ipta, the Iris Covenant, and Snowpeak all joining their ranks.
• Additionally, the Temporal Empire announced an alliance with the Iris Covenant for economic integration.
• IbisMan was banned, for an unknown reason. Not much more I can say, since I don’t know.
• Coolchacha had an argument over repayment with Artonia, a small PvP fight occurred.
• The Exyrian embassy in Yoahtl was attacked by VilyanZ.
• Mercutio announces a territorial expansion, as they take over old Kaowta and Tortugan in nearby territory, along with a land sale by Reggio to the Imperial Federation.
• Amicitia released a statement celebrating their one-year anniversary on Civ.
• Along with Icenia making several announcements to avoid areas near Southshire and other northern areas of the country, literal minutes before Soggyhobo was pearled, ChrisChrispie made an announcement rallying support for the country’s effort to take down the Wet Bandits.
  • In some slightly less political news, Quanton_Biscuit and Anvil are working on initiatives to improve the Temporal Isles rail, the Capitol building interior, and farm tutorials.

Metagame Highlights

• Civ+ introduced a large update, revamping fishing, varying water biome drops, and a whole lot more.
• Realms of Andora is planning a new update with Traits, similar to Tinker’s Construct.
• CivMC is planning an update to 1.20.6, that will also fix issues with item stacking and factories, all thanks to MrJeremyFisher.
  • They are also planning another update to 1.21, which is now completely possible now thanks to Paper recently releasing a stable version. I’m assuming they’ll just update to 1.21 given this news.
• It turns out MrJeremyFisher has been going off in terms of coding work, with a HealthBar mod update also appearing the same week.
• CivModern also released a minor update, fixing some graphical issues in the mod.
• A player asked for a CivMC hardcore server, in which he really just described HCF
• A side effect from the major raider hunt this past weekend was the server reaching a peak in players — 94 players on at one point. Of course, the title referencing an infamous post title gloating about large (or not large) player counts.
• Cissonius proposed a change in #suggestions to add Emeralds and Essence as a fuel source for a few advanced factories as a resource sink.
  • You wouldn’t believe how incoherent of an argument this single suggestion proposed, I had to scroll up for at least 5 minutes from the bottom of the page to get to the top and get the initial screenshot.
  • So many people piled on to argue against this change that it really did branch out into very disparate arguments about Civ. As a result, there’s no way I’m going to talk about this argument anymore, sorry.
• Jaydon released a new version of playtime analytics, now also developing a graph to show your playtime over months. Now you can see how much no life you have, quantified!
• VilyanZ then released a rail map update for the summer, showing the full length of all existing rails across the server.
  • I think it looks too complicated when displayed like this, but I believe you’re going to be able to see it on the CivMap, which will make it a lot easier.
• I uploaded CivWiki’s semi-annual archive of the wiki this past week! Take a look!

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The Fun Stuff

New builds in Kobylinski, after a year of building and refurbishment to be a new home. (cr: Wandrum)

Builds

• How do I love Pavia, let me count the ways:
  • A picture of Union Hill (cr: Gobblin)
  • A cave near the Coast Guard’s lighthouse island (cr: Tiny)
  • The church of t from a Distant Horizon (cr: Koentinius)
  • Within the Highgrove Citadel (cr: Ansgardd)
  • The Town Hall Gardens (cr: Urzork)
  • A long look down Main Street (cr: Owain_X)
  • Another look down mainstreet (cr: HMaverick)
  • A new crop shed near Windermere (cr: ArtificialDriver)
  • A close look at some of the pictures on the buildings on Main Street (cr: Ansgardd)
  • PPIG’s new rail station in the countryside (cr: Sirboss001)
• Well now instead of mainland Pavia, let’s look at the Lyrean Commonwealth now:
  • Frantfurk is a new settlement (cr: Seekinq)
  • A brand new seafaring hall in the Deepslate Isles (cr: Seekinq)
  • Some balloons over the city in Griffin (cr: Ansgardd)

I swear that I didn’t make all of these Pavia pics appear this week.

• Eldoria’s wilderness really does remind me of the Pacific Northwest (cr: Dark_FFC)
• Mery’s natural-looking hockey arena from afar (cr: EmmaKnijn)
• A market at Domsplassen in Truidencia (cr: ObtainableSpat, oops sorry this originally had the wrong label)
• Mayguow does look really cool, even if it may be unfurnished (but who literally cares) (cr: Korby)
• Maugate has some good vibes (cr: Ansgardd)
• Honestly, ALX’s statues on the sea look way better using Ansgardd’s shaders, too
• One last picture on their visit to the IF, here’s Withervale Citadel (cr: Ansgardd)
• Meracydia still is a fantastic looking city! (even if it’s inactive) (cr: peakman2)
• An imposing view of Orakuru Clock Tower in Nara (cr: EmmaKnijn)
• Old Venne’s train station looks like it was plucked out of midwest America — and that’s a good thing (cr: phobitica)
• Totally not a marriage image in front of Lusitania’s train station (cr: banyough)

Cool Content

• Once again I must also commend the Imperial Times churning out not one, but two different reports this week. More effort than me, no joke
• As part of Pavia’s election campaign, Owain_X (along with some AI help) created a campaign video for Pavia First. Looks pretty good man
• Breaking the cutoff rules here to show JKH’s perspective of him pearling soggyhobo

Memes

• There’s only one meme that I think is worth including this week. It’s actually over. I for one welcome our new coconut overlords.

Non-Civ Content

• How the hell did the Mariners completely waste a full 10 game lead in one month. How. This is hell.
• More classical music for you, I guess:
  • It’s Gershwin week over here, so here’s Three Preludes, which are mostly used ironically as standalone piece all together
  • Cuban Overture is really cool too
  • Did you know he also wrote a Jazz Lullaby for String Quartet? Very odd
• Although my other music kink this week was Weird Al’s new polka single and the animation in it
• What beats rock? Who knows?
• Also look at SoundTech and I gush about mechanical pencils (also totally not leg reveal)
• rt6 from Vinland visited a park. So nice

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Poll of the Week

A balloon over Griffin Harbor. (cr: Ansgard, again!)

Last week, we had 47 responses.

Commonly Used Civ Mods

Before you say anything, yes, CivModersn, no I’m not going to fix it.

Anyway, I was mostly asking about Civ mods that people used in order to get a better idea of what people find useful. CivModern’s tools are probably unmatched and CombatRadar is just useful in general. Snitchmaster’s a super helpful one that I really miss, as it really helped check snitches way easier.

Synapse is a bit of a tricky one to talk about due to the controversy around its use in PvP and usage to track players around the server, but I know people used it (and other mods like this) considerably in the past. It’s definitely a very helpful mod and would more likely be used somewhere like 2b2t — but I digress. It was a game changing mod to be fair, so much so it got banned :)

I do wonder what mods the other 11 people said they used though, would be interesting.

Helpful Links, Life Hacks

The second question was about life hacks people would want to share. I didn’t think we’d actually get good ones because people like to save the life hacks for themselves, but I got a couple that I might want to share:

If you didn’t know already, you can click on a rail station on the map, and it will give you the exact location and command to type.

/item [ITEMNAME] for lookup factory recipes is a nice QOL I didn’t know about for a long time.

Eventually, one “small” project I want to do is to make a “tips & tricks” post for the Civ community. It really is hard giving people the map link, the newsletter link, and more when anyone wants to find a resource because of how obscure some of these materials are.

But I do want to also share these metagame hacks:

Take Civ slowly and don’t let it take over your life, then you can truly enjoy your time here!

Talk to & message people whenever you have questions or are curious? People on Civ are much more friendly and willing to chat than I think the community likes to give credit for (we only tend to talk about the bad parts)

When investment is high and politics tense the stress of civ can start to interfere with irl priorities. Take breaks when that happens, and try to move relationships you care about off-civ so they’re more resilient in the face of civ politics. Remember you can play with the chat turned off. Every now and again play single player or on other genres of server- if you’re only playing civ it’s harder to notice when it stops being fun, and the burnout can make the entire game no longer enjoyable

My best tip other players should know is to think about Civ, and what you have done on it. I have found myself at times, just falling into the order of Civ, not paying attention to what I am doing, and just doing things. Think about your time and experience on Civ. Realize what makes you happy, and what makes you want to keep logging on, whether it be the community, the builds, etc.

Personally, I’m pretty glad that I only do newsletters each week and rarely interact with the game at all, so I’m not really as invested with raider waves like we have right now.

Vote Now!

I hope these diamond asset numbers are meaningful.

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Water is Wet Cry for Help

The fight to pearl Soggyhobo, all thanks to ASN, Estalian and Volterran patriots (cr: Cicero).

Once again, thank you for reading this week’s newsletter! I know it’s a very consistent part of Civ life now and many people take it for granted, but thank you for making me part of your weekly routine.

A big thanks to BritishWanderer, Xcios, Gjum, Ahrimanne, Jaydon, Princess__Bow, and HMaverick for some help this week, along with EmmaKnijn with some supplemental support (via the Imperial Times) as well as most of the Pavia nobles for keeping me company while writing (and asking them annoying questions).

As always, if you’d like to show up on the names here, one great thing to do is to contact me @specificlanguage if you’d like to help! Always need more help for this ever ambitious thing of mine, not to mention Featured Articles.

I guess at this rate, I’ll see you next week! Until then…

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