CivWiki Monday Newsletter for July 31, 2023
Good morning and happy end of July from New England!
To be honest, it’s been a challenging week for me. Not that I had anything to do anyways, but just haven’t been able to muster up any motivation to do any of my non-usual routine things. Maybe it’s the summer heat, but I think I need to see a therapist again.
Besides this, we’re at the end of the July and lots of things happened on the server throughout the summer, and we’re only heating up with more grudges to talk about yay!!
Are we ready for the news?
Featured
Featured Image
This week’s featured image is the sprawling skyscape of Altepetl, with its soaring pigeon temple and town square full of shops. Although the country did not see a lot of the fighting from the recent wars, it’s by design, as the entire city is blocked off by a glass wall (as you can kind of see in the back), a vault-like trench, and group security to even get in the city. It only took me a whole year before I finally went back to Yoahtl, but it was entirely worth it!
Featured Article
The Generic War was a major serverwide war on CivMC between Rhode Island and Estalia’s allies in the Elysian Pact. The war started in late July 2022 following continued grievances from CivClassic and Civcraft. Despite efforts to de-escalate tensions between the countries, Rhode Island declared war on Estalian following an incident on one of their citizens. The war was marked by large and disruptive obbybombings in Estalia’s holdings in 0,0, Icenia, an unsuccessful but obtrusive campaign in Pavia. A third front also occurred in Blockchainistan after accusations from Titan Industries of aiding Rhode Island. Rogue raiders associated with Rhode Island roamed the newly-launched server, making the war’s effect felt throughout every nation.
On the morning of September 17, CivMC admins announced they banned numerous accounts associated with Rhode Island, believing their actions to be detrimental to server culture and long-term growth. Shortly after this announcement, a coalition of fighters from all across the server sieged and begun to break the Rhode Island vault, not before minor skirmishes occurred. Blockchainistan soon fell a few days later. With coverage from multiple newspapers such as the Lambat Post and Pavian Tribune, the war has been one of the most reported in Civ history.
This week’s featured image is the obbybombing of Icenia during the Generic War.
The News
The HEGS Corp building in Black Light, Gang Shi.
Unrelated Incidents
- The Imperial Federation discovered that an illegal vault was being constructed near the capital near Anor Lando X, led by Zombie_Stiker, JoelThaTroll, SlothInASuit, and Caddystomper. The group claims it was in attempt to run a coup in the country’s government.
- The Imperial Federation quickly responded after discovering screenshots by declaring the territory demilitarized. The post was soon removed following the incident. (This was the second post removed by King_Cupar in recent weeks, after initially deleting a post regarding Otonabee activity.)
- Caddystomper issued this statement regarding the fiasco, saying that it was a form of protest against the government. Joel further elaborated that the issue with the country was government reform to better reflect the situation of the territories of the Federation. A trial is forthcoming.
- In an unrelated incident, RiseUndead and TrueToneMatters were dismissed and pearled by the Imperial Federation, for attempting to pearl Xan of Transylvania for possessing drugs (which, may I remind everyone, is not illegal on CivMC).
- In a related incident, the United Tribes of the Southern Sea claimed a large chunk of land near the western world border, which caused significant concern over the country’s activity.
- Most pointed out that the country did not have enough players to support the claim, although despite claims of having enough, a list was not provided.
- The claim was rescinded the next day over those concerns.
- In another unrelated incident, the UTSS and the Catholic Church signed the Treaty of Brunswik, which ends the military occupation of a nearby island and the two parties agree to a joint administration of the nearby Nether portal.
- The Temporal Isles announced the separation of much of its territory into the Temporal Empire.
- However the post also saw significant sweeping changes, which include lots of wealth being paid towards the Empire, and access to a nearby Nether Portal. Gang Shi also agreed to enter a military alliance between the isles.
- In an actually related incident, Zolo put up a bounty for 100d after PhysicsGamer pearled Mushroom_Cultist, however the bounty was rescinded the next day.
Other Stuff
- Magnileve posted a long statement regarding Zephyria and his former territory in Terra Leporis Maximi, alleging that despite continuous efforts for diplomacy, the country was being rude and disrespectful and disregarded their claims.
- The general consensus within the comments was that because the nation was inactive for so long, had very few people, and the claim was so vast and big, it wasn’t in their right to control the territory anymore.
- Norlund was founded near to the Temporal Isles after agreements from Warmia — this isn’t the Norlund that has been known for years and normally run by Cortwade, but an early Norlund that predated it.
- Plrog announced that Respein is being resettled under the name of Kaota to “revive the land”.
- Probably the shortest country that has ever existed, Alojzos, was founded, and then its leader resigned within the week
- Cissonius posted a manifesto for the Just Stop Obby campaign, an effort to suppress the market of obsidian. That being said, am I going to trust Cissonius enough for me to hand over my own obby?
- The Lambat Post has been retired with LENS One, a television station, is now on the air.
- Lambat has heard reports of a Wither being constructed in Icenia, which has raised alarms (and their ping!) Crossposted from LENS One.
- Superbgamer hid the four pieces of his pissdog map art around the map with clues to find all four, however they were quickly discovered within the day
Metagame Highlights
The Great Walls of Anvard, in Pavia, taken by ArtificialDriver and built by VolutionFs.
Some comments I received last week about the BUILD alliance were incredibly confrontational. While I do agree that the writing did have bias, and I encourage input to correct possible mistakes, I still ask for respect and patience when requesting changes or when bringing up questions with possible criticism or clarifications to better understand the situation to get the most accurate information possible.
- CivMC admin SoundTech did some minor infrastructure work over this past week, moving some infrastructure which hosted code repos.
- He also announced that they are continuing development on the highly anticipated PvP and Pearl updates, as well as more active enforcement of their content policy, as they announce they are working once again towards Discord partnership. Watch where you post your pissdogs, everyone!
- ChrisChrispie made a post complaining about consent recording of voice calls on Civ.
- Kibbles in response, posted a recording of ChrisChrispie and said that they have “record[ed] literally everything since start of the world in the hopes of making a series called “Game of Pearls.” His extended response, however, felt very demeaning.
- While one-way recording has its purposes, and is controversial, at best, recording for malicious reasons is concerning. Players generally agree that recording without consent is frowned upon.
- This mostly comes out as Gang Shi announced earlier this week that voice calls would be recorded and entering a voice channel in their discord is equivalent to consenting, however no notice of this fact has been available prior to this rule change.
- CivReign and CivRev have unfortunately been shut down this past week, following continued inactivity and financial troubles for CivUnion. CivReign admins have not responded, however Owain_X has been the one to respond to these claims.
The Fun Stuff
Owain_X’s new expansions on the Deepslate Islands.
Builds
- Paddington shows off all of their recent antics within Nassau, which includes a lot of their builds
- I’m not a huge fan of the picture but if the clock face of Big Corey is anything, it’s pretty good
- Byhalia is basically creating a 1:1 recreation of Gensokyo and it’s honestly looking amazing, huge props to his devotion
- I’m kinda just shocked at the massive expansion of the Deepslate Isles in recent weeks
- ArtificialDriver is also showing off pics of Anvard, built by VolutionFs in Pavia
- Gang Shi is showing off some progress and rails within their borders
- Naturrpowers is working on a new palace in Olympia,
- Torynado shows off a cool bridge on the GOR
Multimedia Projects
- Dragongaming posted a relaxing climb to the summit of Mount Augusta where much of the Maester houses are, he also posted a walkthrough of Pavia the week before as well that I forgot to post. Looking forward to more!
- Another profile picture of Jbblocker and one for Kibbles by butter_villager
- Here’s a very realistic recreation of Lambat’s primary populace created by MaybeGravy
Memes
- Man people here need to stop being on edge all the time
- Janet Blackquill has resorted to making daily Civball comics for a little bit, one about cheese, something about Grimace shakes, CivReign dying and a fake book/movie cover for an Butternut/Icenia war documentary
- Ghas has several news posts that range from actual “news” to “let’s just have you lose braincells”
- Bro what the hell does this have to do with Civ
- Elysian Pact is now real
Non-Civ Content
- Once-in-a-generation hitter-pitcher Shohei Ohtani is on a tear after pitching a complete game, while also LEADING the American League in home runs.
- It has gotten so bad that pitchers are intentionally walking him because he is basically the only person providing run support on the Angels
- Oh my god, it’s Weezer!
Not that I have a lot this week, but I’m hoping that people are more kind to each other this week. A lot of news this week just felt horrible to read and people just need to be more patient and kind to each other.
Poll of the Week
Last Week’s Results
We had 80 unique responses for last week’s poll.
Our first question was Which of these suggestions would you like CivMC admins to focus on next?
It does seem priorities are quite spread out, of course, I’m happy to see PvP and 1.20 are on the top “most wanted list” as both have been expected to come for a while, but fishing is not one I entirely expected to get up here.
Backpacks are also entirely a cosmetic change but such a minor thing would be a huge impact on the community for builders and traders. One thing I thought would impact people was the slow performance on CivMC this week for performance updates, but it had a pretty minimal impact overall.
Our second question was What was your first Civ server?
I threw this question in as a whim, as it’s always included in surveys, and very unsurprisingly, it’s a big old graph that shows that people have dropped off overtime. Wow!
Ok, regardless, I’m kind of surprised that there are a good amount of people reading this newsletter that have never played a Civ server before. What’s your deal? Why read this piece of junk?!
Time to Vote!
Controversial Cry for Help
Live, Laugh, Lambat, an artful rendition of Lambat’s main players by MaybeGravy.
I hope you enjoyed reading this week’s newsletter, and I’m super excited for all the very wholesome comments that have been elicited by everything I wrote today.
Thanks to Gjum, Xcios, and RedDevel for providing some input for information this week.
I’m going to also take a minute before I start plugging stuff, because this week I’ve seen a lot of negativity around pretty much every piece of news around Civ, no matter what corner of Civ you belong to. There’s been a lot of cynicism around Civ lately, and I truly want this community to be one that’s positive and uplifting.
I’m going to be lazy and copy last week’s plugs:
- Do you want your content on the front page of the server? Consider writing a featured article! No topic but still want to write? Feel free to message me
@specificlanguageand we can talk! - I also encourage people who have fervent opinions about the Civ genre write an op-ed, I’m happy to bring new ideas about the genre to the table.
- Finally, and if you’re stupid enough to read all of this to the end, and you’d like to support me doing these very stupid things, donate to my ko-fi, not that I care this much about money
Until next time…