CivWiki Monday Newsletter

A (mostly) weekly newsletter for Civ servers supported by the CivWiki

CivWiki Newsletter for August 5, 2024

• specificlanguage

Hello and happy August from the Pacific Northwest!

I can only speak for myself but it definitely feels like this summer has felt like a decade both in Civ terms and in IRL. There’s been so much happening that it’s finally nice that this week the news was relatively slow. I don’t have to think about writing long pieces for stupid stuff — although I’m going to have to this week at this rate anyway.

But I’ve barely squeaked this one out as I’ve got Blue Angels flying over my area every hour. I guess that’s what happens when you live near a major national landmark, but alas…

Are we ready for the news?

This week’s featured image is a view over the Commonwealth hills to the Tricon building, one of the major landmarks of the country. Now, this isn’t the Lyrean Commonwealth, don’t get it confused, The Commonwealth (the original, you might say) is getting more active right now, and even though this build was purpose built for a competition, I don’t think people really find the builds in Commonwealth as often as I think they should. Their builds are perfectly integrated with their jungle environment unlike many of other civilizations on Civ, and I think it deserves some highlight on how good their building skills are.

Featured Article

This week’s featured article is a rerun (with slight modifications) from October 24, 2022.

Alexandria, officially the Free City of Alexandria, was a country on CivRealms self-described as “founded with the desire to provide a friendly place for newfriends to learn about basic server mechanics and the history of the server”. Growing from a Brewer’s Guild, the city became the server’s most populous area, and seceded from Varathia due to its growing population. After neighboring countries became involved in the Ez2War, the country was raided for several days by the raider group. Later in the server’s life, the country was involved in the USA War while simultaneously dealing with an attempted coup back at home.

The main building in the city was the Newfriend Manor, intended as an entry point for newfriends to be introduced to the mechanics and plugins on the server. Among other landmarks in the city are the Statue of Athena, Temple of Sarapis, Ampitheatre, and the Lighthouse. Like many other countries, the country held territory in CivRealms’ various expansions, in this case, Solitude in the Thomas Archipelago. The country served as a quality example for newfriend orientation, however no direct successor in CivMC was created.

This week’s featured image is the Statue of Athena at the entrypoint of Alexandria City.

As many of you can tell, I’ve been repeating featured articles a couple times, and I need new featured articles!

You can help out by writing your own featured article above as long as it has a CivWiki page by contacting me @specificlanguage. You can get 50d for writing one, it can even be about your nation!

This Week In Civ

On the week of August 5 - August 11 in:

2019: The Fourth Olympics occur in Mount Augusta.

2021: The Plus-Minus Concordat was created.

2022:

  • The ongoing war between Estalia and Rhode Island has seen fighting around both nations, concentrated at 0,0, a slime farm in Rhode Island, and a shared nether portal.
  • After Rhode Island obbybombed G-Mall and a statue at 0,0, several nations such as Pavia and Icenia have also spoken out against Rhode Island.
  • CivMC admins have been cracking down on players posting a GIF of a dog peeing; the moderators argue that the video falls under their NSFW policy.
  • The New Danzilona Hockey League (NDZHL) has announced a new season, with teams representing nations around the Medi Sea.

2023:

  • After a series of internal conflicts within the Imperial Federation, including raids on Anor Lando X, several states seceded from the country citing political differences within the government.
  • Pavia changed its governmental system to a ducal democracy, along with the addition of noble electors.
  • Icarus is returned as a new nation after agreements from Mercutio, whom they were a part following the 2023 Butternut–SEC Conflict.

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The News

SPQR’s Senate Chamber (cr: Mark_Antony)

Around the Server

Warning: according to CivMC admins, the following ad is NSFW content:

This ad was paid for by SoundTech, yes, really. To place an ad here, take a look at the ads page.

Economics Corner

Metagame Highlights

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The Fun Stuff

Columbia from above, along with old Kallos in the background (cr: CivRenders/jasonbord)

Builds

Cool Content

Memes

Non-Civ Content

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Poll of the Week

A greenhouse out in Vetranio, Pavia (cr: Urzork).

Last week, we had 80 responses. This is, once again, more than usual, as we’ve usually had 50 responses most weeks, so why are poll numbers spiking up once again? Hmmmmmmmmm…

First Play Date

The first question was how long it was since your first log-in to Civ.

It spikes around 2 years, since that’s when CivMC started, which makes sense, but this also sort of shows that the recruitment pattern for CivMC has actually been relatively consistent over time and people have been staying on the server for a while — according to this poll, the majority of respondants have never known a life before CivMC.

You may be wondering what the gap in 6 - 7 years is, since that’s a major dip in the oldfriend population. That was around 2017-2018, Somber War era. CivClassic at the time was definitely the top dog, but Civ as a genre wasn’t focusing as much on recruitment until maybe 2019, especially once CivRealms 2.2 came onto the scene, which is why you see more numbers in the 3 - 5 yrs mark.

Of course, it always is quite interesting seeing so many people in the 10+ years section, you’ve really been wasting your life!

Feedback Discord Channels

About 18 people thought the feedback channels were helpful, while 14 people didn’t. Some interesting responses were:

There’s nothing more frustrating than trying to get a question in #general when some high visibility topic is getting talked about, or having to sort through 500+ comments while you stepped away for a few hours

those channels are very important. just wish the admins were more excited about new ideas in suggestions and more supportive of new ideas.

Sometimes, I feel that the admins are slow to [implement] things that would really shake up the server. The Civ reinforced obsidian meta gets very boring after a while. They need to shake things up.

Civ desperately needs someone with a vision that can resist community pressure and create a complete experience conducive to geopolitics without having to wait for conflict (lol) to see if the balance is good.

Once in a while a good idea comes along and it gets some traction in suggestions, but it just serves as a what-if simulator. Feedback is generally quite useful though.

Something interesting from that last response though:

I’m a mod and I have community support muted also aside from pings… sorry!

I will say a lot of these responses desperately highlight the need for a second experimental server — something that Civ hasn’t seen in a while. Prior to CivClassics, you would usually see a much less populated but more interesting server that would be willing to take more development and gameplay element risks. As a mainline server, changes to CivMC are usually pretty hard to execute due to the majority of the playerbase, but servers like Devoted (before 3.0), Bergecraft, and even arguably CivRealms experimented enough that brought changes back into mainline — some of the suggestions and feedback. Civ+ may argue they fill in this niche currently, but its presence on 1.8 is going backwards… not quite as easy.

Of course, it is generally not profitable or reasonable to make another Civ server so unfortunately we’re stuck with this state.

I do want to make a “links guide” as I’ve mentioned before so old & new people can find answers to questions that have been parotted before in one place.

Vote Now!

Sorry, I phoned the poll in this week. Couldn’t think of intriguing questions fast enough.

Please note that all information submitted is anonymous. A red star (
*
) means that this question is required to submit.
On a scale from 1-5, how happy are you on Civ?
How did you learn about Civ? What's your story on how you discovered Civ servers for the first time?

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Midnight Cry for Help

Max_imil & company at Pavia’s Town Hall (cr: Max_imil).

Sorry if this week’s edition was shorter or less quality than usual. Was a little rushing around this weekend and totally didn’t lose sleep or anything this week for work-related reasons that I shouldn’t have. Seriously. I didn’t.

If you’d like to help make this newsletter I will be paying out diamonds for those who’d like to help write auxiliary materials, so feel free to reach out to me @specificlanguage! Always appreciate the support.

Besides that, I slightly did lie last week about all the backfills being there: there’s a gap of newsletters between September and October 2022 that I missed which I’ll fill eventually. Sorry!

Other than that, I think it’s time for me to head to sleep. Until next week folks,

EDIT CIVWIKI