CivWiki Newsletter for August 13, 2024

Good morning and happy Mond — oh wait hold on a sec… aw man it’s Tuesday already?!

Well, I took a weekend off while doing some of my prep ahead of time and it was absolutely fantastic. Unfortunately, I didn’t prep enough and ended up paying the price for it on Monday night! Weirdly a lot of drama for these late summer days on Civ.

We’ve got a lot of events that piled up after wars and I’m really excited to have the Civ community come together over the next few weeks to have some fun! But for now I think it’s time to get ready for the news.

Featured

Featured Image

This week’s featured image is the Icenian skyscraper-filled skyline. As summer is heading to a close, Icenia has always been on a never-ending quest to both derelict and rebuild their city over the years, and honestly, I think this might be one of the best iterations yet. The varied skyscrapers all remind me of 1920s America and they do a great job. Hell, they still kind of look like a great American city today. Great work guys, and I can’t wait to come back for more.

Featured Article

CivEx, also known as CivilizationExperiment, was a Civ server that catered to a more encompassing world-building focused playerbase. Despite this, it intended to keep the gameplay style of Civ intact. The server had four iterations, 1.0 lasting during 2014-2015, 2.0 during 2016, 3.0 during 2017, and First Light, in 2019. While the server was helmed by different admins and conflicting development philosophies, the common goal was to provide a gameplay experience to “encourage players to both compete and cooperate” on a Civ server that emphasized world-building and pleasant Civ experiences over military conflict.

As a result, raiding and wars were more regulated, but saw the emergence of grand nations focused on builds, culture and other non-military aspects on Civ. Countries like Blackholm saw massive construction, and several countries like Irongrad, New Antioch, Draconis, and others saw varied forms of successful governments across the server. Today, many of CivEx’s ideas and playerbase went on to play in CivRealms 2.0, and likewise in the short-lived CivReign, although there is no currently active Civ server that is roleplay-focused.

This week’s featured article is Blackholm, a major civilization on CivEx First Light. Curiously, I actually have to give the credit to (cr: shtim).

For those wondering, I tried to see if maps existed for these servers. Link rot much of the older servers, but First Light survives!.

This Week In Civ

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The News

Apparently, Zinc3200 is building a little keep in the old City of England territory as part of SPQR. May not be built on live yet but it’s cool as heck! (cr for pic: Mark_Antony)

On the Calendar

What’s surprising is that everyone decided to schedule things for the next month. So get ready for:

• This Week: Mount Augusta announced a poem competition celebrating their heritage, and the opportunity to win 100d! Although — crap it’s due this week? Better be quick!
• August 17: Commonwealth is doing a Poker Night on August 17th, at 2pm PST/5pm EST/10pm BST! This features an automated poker machine, located at the tavern in Verdant Valley. Gamble for diamonds with Texas Hold’em on the server!
• August 31: Icenia and Pavia are going to war! That’s right, the two biggest superpowers of the nor— huh? oh wait I’m sorry, production has said that it’s actually a Farley War between the two countries, on August 31 at 2pm PST/5pm EST/10 BST!
• September 13-14: SPQR is holding a Roman Triumph and Games on September 13th and the 14th, celebrating the end of the summer and the end of the Wet Bandits.
• September 20-28: Psst… this isn’t official but… Yoahtl is (tenatively) holding its Olympics on September 20, 21, 22 and 27, 28th, a few weekends from now. You’ll probably hear an official announcement from them soon!
• Yesterday: If I had published this earlier, Volterra held a fireworks show on Monday to celebrate the Wet Bandits’ defeat

Pavia is Daily

• Griffin & Pavia announced the two countries would be merging into one! Not very surprising considering Griffin’s Duke and current Pavian Emperor Seekinq currently being heads of state of both countries, but congrats to both countries and their new flag!
• Meanwhile, Ahri and CedarValiant ran a heated campaign for mayor of Pavia City. Yes, you read that right, CivMC admin Ahrimanne. All reporting (cr: Creepi0n/Cissonius @ Pavia Daily)
  • A debate was held on Saturday that asked about future progress for the city’s construction, newfriend orientation, and more. Several attendees considered Ahri to win the debate handily.
  • Despite this, the election only saw a narrow victory for Ahri, winning by a few votes. This was also marked by only 25% of the electorate voting in this election — something interesting to notice as the country has swapped to a democracy.
• Elsewhere in Pavia, a new upstart district is making sweeping claims:
  • Frantfurk (mispelling is intentional), located in the Deepslate Isles, is an “autonomous district” run by masonrays, but has gotten into some small issues with Pavia in the past. (There’s more, but it’s in non-public channels.)
    • This is partially how the Farley War became an event due to some disdain on his part towards Icenia.
  • Acting under the “Frantfurk Autonomous Militia”, mason has claimed areas north of Butternut and more controversially in northeast Mount Augusta and Blockchainistan, a country which has seen no activity in years, but more importantly, its citizens were banned for blatant anti-semitism.
  • I do believe he probably has no idea what’s going on though, but the usual folk are giving him some flack for his actions.
• Within the government, Pavia announced two major acts on Monday, August 12.
  • Monument Bank will now receive a whopping 27.5% income tax that will be sent to the government — allowing Mayor of Pavia Ahri, and Keeper of the Commons SteelHand7 plan to use the income tax for their efforts to improve their respective spaces.
  • Meanwhile, dual citizens now only have to pay 16 diamonds to receive dual citizenship from the country, 4 times less than before. That’s cheaper as a newsletter ad! See their legislation for more.
• Finally, Pavia announced they would be making a Declaration of Friendship with Artonia, as part of the CUB agreement.

An early sunrise in Griffin is a great sight! (cr: C0wboys)

Exhausting Discord PvP

• Up north in Winterbourne, a campaign to free a player went completely awry. Get ready for a long read, folks…
  • Princess__Bow announced that vinny64, who was on trial for attempting to overthrow Nassau, would be sentenced for 2 months. (with the condition he would be released on parole)
  • However, a.aron, vinny’s lawyer, was upset at the lack of response and process for the trial, especially considering they had no opportunity to respond or present their case. To be fair, I would be mad too, however most Winterbourne officials were away due to real life obligations. Just like me!
  • As a result, a.aron wrote an essay arguing against the unjust ruling of 12 months of pearl time, and failure to due process, relaying it to several national Discords (and my own DMs).
    • It is worth noting that the sentence was 2 months (with the condition he would be released on parole) — but would be 12 months imprisoned if he violated any terms of the agreement. It seemed that vinny was OK with it once it was explained that way.
    • Regardless, Nekroz tried to play damage control by basically telling him “bro chill we got irl stuff to do”
    • That being said, I do agree (w: opinion!) that a trial was at least due and a shorter sentence should have been made.
  • In the aftermath of all of this, vinny apologized on behalf of a.aron’s actions, CatistStudy apologized as well actions (and also shared their poor treatment in Baile’s server), and a.aron quit entirely.
  • Yes, I know, I kind of regret running a large piece on someone whose blew themselves up off the server, but I think people probably want some context after they received the same message in several discords.
• Imperial Federation players received a very unusual ping in their discord over the past week.
  • Supposedly, players were uncomfortable about the server being uncomfortably moderated, and (t/w) some players were bullying others due to religion and race.
  • As usual, if this ever happens, this is generally not acceptable and should be reported to both Discord and the CivMC admins.
• Guess what guys, another war is happening within the -,-! Gaiador accused Zatoka and Sovia for attacking their nation.
  • The TL;DR of the image-based post (grr) consists of a few parts:
    • Haxx0r, after being pearled, knowingly broke into a Gaiador bunker, was pearled,
    • Gaiador has been getting gaslit ever since, with both sides marking players pearl on sight, sending newfriends/raiders their respective ways, and their bunker being raided on the weekend of the 10th.
    • Gaiador has alleged that any negotiations have been met with discord bans or aggression (the latter of which seen in the comments of the post)
  • This comment thread with Haxxor has their side of the situation, alleging that coolmanabdul had been a “dishonest, manipulative, aggressive, and generally uncommunicative individual” having a history of run-ins with Commonwealth, Icenia, and Delos along with accusing and reporting false claims.
  • As usual with posts like this, take a look at the comments on the parent post for more information. There’s just too much drama going on for me to take a deeper look!

Everything Else

Are we finally done with all of these long explanatory drama and walls of text?! I knew it was a mistake to delay this by one day…

• Kallos, Ila’Kyavul, Iaumea, and Rivia announced the formation of the EAST Alliance, literally the Eastern Alliance of Security and Trade. I don’t think I need to explain what the alliance is about…
• Wafflehead posted an essay apologizing for his use of slurs within the Civ community, presumably for his pearl sentence? It doesn’t change anything however, as he is still currently pearled. That being said, it doesn’t look like a GPT prompt, presence of sources look solid (although I question the use of a high school op-ed for a source).
  • Meanwhile, there’s a whole petition of people and countries who don’t recognize Wafflenation and as of Sunday night it’s growing
• Salerno announced they would be returning onto Civ, with its beautiful architecture.
• Khalkedonia announced a Non-Aggression Pact with the Eastern See
• Pearl Protection Insurance Group released its July financial statement, focused on growth and long-term stability.
• Icenia announced the Building Regulations and Subsidies Amendment, which provides standards and regulations on how buildings can be built within Icenia City.
• After quite a few weeks of silence on their side, the world has been generally regarded as “safe” from the Wet Bandits. Yippee!
• I guess I will report again on the Yoahtl-Kallos NAP that got reposted the other day, although I did it a couple of weeks ago!
• After a few weeks of wishy-washiness on the subreddit, Norden announced they would be leaving Civ.
• Iaumea extended the GOR to Alenarith on a rail that was a former CDM bridge, allowing the line to access Alenarith nations from Yoahtl.
• Mark_Antony killed IbisMan — kinda based so look how far he’s fallen off. Anyway, this is an excuse to mention SPQR is cool.
• Finally, Mercutio announced that they fully coppered the line between their country and Pacem — speeding up times to the western nation by 3 minutes per journey!

Metagame Highlights

• CivCubed released a dev update new vein models for their custom texture pack and plugins. They look great and would fit right in — if it was on stone.
• Civ+ released their Patreon, with public prices on. They gain about $50/mo.
• Stoomer announced the Civ Hearts of Iron 4 project — not dissimilar to Civ Victoria 3? Only more reasons to not play Civ
• Gjum released a graph of historical player activity, consisting of graphs of new players, total playtime, to server population over the last two years. Awesome stuff!

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The Fun Stuff

A cool night falls upon the Imperial Federation with New Callisto in the background. (cr: Codey)

Builds

• Babe, it’s time for your weekly Pavia/Griffin Pic! Admittedly, Griffin looks really good from afar. (cr: C0wboys)
• The Hippodrome in Ila’Kyavul is starting to look awesome, hockey soon? (cr: Fendrell)
• I don’t think people realize how big the builds are in Orakuru, it’s actually kinda insane. (cr: OreStraya/phobitica)
• Mount Augusta is fixing up their riverbank for a new town (cr: Jaybirdino, just respecting the new name lol)
• I actually do kind of like this pagoda out in the cherry blossom forest, very nice (cr: Ambush3105)

Cool Content

• Imperial Times announced their latest feature, (De)Grading CivMC, as they review Pavia for their first episode
• Southw3st announced the Master Brewer’s Handbook, available in several places across the server.
• You know, we haven’t had a good art piece from butter_villager in a while, and this Emperor artwork is once again really great, and what Civ needs!

Memes

• Reset the timer for how long it takes for someone to claim the whole world
• did someone say the mining meme

Non-Civ Content

Why was I delaying the newsletter, people might ask. Why, I was touching grass of course! And in this case, a lot of things enriched my IRL experience this week:

• I watched a Seattle Mariners game for the first time in person! Even funnier in fact, was that we were watching THE METS baby, that’s right, lets go mets, go get a homerun, c’mon baby love the mets, lets go mets
  • As a side note, a Gaming YouTuber ended up reacting to an MLB compilation video in 2024…
• Very few people in the Civ community and online know that I run regularly. I ended up reaching 7+ miles running this week! All thanks to a local running group. Unfortunately I got shin splints on my Saturday run so I guess that’s nipped in the bud for a couple of weeks :(
• Board games are actually surprisingly pretty big in Seattle and I’ve been having a lot of fun trying out exotic games I’ve never tried before. Taverns of Tiefenthal is one I played this week, it’s a deckbuilder that’s really elegantly themed and has a great mix of strategy and luck.
• Pavia is still addicted to Farm Merge Valley. It’s so late here on Monday night and people are still playing it, the channel rarely has a time when the activity is not there
• Finally, in the playlist this week: Schubert’s Rosamunde Quartet, along with middle Beethoven quartets. I’m going to get my violin shipped out here soon, so hopefully I’ll be able to (remember how to) play it!

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Poll of the Week

An absolutely massive rail station in Orakuru, Nara. (cr: phobitica/OreStraya)

Last week, we had 48 responses. Where did everyone go from the 75-ish numbers last week?

Happiness

Well, these answers might be pretty useless considering that this entire question depended upon everyone supposing that a “5” was extremely happy. Probably should have specified a scale.

The average was 3.21 and the median was 3. Glad to see that at least people are generally happy with Civ so far, but I wouldn’t really use these polls for any purpose in particular, especially since we really don’t know why people responded the way they did.

Your Civ Story

I always label it your “Civ story” on how different players discovered Civ in the first place. A couple of the most interesting ones:

Watched the ACCoker YouTube series. Simply had to join after [I] saw how much fun he and Pantherr had!

Right around the time of the start of the HCF war on Civcraft 1.0, someone posted to r/minecraft with a gallery showing a bunch of things they discovered on the server including ruins of towns. It was amazing to see massive cities that’d been abandoned, hidden builds in the middle of nowhere and hints of conflict and events that were 100% player driven.

My friends and I had just wrapped up a private server and wanted to try something new. One of us saw an ad for a server that said it simulated civilization so we tried to join it. that server was Stoneworks. When we tried to join it had a queue, so we looked on the internet for other similar servers and found CivClassic. We met up around 0,0, were found by Icenians, they taught us the mechanics, and then we moved to another country.

irl friends group wanted the year’s two week minecraft run to be on a public server for a change, and Bez found the fucking political compass ad squareblob made. [editor’s note: unfortunately I can’t find a post like this from squareblob :(] we saw it was a political server and we were all politically inclined so we decided on a theme, dragged a name out of a fantasy name generator and the two week run for 6 friends turned into half a decade. Only two of us are still interested in civ, but hey that’s how Trud was made

Doing my friend[sic] play it on a road trip to the Smokey mountains, and then talking to them while eating lunch about it. They finally convinced me to join, and I left their nation 2 weeks after joining [editor’s note: they still play]

I saw the logo on r/place

My friend was on reddit and found some post talking about the bombing of Icenia. [editor’s note: Maybe this one?] They were confused because they had never heard of that country before. They clicked the post to look into it and realized it was about a Minecraft nation and it instantly grabbed our attention.

Every time I do this, I always find a new story that is intriguing or just absolutely hilarious, and I still find it incredible that Civ has this kind of reach.

On one item, however, this is a funny idea:

Also something like this would be fun to read and guess the player. I think it’s pretty obvious who I am. But would be fun to see your guesses!

Vote Now!

And that last answer gives me an idea — but only if you’d like to:

All submitted answers will be anonymous, so even I won’t know who it is. I’ll try to post a leadup post on Sunday ahead of the newsletter for people to guess! It’ll be fun!

Paying on Interest Cry for Help

Pope Antares I visits Salerno with a small crowd at St. Ambrose. (cr: Antares/Salerno?)

Thanks for reading what ended up being a chonko of a newsletter. Another huge thanks to BritishWanderer, Codey, Bestfiretop, Jaydon, Gjum, Mark_Antony, x1025, VilyanZ and others for some help on the newsletter and company in voice chats this past week!

I did this during the fall last year, but I think it’s worth saying it now — I’m only going to start producing newsletters if there’s enough news to fill a week. During the spring and fall, activity tends to be relatively lower and as a result, the newsletter kind of feels empty, and I don’t want that to happen and kill my vibe. Not that I don’t like producing these, I just don’t like more work!

I don’t think that’s going to happen for a while, but I really appreciate the outward support that the newsletter’s been getting. I’ll see you all next week, with less news! Until next time…

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