CivWiki Newsletter for August 19, 2024
Good morning and happy Monday from the Pacific Northwest!
Honestly, it isn’t really fun being bedridden after trying to work your legs too much while running. That’s usually not a good sign, isn’t it. Not to mention that my area is literally filled with hills.
Civ had a lot of activity this week. I’m surprised how minor drama that happens the week before spills out into having major worldbuilding implications, but I think that’s just how Civ works sometimes. What can you do?
Anyway, that’s enough rambling forewords from me, how about the news?
Featured
Featured Image
A couple weeks ago, I made a deal with Urzork what whoever got 2nd place on his (De)Grading CivMC poll would receive a featured image that week. It turned out to be Winterbourne and here it is! This was taken with a long view behind the market square on the river. With the castle in the background, everything look quite incredible at this scale. I know that while many Winterborians(?) are on break at the moment the country still looks create majestic in its winter glory. Great work!
Featured Article
This week’s featured article is a repeat of September 26, 2022.
Loveshack was a micronation on Civcraft 1.0 and Civcraft 2.0. Fully located within the borders of Mount Augusta, the country was an anarcho-queer monarchy focused on spreading the dogma of love, freedom of sexuality, and supporting the self-determination of all nations. The nation’s main reason for existence was simply to roleplay as a micronation. Much of its territory was divided in provinces, with small provinces focused on its palace, courtyard, and even a barstool in Prince Toastedspike’s favorite bar.
Despite its small size, Loveshack became involved in some diplomatic issues during its tenure on Civcraft, The longest war involved the French Mount Augustan province of Vanier, where continued military aggression eventually resulted in Mount Augusta recognizing Loveshack’s sovereignty in 2014. Loveshack was also engaged in conflicts with Orion, attempts to annex Grundeswald, and accession into the U3P, a military alliance in the +,+ quadrant. To this day, Loveshack remains the only successful attempt at a microstate in Civ, simultaneously being recognized officially and taking a lighthearted nature to culture and international relations in Civ.
An ingame screenshot of Loveshack’s palace in Civcraft 2.0.
This Week In Civ
On the week of August 19 - August 25 in:
2022:
- The ongoing Estalia-Rhode Island War has taken a turn towards other nations after failed attacks from Estalia. With Rhode Island’s name being changed to the United States of America, the country declared war on Pavia, SPQR, Jorvik, and Moloka.
- Pavia saw a large obbybombing of the country’s major landmarks, and fought off a skybridge on their vault later that day. While USA leadership has stated they did not want to obbybomb them, no effort was made to stop it, stating USA would rather kill the server.
- The next day, Icenia fought off a large offensive from Rhode Island as well, with much of the city being griefed. Defense minister Lagiacrus was also pearled during the defense of their vault. The next day saw USA fighters successfully break into their vault.
- Ez2Clutch was unpearled and switched sides from Estalia to the USA. He has been associated with Vah raiding other nations across the server including Nara, Icenia and Yoahtl.
2023:
- Mount Augusta elected Podly as its newest mayor after a competitive election.
- Transylvania elected fastestgrass as their newest president.
- Lambat is electing its newest Metro Council, however, many incumbents are not running after many joke candidates have declared their intention to run.
- Pavia is offering financial incentives for further build contracts.
- Golden Nations, a previously survival server has announced they would be using Citadel and other related plugins on their upcoming iteration. (Editor’s note: This proved to be unpopular and moved back only a couple months later).
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The News
I went on a boat to get this extremely wide angle shot of Shockton. Also because otherwise, a large farm would’ve been on screen if I got too close.
CivMC Update
There’s not really much to talk about here, but it’s just worth noting that CivMC updated to 1.20.6.
- However, the update broke lore additions on crates and fossils, in which a later update then fixed these issues.
- I will update the unofficial mods list later to reflect this, but most versions for 1.20.6 should be similar to 1.20.4, just click on the mods name for more.
- Okx also put in the work to make a new version of CivModern as well!
How to Unravel an Alliance in Five Simple Steps
This section is like nothing you ever bought at IKEA; it comes to you in only two parts.
- Coolmanabdul was pearled earlier this week, with his bunkers being raided, and his pearl being stored in Sovia and later in an ATS bunker.
- He then claims Ambush3105 released him and kamigoose, of his own will in response to his Reddit post from the previous week.; However, this claim is disputed as others claim that he paid Ambush for freeing him.,
- Abdul then gave himself up to Zatoka to be pearled and is currently in limbo in negotiations.
I sunk a lot of time and effort and research into the above post, including one of many panic attacks that resulted in being a false flag of an “illegal” bunker. What a waste of my Sunday.
Meanwhile, Ambush’s actions had implications within the Alliance of the Sea:
- Tophat was frustrated at Ambush’s actions and as a result, pearled him. Something I may have forgotten to mention is that he attempted to free him twice.
- When he gave Ambush’s pearl to Zatoka — who pearled him in Yuan, it caused a large argument in the ATS discord over Tophat’s actions.
- As a result, Thanatos, Artonia and Khalkedonia left the alliance in protest.
- Temporal Empire also made an announcement that they would withdraw their observer state status over the incident.
- You may be wondering why I don’t have any receipts for this, and that’s because the ATS discord has been deleted.
- Effectively, the ATS completely collapsed over their internal drama, and I don’t think I’ll ever know why until someone in the Reddit comments explains.
- On a semi-related note, Ambush announced he would be leaving the server shortly after, citing family issues.
Pearls o’ Plenty
- Sloth was pearled by Walkers after it was alleged that he helped fund the Wet Bandits.
- Although I don’t have public evidence for this, it is likely that this will be a relatively permanent pearl.
- IbisMan was killed by Matt4fun9. ASN players also are attempting to track IbisMan down the nether, as he is attempting to raid near the Fempire portal.
- Icenia called out for any claims they have on Stoomer.
- He’s been pearled ever since Plrog pearled him a few weeks ago, and his pearl was most likely handed off to Icenia following Heikki’s inactivity.
- Editor’s note: yet another Plrog nation that didn’t go anywhere
- Editor’s editor’s note: Hey Stoomer, this is really mean, like, you should try pumping out newsletters for 105 weeks in a row; in fact if i kept you, my term of release would have you write a proper newsletter
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Imperial Madness
Vibe check, have a moment relaxing at this hot spring in Maugate (cr: ZZERS)
Sorry guys, there’s still more long sections to go.
- Imperial Federation held its August federal elections this past week. (all graphs are cr: TheJmqn)
- Potato_Duke was elected as Chancellor, following his successful run a few months ago. He gained 42.4% in the first round and won with a plurality of 57.1%, beating JAW689.
- Sunanic was elected as his Vice Chancellor, but there are reasons we have to discuss that this may not be the case.
- Southw3st was also elected as judge, winning in the first round wth 71%.
- In addition to the election, Groveheart and Withervale announced they would be seceding from the Imperial Federation and founding the Great Western Bay, a new country consisting of both countries previously mentioned.
- Sunanic was a citizen of Withervale, which may affect his Vice Chancellor eligibility.
- Meanwhile, Zeus1776 was elected as Archduke of the GWB.
Pavia Madness
This week’s Pavia News are brought to you by Pavia Daily (cr: Creepi0n/Tuomasz).
- On Tuesday Cissonius cancelled the “Kilmoran House Agreement” between Pavia First and Renew, cutting the cabinet by half its members, along with Mayor Ahri opening the first public Pumpkin Pie station to fight malnutrition and hunger in the city
- Friday saw Cissonius (after a lost dice day) surprisingly resigns and retreats to farming sheep, making the way free for a snap election on Saturday
- Pavia Daily then gave a quick overview of all candidates for the Prime Minister election
- On Sunday, State Tabulator HakR_ announced the win of gobblin, in a surprising vote with barely 50% votes going for the UPP.
Around the Server
A nighttime gaze at Windermere Castle, Pavia.
I’m sure I missed a whole host of other events not listed here. Sorry!
- Nara and company embarked on a world tour this past weekend, stopping at several notable places around the server. I’m sorry I missed y’all at SPQR!
- Commonwealth’s Poker Night got cut short as a terrorist attack in the pub saw an explosion which destroyed the poker machine. But people still had fun though!
- Lambat’s nether portal was announced by Kaprediem to have its ownership transferred to Pavia-Griffin.
- Among the many announcements that Salerno has put out this week, they announced they would be would be administering previously Norden land along with supporting the Catholic Church.
- I do want to shoutout Hateno Village for being a killer idea for a nation and coming up with builds that look very faithful to the game.
- After over 20 submissions for flags for Accra (although, not all of them were serious), it was announced that Squidhasthebad’s Miami-palette like design won!
- This may not actually be real, but Accra was also added to the GLHF Alliance. Maybe any Kallosians want to confirm?
- The Iris Covenant put up a vote to see if they want to marry PhysicsGamer. Well…
Metagame Highlights
- Civ+ released a minor update that reduced spawn rates for all mobs, and added small update to maps, treasure maps, and validation checks for their own infra.
- A newfriend doesn’t know what’s going on. This is somehow more common these days, although I can’t chalk it up to newfriends being clueless, really. It’s really a problem about New Player Experience being nonexistent.
Upcoming Events
- August 20: Nara celebrates Finn’s birthday! Send well wishes in Nara discord.
- August 31: Pavia & Icenia are going to (Farley) War! Bring your best worst PvPers!
- September 13-14: SPQR is holding a Roman Triumph and Games on September 13th and the 14th
- Late September (tbd): Yoahtl holds its long-awaited Olympics! Sign up today!
- Sometime in the fall: I want to host a board games night for Civ players, like Quiplash or Civ Against Humanity. Stay tuned!
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The Fun Stuff
Progress on Mount Augusta’s dock area within their new town (cr: Jaybirdino).
Builds
While there weren’t that many pics this week, quality always takes precedence over quantity.
- You probably just saw Mount Augusta’s crazy new dock area that looks awesome, jaybird’s been hyping that up the past week and has totally paid off.
- Hot springs are very cool especially when it’s randomly occuring in nature like this in Maugate (cr: ZZERS)
- Babe, it’s time for your (very high quality) Pavia pic for the week! (cr: Tiny)
- Apparently SPQR has been building the Circus Maximus in preparation for their games, and once again, the scale and replication is extremely well done! (cr: me!)
Cool Content
- The Imperial Times’ miniseries, (De)Grading CivMC released their latest city tour in Yoahtl! (cr: Codey/Urzork)
- It’s just high quality enough that this Ibis chappell roan moment belongs here — although the “x ibis” implication is something quite different (cr: iinkuu)
Memes
Non-Civ Content
- On the Classical playlist: Schumann Piano Quartet. Third movement will give you absolute chills it’s so lovely
- Shin splints aren’t fun. Sorry guys, I didn’t do anything fun this weekend besides get my violin and cook food, so that’s cool, I guess.
- Apple bottom jeans, boots with the fur…
- On my idea list, I have something that would allow me to abstract the polls I use into a website.
- Unless you’re on Discord, it’s very hard to make one without paying unless you use Google Forms, Typeform or Qualtrics 🤮. Shouldn’t it be easier?
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Poll of the Week
The end of the Circus Maximus in Rome, SPQR. Thanks to BattleOfSky for touring me around!
Last week, we had 50 responses.
Dual Citizenship
The question, specifically, was how many citizenships you hold. And here’s the answers:
It’s interesting to know that not that many people hold dual citizenships, just under half of the respondents did. I think it’s way easier to be associated with one single nation than multiple, because often the benefits are not as high as you would normally have if you have more than one.
Plus, it’s probably harder to integrate into a nation when you’re a citizen of both, especially on Civ, so possibly these answers are not surprising? I don’t know.
Only Ten Words
The second question was to describe yourself in 10 words, where people will guess who you are later.
Now, I’m not posting the answers here — I’ll post them in a Reddit post sometime later so people can guess on Reddit. (I was going to do it on Sunday but I got too lazy!)
But looking at the initial answers though, once you see what got written, only having 10 words is going to be very hard to guess who they are.
Vote Now!
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Late Summer Cry for Help
Hey, thanks for reading this week’s newsletter! I hope I brightened your day at least a little bit (despite how much depressing news there was around the server this week.)
I’d like to give some thanks to Creepi0n, BritishWanderer, Tuomasz, Xcios, Gjum, abdul, Haxxor, Flags, Wheaties, Hakr, Mark_Antony, Bronnakus, Raeders, VilyanZ, ArtificialDriver and Southw3st for all their support this week, one way or another. Probably missed quite a few from that list, too.
As usual, if you’d like to help out with the newsletter, I’d always love help from whoever, there’s usually too much content to write on my own. All you gotta do is DM me @specificlanguage on Discord. Very cool.
Anyway, that’s it for me this week, so until next time…
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