CivWiki Monday Newsletter

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

CivWiki Newsletter for September 16, 2024

• specificlanguage

Good morning and happy Monday from the Pacific Northwest!

I managed my time at least a little bit better so I happily managed a near deadline post today pretty comfortably. Plus, I’m sleeping at a healthy time tonight!

It’s a little bit more of a quiet week all things considered for the news, but I hope everyone’s had a great one — it’s the Olympics hype edition of the newsletter and I’m really looking forward to see the community come all together once again.

Let’s great straight into the news!

This week’s featured image is actually the newsletter building in Pavia City! That’s right, there’s a physical newsletter building within CivMC! Graciously designed by paagf and Gobblin and built by Blackgold, not only do I appreciate them designing this building for me for free, but also using several new blocks including mud, froglights, and actually has a working non-factory printing press. Located just outside the town hall on Main Street, it’s a great building and I couldn’t be happier with how it’s turned out. All it needs now is a newsletter logo. Thanks to everyone who helped, and come and visit!

Featured Article

This week’s featured article was written by IntentGames.

The Elysian Pact (EP) is a defense and military alliance between Volterra, Nara, and former members of SPQR, Pavia, Estalia, and Warmia. Formed in July 2022, The EP is mainly known for its role in several major conflicts throughout CivMC’s history. Only around a month after its founding, the pact saw its first action together in the Generic War. The war, fought against Rhode Island saw many internal conflicts within Rhode Island eventually declaring war on many nations, including Pavia and SPQR on August 17, 2022. This declaration of war caused all nations within the EP at the time to join the Coalition in fighting Rhode island. By September, the USA (formerly Rhode Island) collapsed following a mass banwave by CivMC administrators, leading to the eventual fall of Rhode Island’s vault, and victory for the EP.

The next conflict the EP took part in was The Four Hour War, which saw the EP launch a successful military incursion into Arnen after the pearling of PhysicsGamer in Pavia. The final major conflict the EP participated in was in February 2023, with the EP launching a coordinated attack on Kallos. The battle lasted just one day, ending with the fall of Kallos’ vault and the pearling of its leaders. Despite these military successes, the alliance saw Estalia and Pavia exit following internal grievances in the group in February 2024, and SPQR exiting the alliance in September 2024.

This week’s featured image description is the flag of the Elysian Pact.

This Week In Civ

On the week of September 16 - September 22 in:

2022:

  • The Estalia-Rhode Island War came to a close last weekend as citizens from Estalia and Pavia as well as other nations that supported the coalition disabled and freed pearls from a vault and skybunker in Rhode Island city.
  • CivMC admins announced a blanket ban of nearly all Rhode Island and associated players, after a larger effort to crack down on players who were “engaging in server killing toxicity beyond toleration”.
  • Icenia announced a large cleanup effort after Rhode Island players obbybombed their city for the fourth time prior to being banned. President ChrisChrispie was hopeful that the city would return to its former glory.
  • Blockchainistan pearled shadedoom of Petrichor as Estalia lost a heavily favored fight to remove Blockchainistan from the map, who had been implicated in aiding the USA.
  • The Imperial Federation, Hyperborean Confederation, Pridelands, and Venne all entered a new defensive alliance, called the Meridiem Compact, involving all nations around the South world border.
  • The Lambat Post announced new editions to be published ingame, the fourteenth edition is available at the Media Center in Lambat City.
  • The blanket ban allowed CivMC player count to rebound to upwards of 100 for the first time in months.

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The News

Icenia’s skyline on a cool, calm night.

Around the Server

I’m sure you all expected a lengthier writeup, but nope.

Metagame Highlights

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The Fun Stuff

A foggy night on the streets of Rivia City. (cr: Jaydon/Fendrell)

Calendar

Builds

Cool Content

Memes

Non-Civ Content

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Poll of the Week

The new Groveheart Crop Exchange, with its double towers over the evergreen landscape. (cr: Gidein)

Last week, we had 64 responses. That’s up from 42 last week.

Political Compass Orientations

Political compass questions are a hallmark of Civ, I mean naturally it’s come up in previous servers’ advertising, in the culture, what have you. When Lodish used to do these more regularly, there still continued to be a really heavy bias towards Lib/Left anyway. Thankfully I play on the side…

Of course, I couldn’t leave out my boy “I just want to grill for god’s sake”

Minecraft Movie Hot Takes

I figure that Civ players, the most degenerate minecraft players that exist, have opinions on what the Minecraft movie looks like.

It looks like cookie cutter corporate garbage with expensive but unappealing animation and no redeeming qualities. I imagine whoever decided to lead this project was banking on kids being stupid and watching anything they slap the word Minecraft on to. Something something capitalism bad and sucking the life out of art.

If Lego can make a good movie, Minecraft can too. Shouldn’t be live action focused

“My name is Steve”

I refuse to watch it. I would much sooner give every single one of my many groups to my opponents, breaking several vaults and releasing pearls, than to engage with something for children.

I know it was never going to be an option for a cash cow like minecraft, but it would’ve been really interesting to fund any of the longstanding animation studios that have made minecraft animations for over a decade to make something longform. It might be nostalgia but I feel like those old vids had really good creative direction for something created solely out of passion

The cast looks good, but somewhat poorly done. The kids seem normal, jack black is probably gonna be awesome, but (i forget their names) the tan guy with long hair and pink jacket (ed. note: Jason Momoa) and black girl (ed. note: Danielle Brooks) seem like they are going to have extreme, exaggerated, unrealistic and annoying personalities, with the dude being the worst.(ed. note: hey you forgot about Jack Black as Steve) The animation seems a little weird, not my taste, but could work. I actually think the movie has potential, I will probably still watch it, I just think they are gonna mess this one up badly even though it would only take minor tweaks to make it really good. Hopefully my suspicions are wrong and it turns out good. The trailer does not give me much faith though.

Surprisingly I have found the rare positive take within the comments:

I think people are way too harsh on it. It is supposed to be fun. People upset about it don’t realize that they aren’t the target audience for Minecraft companion content anymore. Anyone expecting massive lore revelations to further Minecraft’s currently implicit lore structure will be disappointed. What it will be is a fun movie with good visuals that will make Minecraft players of all ages happy, even if it’s primarily trying to cater to a more general audience.

May I counter with: it looks ugly. I think it has potential, but if it’s anything like their first showing I have incredible doubt. If they can improve it like the Sonic movie, there’s potential, but I have a feeling this one might be too far cooked to save it.

Anyway, I cannot wait until April 4, 2025 when I will shame watch this with my friends.

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Competition Cry for Help

Doommad attempting the parkour course in Yoahtl (cr: x1025).

Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter — really appreciate your support!

Depending on what happens, you might not see a newsletter appear next Monday — this is not me quitting quite yet but just anticipating a busy week. I am hoping I will at least have some people who will be contributing to several parts of the news to keep me from writing a lot.

Thanks to butter_villager, Tatsu, Zolo, Hakr_, BritishWanderer, Ahrimanne, Gobblin, paagf, and Blackgold and a huge thanks to IntentGames for writing this week’s newsletter. Always looking for contributors, (especially next week) so message me if you’re interested: @specificlanguage on Discord.

I think that’s all for me this week, until next time:

EDIT CIVWIKI