CivWiki Monday Newsletter

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

CivWiki Newsletter for September 30, 2024

• specificlanguage

Good morning and happy Monday from the Pacific Northwest!

With the temperatures here cooling down to around 50-60 degrees, and the clouds rolling in for most of the day, it’s setting in. Yep, it’s fall.

I’m so glad that so many people showed up and competed in the Olympics this time — it’s always wonderful to see. And it’s interesting that we’ve had such a long time since a major war; although it’s kind of expected for this time of year we haven’t really had a major peace period like this since CivClassic. Of course, I may be just jinxing it.

Enough spection from me, let’s get to the news:

This week’s featured image is the Olympics’ closing ceremonies in Kobylinki, Yoahtl. Once again, I decided to highlight the whole community coming together for some amazing fun and games with week. I’m a little sad I wasn’t able to come this weekend (i need sleep!) but of the few events that I attended it was so fun to have everyone around. I can’t wait for the next one.

Featured Article

This week’s featured article is a repeat of June 1, 2023.

Empty Promises was a Civ magazine that highlighted articles, news, columns, interviews, cartoons, and other affairs related to Civ. Occasionally published by Dr_Oracle throughout the later years of Civcraft and in CivClassic, it was frequently marketed as “Civ’s longest running newspaper/magazine/bad joke”. Its main selling points were its high effort to design along with its commitment to investigative journalism, generally well received by the community. It often tackled challenging subjects, such as Nether Factories drama and recovery efforts during the late years of the Titan and HCF wars in Civcraft, and featuring or interviewing figures like sintralin and bgbba during the Somber War giving both perspectives of the war’s outbreak.

Empty Promises was unique as it was one of the only fully compiled, true-to-its-form, and sometimes open-sourced Civ magazines; many Civ newspapers today only focus on current events and rarely run interviews, op-eds, features, or showcases about items that had little to do with current events. Dr_Oracle has since gone inactive, although occasionally played in the Augustan Federation in its later days.

This week’s featured image is Empty Promises’ 13th issue, highlighting Pacem.

This Week In Civ

On the week of September 30 - October 6 in:

2017: The Commonwealth reports Lexington’s iron farm to moderators, who remove the build but compensate Lexington.

2022 (ed. note: I didn’t backfill this edition, I will eventually):

  • A report came out accusing Icenia’s unequal treatment of its territory, the Temporal Isles, to have been the cause of their secession; this has been denied and both parties are on good terms.
  • The Imperial Federation have expanded their territory to numerous territories throughout the southwest quadrant.
  • Cortesia del Mar have enacted a 136-page constitution, inviting people to celebrate next weekend.
  • The Commonwealth and the Imperial Federation all held elections for the first time this iteration, bringing new leadership into the fold.

To place an ad here, take a look at the ads page.

The News

The grand ship outside of Adria, Griffin (cr: Seekinq).

Around the Server

Now that school has started, news has been relatively slower.

The Fun Stuff

A little of a garden grove atmosphere in Zaros (cr: ToesSquared).

Calendar

Only one long-range event on the calendar this week:

Builds

I don’t have a lot, but here’s a few highlights from what I saw this week:

Non-Civ Content

Poll of the Week

Halland Bridge in the Imperial Federation (cr: mattbruhr)

Last week, we had 60 responses. I think good (and possibly controversial) questions make people turn out.

Word Conveyance Method

I knew that most people prefer to read the newsletter on their phone, but it’s relatively surprising that more people these days are reading the news on a computer. Fun fact, I didn’t really optimize the site for mobile but it turned out extremely readable anyway out of the box, so it’s an incredible bonus.

For those with large browser windows, how do you like the navigation bar on the right side? That’s been a feature on the site forever, lol!

Admin Perception

I’m sure you’re all waiting for this one.

I am suspecting there is somewhat of a vocal minority about the admins. You could bring up a whole lot of criticisms about the admins’ actions:

Slightly negative, they make dumb decisions way too quickly like banning sloth and won’t admit they were wrong.

Broadly negative. For the period I was playing transparency and approachability were huge issues, and I think the admin’s priorities were misplaced. CivMC always felt balanced more towards powerplay than casual gameplay, and that the admins didn’t do a sufficient job of creating room for healthier playstyles.

They’re doing a lot of work but consistently do something community is against of. SoundTrch[sic] always says they do a lot and can’t do more although that’s not even what people ask them to do.

They’re always concerned more about the server (mechanics) than about people actually using it

soundtech is one paint diagram off becoming crimeo 2.0

…and there’s more, way more vile stuff that we aren’t going to talk about in this newsletter.

However, there were several people that admit the admins have generally excelled in one field:

CivMC admins suffer through a truly thankless job […] It is easy to debatelord each individual decision they make, but at the end of the day, this is a passion project for them and they do good work! It is NOT easy to manage a commnunity AND gameplay in the way that they do, so I’d say I view them positively.

They quite literally do it for free and they do keep the server moving, especially sneedtech

They are committed to letting the server run and provide players an outlet to voice their opinions; even if it results in inaction.

civ feels dynamic without changes being too drastic, and it was nice to see the recent wave of vpn shitters get banned before they could cause too much trouble.

Positive. CivMC in general is a very well moderated space. I’ve been playing Civ since 1.0 and this is the most fun I have had.

Positive because I hate server killing behavior

Most oldfriends can generally recognize that despite their shortcomings they have vastly expanded moderation efforts on Civ, and have done a relatively good job maintaining the feel of Civ meta-gameplay while also taking out bad behavior. It’s something that I think CivMC might take for granted considering the past several years of incredibly barebones moderation, if any.

I should know, I’m literally in this kind of business.

Vote Now!

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Truncated Cry for Help

The newlyl completed bridge from Highgrove Castle to Aurellia in Pavia (cr: Tatsu).

Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter. I don’t have a lot of people to thank since I’ve just been so busy, but thanks to Wandrum, Ishir, Tatsu, natls and Drekamor for some minor support.

I think if not already obvious, people can tell I’m starting to run out of steam for the newsletter. I may take a break or two if I’m starting to feel burnt out, but with the busy life I have now it may just generally become harder to fit this time in. I rarely even check into Civ these days as my ambitions IRL are expanding quite a bit.

I do want to say I still like writing, it’s kind of a zen moment in a way for me. But I’d like to be writing about other things.

I’m not sure what this means, but I’m still committed to getting replacements for the news. I know people have reached out to me about helping which I will coordinate later on, but if somehow you haven’t read the past few weeks and are still interested, contact me @specificlanguage on Discord.

Until next time…

EDIT CIVWIKI