CivWiki Monday Newsletter for October 16, 2023
Good morning and happy Monday from New England!
I know I didn’t do anything last week but activity has been down on the server as of late. Not that it helps that people are back in school now, but it’s at least something to consider.
It’s been fine for me the past couple of weeks, I guess it’s not a bad thing for Civ to be a temporary NEET, but we’re working on something at the very least. I’ve got stuff keeping me busy, which I can’t show otherwise I’m going to dox myself.
Featured
Featured Image
This week’s featured image is a bit of a eerie passage in Margaritaville. The normally cozy relaxing retreat created by MaybeGravy has been sufficiently been spooked up as we get closer and closer to the end of October. It still distinctly looks like Margaritaville too, with great decoration for the season. As I have about two more weeks until the spookiness factor reaches maximum, I’m looking for spookier images to put on the front page. Looks great, can’t wait to see more!
Featured Article
Tierra de Conciencia, commonly initialized as TdC, was a communist nation on CivClassic 2.0 focused on creating a Spanish-themed state as a collective. The country was founded at the start of the iteration, located in the north of the map, initially near Mount Augusta’s first settlement. A few months after its founding, the country initially rose within the summer of 2017 after a series of raids on the founders, griefs on the town, and other conflicts, Tierra de Conciencia split the island and then annexed Mount Augusta’s settlement as they moved south, closer to The Commonwealth. They would face a series of raids and small conflicts with ProgramMC and Nipplerock within the next months.
The country’s capital, aptly named El Capitolio, was intent on a brutalist building style, notably constructing a library whose architecture depicted notable communist works as books. They also heavily invested in infrastructure, contributing to the early construction of the HITS, an underground railway that stretched from Hjaltland to Impasse. By 2019 despite an attempted resurgence, the country fell into inactivity, and many players went to other nations, primarily Mount Augusta. (Full article…)
This week’s featured image is El Capitolio, the capital of Tierra de Conciencia.
The News
The Pigeon Bowl in Yoahtl in their new athletic complex, constructed by x1025. Of course, featuring their signature catchphrase.
Server Updates
- Technically this isn’t a full server update from CivMC, but SoundTech and MrJeremyFisher has updated Kira to use slash commands and, more importantly, re-add in-game command execution out of game.
- Other updates included more brews from RedDevel, check the announcements channel for full updates of what’s happened since the beginning of the month.
- RedDevel has also announced a Halloween event the weekend prior to Halloween, encouraging users to decorate their city in a spooky fashion for a holiday treat.
- It isn’t a Civ server without a delayed launch, so how about CivCubed delaying their launch from November 30 to December 1? The original launch date was on a Thursday, and so for convenience of nearly everyone the launch was moved to Friday. Here’s to hoping it launches on time with no bugs^TM!
Happenings Around Civ
For those that were up late on Sunday night, there is a glaring omission from this week’s news, but happened after the news cutoff and it’s too much of a hassle to deal with as there were horus left before publishing.
- Icenia and Nara announced the creation of the International Hockey League, the second iteration of a hockey league on the server. Hosting ten teams, its first matchups in a double elimination bracket are set to be hosted soon, featuring a 400d+ prize pool from the Monument Group.
- Troll_Bebek was pearled by Gang Shi this past week. This was due to his involvement and stealing bastions from their vault from their siege during the last war. Gang Shi officials eventually pearled him while in Fempire territory, not long after stealing bastions within the territory as well.
- Icenia, in response, marked Gang Shi as a territory to be avoided at all costs, along with Fempire and the Temporal Empire, along with some aligned parties recieving caution warnings.
- Kibbles also released footage of the pearling although, please disregard the audio and text.
- More information about the issue can be found in an interview with Gwua in the Pearl Street Herald.
- Speaking of which the Pearl Street Herald is Icenia’s newest newspaper that covers Icenian and foreign affairs (in issue 1) as well as interviewing foreign dignitaries (issue 3)
- This is now completely out of date but JuniorTide released analysis of Icenia’s 2023 October elections cycle as they reached an new high voter count from the past few months, read the post for more info.
- Slushhi joked to Monument Group leaders about not paying a 3000d+ loan from the Monument Bank. The post was entirely ironic, however, the Monument Group did not take this lightly.
- Several Monument Bank officials and Pavians eventually arrived at the vault and the Monument Bank responded by entering the territory by force and “retrieved the full payment including interest”. The credit score of Icenia remained unchanged.
- Slushhi then made a post following this week joking about the incident, Chicanery-style
- Artificial Industries also announced their initial public offering, set to sell 10% of their company. See more details here.
- Pavia also announced a declaration of frienship with the Deepslate Coroporation, along with a modification of the Council of Universal Betterment decree
- Volterra changed their election system, and elected Mickale as their new Arbiter, an elected constitutional monarch.
- This came along with a Senate election where Highboy, Seldomshock, what777, S4NTA, and itzHoover were elected.
- Ghas News announced it would be discontinuing. I salute you for a great news service (but also another news org the newsletter has outlasted, again!)
- Lambat released a bounty for swishwish85 and adventures333 after the duo stole a beacon and attempted robbery of the national treasury.
- Gang Shi pearled two very notorious players whose names I’m not mentioning so they don’t attract more drama
- Estalia has revealed its 15,000+ Wordbank Library for sale. I’m also going to be 100% honest, I don’t have enough money to even purchase my own Wordbank name, so anybody willing please buy it for me
- ComradeNick ran unopposed for Mayor of Mount Augusta, and ptpumpkin also ran unopposed for Judge of Mount Augusta. “Close one” is probably the overstatement of the century.
- DarthChini was appointed as the Prefect of Lugdunum in SPQR by unanimous vote.
- Nasion is looking for a new leader for Warmia due to their inactivity, and desires a leader “that can keep Warmian heritage, culture and foreign policy the “Warmian way”.
- A change in leadership was announced as Oceanstar was named the new leader of DonFuer’s CivMC, following inactivity from Dark_FFC. Their claims were also significantly reduced following the switchover
- Very shortly after, however, the PPIS expelled DonFuer from the alliance, citing no further reasoning besides the leadership change. After contacting PhysicsGamer further, this seems to be the result of a series of attempts to expel DonFuer from the alliance, deeming it “not beneficial” to keep them in.
- Speaking of alliances, Baile announced an alliance with similar cold nations Vinland, Kar Kazdun, and Jomsborg to create the FROST alliance.
Metagame Highlights
- There are several suggestions in this thread that seems like pretty good ideas to raise activity on the server
- NeoTide announced a map artists’ guild to create better map art and more
- Ticket purchasing should be available for Solitaire’s ore lottery today, which incentivizes players to vote for the server on various websites.
The Fun Stuff
The Lux Capital’s new train station in Amicitia. Sorry I called your nation not an actual town last time, whoops, it looks great and probably better than I could make myself.
Builds
- Here’s a great picturesque walkthrough of Icenia from Shadno, great work!
- I remember highlighting Blue Cove in Icarus a while back, but it wasn’t finished — it looks great now!
- The Lux Capital looks like a great steampunk haven looking over Ashburn Central Station, not to mention their lighthouse built by BigHurt32
- Vinland’s Bridge of Bifrost isn’t the Marvel bridge but it’s a great span of a bridge over the sea
- Griffin’s Halloween decorations are amazing and glows the town up — I promise it’ll get the feature next week, I’ve deliberately been trying to stockpile them.
- This stadium from Yoahtl seems like way too high effort for something that’s literally just a sports stadium but it’s an amazing monolith in the jungle
- More construction has been happening in Pavia, with its National Library on the outskirts of town hall, a new Trading Hall in the City of Pavia, and more.
- Even though it’s copied from Docm, this new Goat statue in Regentsburgh looks amazing
- What the h*ck, why is Mercutio building in Pacem style, that’s illegal (but also very cool)
Multimedia Projects
- A grand return calls for a spooky t-shirt from iinkuu as a “gift” for iinkuu
- So there’s a bomb in Icenia but why does he look like dark Arlo
- What a way to make art about something extremely stupid
- Ok for something more lighthearted and less dark, here’s a very stylized travel poster for Adria, Griffin. In their discord, they also have versions for the Crownlands and Sealeo.
- The Civball map of the world is slowly getting built up, with another full map update along with…
Memes
- SoundTech has an egg but I think he probably ate it by now
- This is unironic because there is a skybridge from Pacem to the south world border — if there’s another water wall I’m going to scream
- Boy I love holding down M1 for hours
- There is no meaning to the Eire Gnome, it just is
- Yeah I guess Gang Shi attracts newfriends like moths to a flame somehow
- If I had a nickel for every time someone claimed the whole map…
- Not everyone can be a maglev speeding down the ice roads — I like AFKing on my computer and not running a macro, for example
- Oh fuck BritishWanderer has broken the laws of physics, we’re all doomed now
Non-Civ Content
Sports Corner
- Playoff season in baseball is now in full swing, with the Philadelphia Phillies once again defeating the Braves and advance their way into the NLCS in epic fashion — with Castellanos hitting a home run two games in a row and the Braves somehow losing despite winning 104 games, the best in MLB.
- As we head into the final games of the season, we have Dbacks vs. Phillies, a matchup in the NLCS nobody expected, plus a battle for Texas in the ALCS (AND EVERYONE SHOULD BE ROOTING FOR TEXAS BECAUSE FUCK THE ASTROS)
- The college football game of the week was played in Seattle on Saturday; #7 Washington hosted #8 Oregon in what became a wild back-and-forth affair.
- Heisman Trophy hopeful Michael Penix Jr threw a go-ahead TD pass with less than two minutes remaining.
- As the clock hit 00:00, Oregon missed a game-tying field goal, and the Washington fans stormed the field.
- In the NFL, the last undefeated teams have taken their first loss despite both being heavily favored to win in each of their games. :sob:
- The 49ers fell to the Browns, while sustaining tons of injuries (RIP my fantasy team 🙏) and the Eagles fell to the Jets.
Things People Care About
- Nara has been spitting Finn facts for a while but I’ve neglected them so here’s just a screenshot of their announcements channel, not to mention Swordmaster7777’s birthday was also released recently
- So, you might think this is just an arrangement of the Mario theme, but it’s actually a recreation of an animation music demo from the early 2000s, and completely recreated in Roblox for this. It’s so impressive, and the YouTube algorithm delivers again. There’s several of these, but Pipe Dream is not only a versatile music space but it’s very compelling to watch. Intel even recreated this IRL.
- Probably the most anyone’s ever done for a Non-Civ content area, but SpaceVolcano is having a baby — don’t worry it’s Yoahtl-approved to post here
- Uh oh, all the famous Lusitanians and Lambatans met up, there’s no stopping them now from making as much wine as possible, and then getting drunk on that wine
Poll of the Week
I Asked Two Weeks Ago
Last week’s (or, should I say, two weeks’ ago’s) question was “Roughly how long per day do you leave your account inactive on the server?” It was essentially a feeler question about how many people actually care about botting deliberately.
It does seem like a lot of people just don’t actually care about botting that much compared to others. While there are definitely bottable items, I think that people just log their accounts in on a timer because that’s probably easier than keeping your account on waiting for the bot to do something. But, I probably can’t judge from these items.
Ooh, I Have A Question!
Now, guess what, there are THREE questions that I’m asking this week. This week, we’re going to aim our focus very squarely on the CivWiki discord:
I think regardless of what the results are here, I personally would like to increase moderation on CivWiki both on the discord and the wiki itself to generally enforce better standards, especially with the somewhat barebones mod crew we have right now.
Speaking of which if you’re not in it already, please join the CivWiki discord at https://discord.gg/RMSSH8T8Bs
Too Early for Snow Cry for Help
The formation of the FROST alliance between Jomsborg, Kar Kazdun, Vinland, and Baile.
I didn’t want to put this at the start of the newsletter but it’s been a tough one this time, because I got food poisoning this weekend! :)))))) I swear, every time I go to make a newsletter lately there’s always some act of God that really doesn’t want me to do it…
Thanks to the newsletter staff that provided various editing support this week, including Xcios, Creepi0n, BritishWanderer, Slushhi and RedDevel, along with Gjum and Lodish as admins who are on board with the ticketing scheme for the CivWiki. That’s been in my head for a while so I’m excited to finally see that come to fruition.
Otherwise, thank you very much for bearing with me this week, there’s a lot going on and I thank you all for your patience. Until next time…