CivWiki Newsletter for October 21, 2024

Hello and happy Monday from the Pacific Northwest!

I’m not gonna sugarcoat this one, I don’t think this week was actually that good for Civ. Maybe my musings about drama being quiet was a bit over-optimistic. It’s like we had one big burst at once… One thing I’ve learned about Civ over the years: keeping a grudge is never a good thing. True kindness will always be repaid in more kindness. I wish sometimes people on Civ would learn that at least a little bit.

In a bit of a more optimistic note, I made the thumbnail a bit different than usual. Do you like it? Do you not like it?

Well, onto the news…

Featured

Featured Image

This week’s featured image is Adria, Griffin at sunrise. Now that Seekinq has had some well-deserved time off from running two nations at once, they’re back to building, and has had some major strides. It may not look like it from this picture, but some buildings in the picture have new exteriors, plus from this picture I’m literally standing on new buildings. I always love how the city looks and it’s still amazing to see this city continue to be built out. Great stuff!

You’ll be glad to know that this very far rendered picture is all thanks to the admins’ new policy on Bobby mod, which allows mods that download information from the server for later use. Hmmm, now that I’m looking at this picture, there seems to be an orange tree peeking out in the far back. And some spooky buildings on the left. What could that mean???

Featured Article

Map art are areas that, when rendered on a map, can display an image, usually some art. Although pixel art was a widespread part of Civcraft, and map art has existed since maps were introduced, Civ players did not widely adopt the practice until CivClassic, when several signature map arts were created, based on real-life paintings or art, Civ-specific memes, in-game events or flags, or for basic informational purposes. While they can be see on a world map, in-game maps were used to display them in context. These maps were then sold across the server in major shopping centers such as Yoahtl, widening their reach across the server.

The practice now continues today on CivMC, with several map arts being ported over from CivClassic, as well as several new ones created based on Civ memes. Players have more recently found ways to display more elaborate messages, including newspapers, real life images or images of in-game places. New map arts continue to be created, sold across various places around the server, as well as being housed in museums, and continue to be an integral part of Civ culture.

A rendition of Vincent Van Gogh’s The Starry Night in map art form, created by mummybundles.

The map art linked to, in order, are:

• The Starry Night, by mummybundles
• :glad:, by NeoTide, referencing the widely used 3-D style of emojis commonly used in Civ discords
• Gensokyo Olympics, by anon00014, an advertisement for the Gensokyo Olympics on CivClassic
• QR Code, by Bi0nicRenegade
• BunBunMaru News, by Superbgamer5225
• Lusitania IRL, by banyough
• Visit Adria, concept by Seekinq, created by EVDan
• get real, by Intelligences

This Week In Civ

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The News

Exyria’s fiery hockey arena. (cr: Spenduh)

There is a LOT of bad stuff to talk about this week. If you’d rather skip that, click this link here.

CivMC Rules Update

CivMC’s rules updated for mods! Among the highlights were:

• Mods are now grouped into categories, compared to specific exceptions from before.
  • Cosmetic mods are now blanket allowed as long as they do not enable X-Ray-like features
  • Performance mods are also blanket allowed as long as they not add functionality
  • Mods that use information for later use, including World Downloads, Map mods, DH/Bobby, etc. are allowed except for the previously imposed limits pre-change (e.g. cave mode).
• Additionally, a new item was added where Client mods can now read the light level of any block.
• A rule change was also quickly added the next day, with Holographic build guides also being allowed.
• Finally, a note was added that CivMC only accepts bug reports from the latest supported version — and ask that you use a vanilla client and reproduction steps if you do.

Altogether, this was a massive update that greatly lifts the mod restrictions, it’s great to see the admins adapt to future changes.

Black and White

Vinland, Baile and parts of Pavia were griefed this past week, but was cleaned up in historically fast fashion.

• On Monday night, ItzEiscue and NewEqq obbybombed Vinland, however the damage was relatively limited.
  • ItzEiscue was a “beloved” member in Artonia and Khalkedonia, and Tophat dissociated with them from these countries later that day.
  • Players may recognize NewEqq following an unrelated drama from two months ago about “unfair treatment in Winterbourne courts”. (ed. note: that was really only two months ago?)
• Although I could not deduce any motivation, other suspected parties were not involved.
• BenzoEG and Monsta was sent to the area and logged out waiting for ItzEiscue there. Fighting ensued which saw ItzEiscue pearled by Khalkedonian Military forces, while NewEqq turned himself in later Tuesday.
• The former is being held in Khalkedonia, while the latter is being held in Winterbourne, being tried for the previously mentioned drama.
• Several Pavians and other players, including Tatsu, natls, Alberb, Gamer, Ma_Na_Mi, AugustusVex, Monsta, benzo, Cissonius, BritishWanderer, Gobblin, and Tophat and others also helped out, and Vinland leader DSBulldogs commended them for swiftly cleaning up the grief. (ed. note: Phew, that’s a lot of names!)

Quickly Glossing Through Drama

I mean, personally, I can’t believe my Civ career path has eventually led me to talking about Dream drama in 2024.

So the short version of the story is:

• African_Warl0rd, former leader of Salerno, believed they were banned because of natls finding an old username of his
• In an act of revenge, they found things about some Dream drama from a while back involving natls, in an attempt to call them a “hypocrite”

However, there are two major flaws to this above story:

• First, CivMC admin RedDevel showed up in the chat and immediately disproved the above theory,
• Second, although names were not explicitly stated, this has already been proven by Dream himself to be false. Not to mention all of this was essentially false from the get go.

That was the straightest line through this story and I don’t want to talk about this ever again. On the other hand… Congratulations, all of CivMC is now 3 degrees away from Dream in association! I am now very much not excited for the Dreamstan invasion.

It’s A Joke Until It’s Not

Maybe it’s a thing where the worse the drama gets, the less I actually write about it. The short answer through this story is:

• Thanis0077 was banned for an inappropriate comment (ed. note: This link leads to a comment that says that such comment existed; the actual comment is publicly accessible with some minor searching).
• Quickmia’s initial support of the comment led to DockerImage pearling them, although they tried to rationalize themselves later in the same chat
• Thanis is willing to apologize and regrets his actions following this incident.
  • Although, you’re preaching to the crowd here. You need to preach to the mod(mail)s.

Around the Server

Keen-eyed viewers will think this is just a hill with Cherry Blossoms, but this is located just outside Mount Augusta (cr: me!).

I really hope everything is smiles and happiness from now on, right?

Some news stories were contributed by Ishir_.

• The International Hockey League played its first games of its second season!
  • The Exyrian Exorcists defeated the SalerKnights 10-1, a little bit of a blowout…
  • While the Yoahtl Pigeons defeated the Commonwealth Crowns 14-1!
• Although unrelated to the first story, Artonia was obbybombed by Kurobolt but once again, grief was quickly cleaned up by natls, Manami and Tatsu.
• The ASN shrunk their claim on the former Hateno Village territory, limiting their reach only to the former vault.
• Vanani and the GWB signed a Non-Agression and Cooperation Pact on 16th October, paving way for peace and further vananian diplomatic relations in the nation and deluvia.
  • Additionally, Vanani and Mayguow signed the Treaty of Navsagar and laid foundation of a new township, Navsagar, near their southern borders. Both nations are collaborating on making a joint town there.
• Paddington announced their construction of a vault, which although I guess you wouldn’t normally do, but that’s cool I guess
• Great Western Bay completed their upgrade of the Bayway to reduce travel time.

Metagame Highlights

• TheJmqn released a new claims map, the 31st with not many changes with the exception of large nation growth.
• OreStraya finished mining one of the largest veins that just kept on giving — an estimated 9k diamonds mined!

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The Fun Stuff

Altar’s Point, a small community north of Union Hill. (cr: Tatsu, Gobblin, BritishWanderer, Blackgold211, AmberSolberg205)

Calendar

• Ongoing until Halloween - CivMC’s Halloween event might see some spooky heads floating in the water, maybe you could fish them up…
• Sometime next week(end), TBA - The Alenarith Protectorate is hosting Icenia’s first in-game Senate debate, which will be streamed.
• October 30 - FlamingSofa’s Spooky Map Art themed competition is wrapping up!
• November 10 (1pm EST/18:00 UTC) - Volterra Day, celebrating the country’s 10th anniversary!
• November 14 - Highgrove Day, along with Charles III’s birthday is being celebrated in Pavia.
• November 18 - A build competition for CivMC’s PvP server! Message RedDevel for completed submissions.

Builds

• I kind of like the positioning of these little houses behind the church in Pavia (cr: Tatsu)
• Even though Jah Park hasn’t changed, the Bobby change makes this very cool (cr: me)
• I like seeing hockey arenas with new designs, and Exyria’s is absolutely on fire (cr: Spenduh)
• While I did my own pictures of Adria, a new tavern also found its way into Griffin’s latest builds! (cr: Seekinq)
• I know Winterbourne castle isn’t exactly brutalist but from this angle it does kind of look like it in a very appealing sort of way? I don’t know it just looks cool man (cr: Nekroz)
• Meanwhile the real gem is using Bobby to get a view all the way across Winterbourne Harbor (cr: PFP_Nexl
• Blue Cove looks really cool at night, I don’t think I’ve ever seen this picture even though it’s like a year and a half old (cr: zolo)

Memes

• I wish I could be POS by Hakr_
• If I recall correctly there was a Petoria joke made already on Civ, so this is technically unoriginal sorry

Non-Civ Content

• I will never turn down a pet post so here’s Scramble0’s cat
• I was gonna say “Let’s Go Mets”, but baseball fans will be unsurprised about the outcome, yet another Dodgers vs. Yankees World Series
• Ok ChrisChrispie, I saw the stupid Lions vs. Vikings game — at one second left
• Some of what rotated around on the music playlist this week:
  • brat but it’s on mario paint so it’s not really brat but it is
  • Does Hades metal count as “Halloween music?”
  • it’s fall so you know it’s time for all the Peanuts specials and therefore Vince Guaraldi jazz
  • My barista at Overcast Coffee in Capitol Hill made a “HOT TO GO!” joke; this wasn’t actually something I listened to this week but I just thought it was funny as i was getting my usual

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Poll of the Week

The large skyscrapers located in Jah Park, Icenia. (cr: me!)

Last week, we had 59 responses.

Server Event Attendance

It’s at least reassuring that people will generally go to events. One of the main reasons for adding a “Calendar” section onto the newsletter as of late was because sometimes, Civ can be a very singleplayer-esque game, but events do liven up the server in my opinion. This is especially true when the admins run events sparingly (but they do run events!)

Interesting that there are quite a few people that don’t really pay attention to them that much; I saw a lot of players present at the Yoahtlan Olympics but for smaller, national focused events (although, I’m not sure how the Hockey turnout this weekend is as I’m writing this), it usually is much less, and it would help to at least bring people in if people are interested in doing so. I know some events may not be interesting as others, but at least I try to bring people’s attention to something.

Anyway, this poll is quite literally to justify the existence of the Calendar.

Best PvPer

If this set of questions isn’t obvious week-over-week, I’m mostly asking who were the best people who did x, y, z in the game, so hold your horses to complain that “why are you asking about PvP when it shouldn’t matter on Civ grrrrrrr”. Across Civ’s history, PvP has played a vital role in shaping today’s game, for better or for worse.

With that said, the number one answer, by far:

Ez2Clutch

No one player was mentioned more than him. Although newfriends that have been on this iteration may not know, it’s pretty unequivocal and wreaked havoc across two different servers, a force to be reckoned with. This is also high up because he played relatively clean with very little cheating incidents, of which some of the below may have been involved in.

Of course, he’s banned right now, which I basically assume is because of the Rhode Island Blanket Ban.

Among other honorable mentions:

Vanax

Saren_Solaris

He does have his youtube compilations still up.

S4NTA

Although some comments do say he’s washed today.

Adderall

Chosentwicelol

TheJKH

SlothInASuit

We haven’t had a tier list in a while, so not sure where he falls on here. Still, I guess there’s a reason he hosts the bunkies tournaments.

squidhasthebad

ThereWalker

Interesting that they were mentioned a lot as a (relative) newfriend.

auqust

Probably the most underrated pick according to comments. He kinda flies under the radar in the news but does get pretty impactful pearls by the end of it. Absolute pearl workhorse for Icenia.

Of course, as someone not even close to being inside the PvP sphere, you can talk amongst yourselves how poorly I laid this out. Hell, you could even make an updated tier list!

Vote Now!

As usual, please don’t put me (specificlanguage) as an answer.

Tacky Cry for Help

Players at the hockey arena in Yoahtl (cr: x1025).

Thanks for reading this (awful) newsletter! I hope you learned a lesson today. Or maybe not, I guess it doesn’t really matter to me!

Thanks to Tatsu, Tophat, ArtificialDriver, Ishir_, and Drekamor for helping out in some capacity this week. I know there are quite a couple of people that have reached out to help, but I will be giving out more responsibilities this week… I hope. This week was supposed to be my “week off” in the 10-week rotation, but it didn’t end up being that way, so that’s kinda cool.

Anyway, that’s all I got for this week. I hope next week’s going to be better. Until then…

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