CivWiki Monday Newsletter for October 30, 2023
Good morning and happy Monday from New England! A spooky halloween edition of the newsletter is coming your way very soon, and there’s no doubt about it this time. There’s not much to say this time besides I hope the halloween event was enjoyable. I hope you’re going to take your spooky affairs safely this coming Tuesday.
Are we ready for the news?
Featured
Featured Image
This week’s featured image is a sunset falling upon Halloweentown in New Jersey. If you remember, they held a halloween event last year, and they’ve definitely topped themselves this year, with a giant pumpkin tree somewhat reminiscent of Jack Skellington. With the fall colors sprouting out everywhere, it’s bound to be a great halloween for them! Looking forward to next years!
Featured Article
This week’s featured article received help from prawny331.
Inferno was a nation in the Cerberus shard of the short-lived server Devoted Hell. Formed by prawny331 along with colleagues from CivRealms and Otonabee, the nation was modeled after the nine circles of hell from the first part of Dante’s Divine Comedy. After the early days of server hiccups, raids and issues with the subscription model, Inferno became one of the fastest growing countries on the server building up a city relatively quickly along a large lava lake. The country began construction of their giant rings of hell during February 2021, making use of popular movie nights to speed up mining.
The city that they first built, Izalith, was the third-place winner of the server’s build contest, and hosted the first XP shops on the server, along with the Church of Cola, honoring the admin’s logbox in the territory, and engaged in international diplomacy by joining the newFRIENDS alliance with Mercer and Alexandria, along with being a major stop on the 2048 superhighway that ran across all shards. Despite massive planning, player numbers dwindled and Inferno became the last active nation on the server prior to March 2021. Today, most players currently play in CivMC’s Nara, Icenia, or other associated countries. (Full article…)
This week’s featured image is Inferno’s capital Izalith, which ended up third in the advertisement competition for the server.
Editor’s note: it just goes to show that the only relevant featured article content I can throw at the newsletter for Halloween is stuff from Devoted Hell, lol
The News
Server Updates
Danzilona’s decorations for Halloween. I would’ve put their GIF here, but I couldn’t find a way to make it accessible for mobile users without an aneurysm.
There was a server update on October 27, the last update was on September 14. Intended as a Quality of Life update, few mechanics were changed with the exception of the Halloween event. Some notable changes were:
- Addition of city spawns for Kaowta, the Kingdom of Amicitia, and Temporal Isles
- Preventing snitch hits from being sent on Kira if softculled (from Okx)
- FactoryMod changes to make the Nether Factory self-sustainable
- Allows safe ore breaks for Sea Lanterns and Bookshelves (from Orinnari)
- Make cobwebs unreinforcable
- Add more blocks to be used in CastleGates
- And in my opinion, the most important one, a update that reenables the newsletter dogfact!!! (along with changing most info links to the new CivMC Wiki)
Furthermore, the update came with a halloween update:
- RedDevel made continuous hints and reminders for players to decorate their cities over the past week. This came into fruition when upon the update’s released, the announcement of the Pumpkin King’s wrath would come upon the server over the weekend.
- Custom mobs (a first for the server) would descend upon the server and upon defeat, they would drop special event heads. It would also remain nighttime for the entire weekend.
- However, these custom mobs include Phantom spawning, which had very lenient spawning measures that made playing harder for those not intending to participate in the event.
- Additionally, RedDevel announced that players that sent their decorations would receive a special token commemorating the event, which ended up being a commemorative lored Pumpkin Head with the message “Congratulations, you’ve survied the long night of 2023 during halloween!”.
- If you thought that was misspelled though, no, that misspelling actually made it to live. I have completely embarrassed RedDevel after pointing that out only minutes after they were distributed.
Happenings Around Civ
A spooky night in Venne.
- After Transylvania was annexed by Kaowta on October 22, Transylvanian citizen X_an along with others opposed the change, intending to coup the government.
- X_an pearled Metallic on October 23, the leader of the Transylvania, and demanded a return to the constitutional government.
- In response, Kaowta hired Walkers, who along with leader Plrog, pearled him in Cluj upon confrontation.
- Both sides have agreed to peace terms, and today X_an is the new leader of Transylvania (citing that “he’s basically the only competent transylvanian that is active”)
- Pavia brokered friendship agreements with more nations this week, including Volterra, the Imperial Federation (marking a return to relations between the two countries since the Four Continent Concordat), and Nassau.
- Mount Augusta is also expected to pass a friendship agreement with Pavia soon.
- Additionally, Archduke Gobblin III died in a rail tunnel collapse, while his son, Gobblin IV was elected as the new Archduke of Pavia.
- Imperial Federation Chancellor Potato_Duke released a statement thanking several nations and citizens for their generosity and willingness to contribute following their constitional crisis this past summer.
- This resurgence has been relatively unprecedented following an attempted coup with a new capital and resurrection of international standing being some of the fruits of their labor over the past month.
- The International Hockey League saw two matches over this Halloween weekend:
- The Fempire Punks defeated the Icenian Isopods, 8-3.
- Malina’s Mandardins were blown out by the Shiroyama Tigers, 17-1.
- ComradeNick provided an update on the BUILD alliance, acknowledging the accession of Arsenia, New Jersey, Amicitia in the alliance along with updates on procedure, and domestic happenings in the country.
- Vinland celebrated the completion of a rail to Pavia as a result of their declaration of friendship
- Amicitia celebrated marijuana legalization in the country this past week. (Crossposted from the Sapphire Wave.)
- Solitaire delayed the ore lottery to the following year citing IRL scheduling issues.
Metagame Highlights
- CivCubed released information about their subgroups feature ahead of launch, allowing nations to segment infrastructure on their own subgroup.
- Tybug re-released their op-ed about reputable sources for CivWiki — it’s very aspirational but should be inspiring nevertheless
- Some knucklehead edited my talk page on CivWiki encouraging people to get off the platform, but also on several other wikis to do so.
- But, at least I can at least revel in the fact that we are somehow on the same level as the Critical Role wiki in terms of “wikis that need notifying”, lmao.
- Speaking about CivWiki, we’ve introduced an issues board on the Discord for anybody who wants to talk about pages that need fixing or other issues that have/will come up to improve the wiki. It’s part of a general push for TLC that I want to have for the wiki before the end of the year, so we’ll hopefully come through with that soon.
The Fun Stuff
Estalia’s mall in Suramir, decorated with a large pumpkin overlooking the lobby.
Builds
There were a lot of fantastic Halloween builds that it was difficult to figure out what would get slotted for the featured pictures this week. Even if your picture didn’t get highlighted, builds here are of the highest quality and you should be proud!
- Shiroyama built a spooky graveyard of players past and gone, but not before a murder mystery is going on in the SpeedyJustice mansion next door. (from Bronnakus)
- Shockton completely spookified their city, of course I love the ghosts and the creative additions that isn’t just putting pumpkins everywhere. (from Seldomshock)
- Pacem constructed a large pumpkin within their town square (from peyt1212)
- Nothing is spookier in the nether than Roe v. Wade (from Torynado)
- Danzilona has dressed their city up for Halloween, not to mention a little musical jingle to make your bones shiver (from peakman2)
- Halloweentown knocks it out of the park again with a foreboding tree(s) (from Altelier)
- Venne has several images of their town that make it seem darker than it is, maybe it’s the prismarine
- Sdorr and friends made several life-size figures of pumpkins and ghasts along the shore
- Transylvanians are building a big tower but I honestly can’t see where it is
- Butter_villager scrapes up some screenies of Gang Shi’s Blacklight
Art, Memes, and More
Art and More
- Xcios released a new map of Icenia separating the city into districts, can’t believe my house is smackdab in the Kowloon district even though I tried so hard
- DonutsFoYoNuts released a highlight reel of all the matches during the IHL’s first week!
- I like the stylized wedding invite for a Hockey match between Malina’s Mandarins and Shiroyama Tigers lol
- Gjum posted the current bracket of the IHL (as of last week) but it’s still really well done and I like the modernist design
- Just in time for Halloween, a new profile picture for Toaxbis and squidhasthebad from butter_villager.
- Tiantang posted a very nice tourist poster for their town
Memes and More
- The newsletter entry should just be a bunch of words that don’t change the problem or the solution at all
- I don’t even get if the meme was intended, but the real funny is in the comments
- Damn, I like old people dancing, I might as well come to the Bunkers Knob Pub
- I’ve been desperately waiting for the day when I can put a bgpost in the memes section
- 🎶 Got a long list of ex-lovers / They’ll tell you I’m insane 🎶
- I’m sure that SoundTech was supposed to push this announcement out but this was still funny
Non-Civ Content
Sports Corner
- I am so glad the Texas Rangers and the Arizona Diamondbacks are in the World Series — but I’m not sure I care about this series that much… there’s not even anything interesting I want to talk about this series.
- I forgot to do Pick’ems this week so I’m going to sob at my standings being completely dead
No Sports Corner
- They finally announced a release date for the next Doctor Who episodes! I honestly just hope Russel T Davies can turn the show around after the shitshow that was Chibnall era after a full year. For those in the US, you can watch it on Disney+!
- Holy shit Andrew Tate dancing to Bumblebee (it’s not)
- The only Taylor Swift album I’ve finished front-to-back is 1989, so I have to appreciate her re-release, she’s enhanced it in every way. She even got Kendrick back to rap for Bad Blood which is the more iconic version of the song and was remiss to not hear the good version on the album
- And of course, for Halloweenies, Icenia did some funny movie night stuff including watching the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie — I just like the MatPat cameo
Poll of the Week
Last Week’s Madness
Last week, there were 45 responses to two questions that pretty much had nothing to do with each other. The first question was very self-reassuring about “Do you like the polls?”
I’m glad people are generally pleased about the polls because I was very much hoping for this addition for a while now — I am trying to think of topics that bring better questions, but sometimes it’s hard to think of questions. Please suggest topics we can run polls on!
The second question this week was more for a certain someone: “Are you going to be playing CivCubed?”
For those unaware, CivCubed is a new Civ server that will be run by Janet Blackquill. It’s been a little under the radar if you’re not in the know.
I think the general impression I’ve gotten from CivCubed is that it’s doing a lot of good quality of life stuff that improves the genre (not to mention a complete plugin rewrite lol), but it doesn’t provide enough compelling gameplay elements, advertising or something that doesn’t quite make it compelling to everyone.
I’m hoping that CivCubed will finally fill the shoes that Devoted, CivRealms or Bergecraft did, where it’s a more experimental version of Civ that won’t be afraid to be bleeding edge or make crazy changes to the Civ formula that will eventually weasel its way into mainline servers within the next couple of years.
This Week’s Monster Mash
I hope these questions are slightly relevant?
Somehow More Spookiest Cry for Help
Pavia and Griffin players helping take down the phantoms in the Pavian gardens.
Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter!
I hope you’ve enjoyed this halloween edition, and a huge thanks to everyone who submitted pictures in my very slow response in the builds channel. Thanks also to Plrog and X_an for providing a small amount of information for consultation this week.
I’ve been also working on CivWiki a little bit more this past week, and hopefully you’ll see some more activity soon, as I’m hoping to put stuff in place to encourage more editing (there’s a lot of cleanup to do).
There’s not much else to say but happy halloween, and of course…