CivWiki Monday Newsletter

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

CivWiki Newsletter for November 4, 2024

• specificlanguage

Good morning and happy Election Monday from the Pacific Northwest!

I’ve already voted myself, so you can’t really influence me in any way, but I guess in all likelihood those reading this haven’t actually voted yet, so consider this a sign that you should go and vote right now if you haven’t. And if you’re physically unable or don’t live in the US, what’s wrong with you?

Let’s get ready for a short news section this week since I’m burdened with oncall during this election season:

This week’s featured image is in Hanyang, Vinland. I’ve been meaning to come up here for quite a while for its Korean architecture and it does a very great job standing out here in the wintery, mountainous terrain. EmperorAshina’s win in last week’s Nice Dice Friday basically pushed me to do this. Although I don’t have a direct way to congratulate them this is the best I can do. What’s not pictured though is the massive amount of settings finagling to make sure that Bebo Inc farms didn’t show in the picture, it absolutely ruins the shot of the town if it appears. Anyway, I hope to see more development on the city in the future!

Featured Article

This week’s featured article is a repeat from June 27, 2022, and was written by Yodabird19.

Mount Augusta’s iteration in CivClassic 2.0 was a large city-state, centered around democracy, legalism, and limited government. After an initial stint near Tierra de Conciencia, the country settled near The Commonwealth and became a populous center of activity near the middle of the map. The city played a major role in the start of the Infinity War with numerous contentious Mayoral and judge elections, having over ten mayors over its lifespan.

The city was also an economic and cultural capital of the server; the Maester Alliance and the Order of St. Marcus held its headquarters in the city at Shardore Tower Library, the Augustan Trade Center and nearby Mount Augusta Mall, and organized the Fourth Olympics on the server. The city also had many distinct districts which became its own territories such as South Augusta, Sealand, Insula, and Union of Socialist Augusta. The nation collapsed after players migrated over to a new iteration in CivRealms 2.0, while much of its territory was inherited by Mount September.

This week’s featured article image is the Augustan Trade Center (cr: Jaybirdino).

This Week In Civ

On the week of November 4 - November 10 in:

2022:

  • CivMC players heavily lobbied admins to unban player SapienFrfx, who had been banned for using a VPN. After a post from Yodabird19 was made, Sapien was unbanned less than 30 minutes later. The main grievance has been the administration’s slow response, after previous commitments to be more communicative with the player base.
  • Relations between Icenia and the Temporal Isles boiled over this week after small shenanigans between Icenian individuals and the Isles’ government resulted in a relations breakdown.
  • A new alliance, the Independent Southern Powers, has been formed with members Cortesia del Mar, Venne, Ila’Kyavul, Arsenio Pact, and Nara joining for “regional collaboration, integration and unity.”
  • The NDZHL hosted its first hockey matches since the Generic War, with the Naran national team defeating the visiting Lambat team with a score of 11-1.

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Around the Server

Spooky Time in Shockton, Volterra (cr: Cicero)

Around the Server

If I didn’t get to your news this week, I’m really sorry. I should have most news up to Saturday night, but I didn’t get a chance to look harder on Sunday and was just flooded with chores, errands, and real-life funnies this weekend.

Metagame Highlights

Memes

Non-Civ Content

Calendar

Same Kallos picture, different Kallos angle (cr: Fendrell)

A lot in store this week.

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Poll of the Week

A sprawling village located around Karydia Imperial (cr: Potato_Duke).

Last week, we had 50 responses.

News Cadence

So the reasoning for asking what your preferred news cadence is that I originally intended to end the newsletter back in September. It is November now, and I deliberately delayed my exit of newsletter duties to the end of the year to figure out a graceful exit plan (although I plan on doing one edition in January while I return from vacation.)

This being said, this was sort of a question I wanted to ask, although I don’t think it was phrased very well. There are three four ways I imagine the future being playing out:

  1. I train up a successor (but nobody was willing or committed)
  2. I become an editor-in-chief and relinquish/fanout most writing responsibilities (but no one contributor has been consistent enough)
  3. I stay on as the sole writer, but only publish the news monthly as a wrap-up of the month sort of thing (but this would hurt retention)
  4. The newsletter dies (well, yeah, I mean it’s its own downside)

In all likelihood, it’s becoming more probable this newsletter becomes a monthly affair (3rd option) with other contributors helping along. The current social setup on Civ BEGS for a frequent newsletter to keep news flowing across the server, but I don’t have the gumption to keep going for much longer. I’ve been doing this for two and a half years, and I want to focus my writing skills towards something else.

Most Helpful

Alright, I think this will be the last of the “best of” questions for a while because I can’t think of anymore, but I hope you enjoyed it. Here are some top mentions for the “most helpful” Civ player of all time:

Reddevel / i think the person who wrote the civwiki tutorials is clearly the most helpful

As much as I can always rag on them, they’re actually so good about composing really helpful content for the game, not to mention a very good admin too.

Gjum

Actually took me way too long to find this, I don’t know anyone who’s influenced the game in so many ways, from a smorgasbord of mods, tools, and metagame utilities, it’s no wonder he’s one of the people who’s shaped modern Civ. He’s basically the reason we have an interactive map out of game.

ComradeNick

There are times where I don’t agree with his politics, but I can always commend that he’s such a newfriend engine for this game, it’s honestly insane.

In terms of discord support, Shadno is probably #1

One of the best newfriend recruits that CivMC has to offer. Incredibly helpful and insightful and can take a good joke.

BritishWanderer

Eh, he’s ok.

Tophat. There was a period of time where he was the department of defense for every newfriend nation that joined the server. He has also funded countless newfriend projects and is generally a good teacher of the game

Another one of the best newfriends on CivMC. Really matured into a very helpful player across the server and is a genuine help to all newfriends he encounters as well.

Among some honorable mentions but I don’t have long diatribes about them are:

Jaydon, Drekamor, Sloth, Seldomshock, Forged, Tatsu

If you’re on this list, you’re very well revered and incredibly helpful to the genre. Thank you!

Vote Now!

I wrote this question before the version phaseout announcement, but I guess it’s probably good anyway to ask.

Please note that all information submitted is anonymous. A red star (
*
) means that this question is required to submit.
Which version of Minecraft do you play on for Civ?
Would you be interested in this newsletter becoming a 'news magazine', with more features and deep dives, but only appearing monthly?
What kinds of themes do you want to see for a map art/build competition?

Buy Raven for all your armor or tool related needs! We do deliveries to Pavia, Transylvania, Accra, Yoahtl, and Exilus as well as Lambat Portal and Titan Portal for our pearled customers. Make orders by joining our discord:

discord.gg/nnRdn6CYFY

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Democratic Cry for Help

The fountain and some beautiful leaves at Seattle Center. Wait, this isn’t Minecraft! (cr: me)

Sorry I don’t have a long writeup at the end. I’m sure I’ll talk more about the newsletter’s future sometime, but that’s a later problem.

Thanks to realmichael, Stoomer, and Tophat for some extra reference, as well as Zolo for finally letting me gamble some of that sweet, sweet hard-earned ad money. If you’d like to help contribute, I always appreciate DMs located at @specificlanguage on Discord.

Alright, I gotta get back to work, until next week…

EDIT CIVWIKI