CivWiki Monday Newsletter for November 13, 2023
Good morning and happy Monday from New England!
Now, I know this newsletter has a lot of focus on drama, but this is a very important warning that this should, and I never wanted to make this a drama-driven publication. The emphasis of this publication is show how interesting and cool Civ as a game can be, and if that’s not what’s being taken away here, I would be doing something wrong.
There are numerous ways to get into the newsletter that don’t involve causing a spit publicly. The best way to play this game, in my opinion, is to keep this as a side mode, something to look forward to, not something to obsess about. It should be fun interacting with others, and if it causes you great stress, I really think it would be time for a break. Believe me, after going through mental health issues this past couple of months, this is the last place where I want to be vitriolic in online.
That was a bit of a downer. Do we want to get to the news, or would you just rather skip to something fun?
Featured
Featured Image
For this week’s featured image, we’re going to start the winter theme and head towards the citadel and castle outside Vinland. Yes, this week’s may be a bit sparse of a picture than what we usually see, but this one I took myself while on a tour of Vinland with RT and friends. Maybe from this angle it doesn’t look impressive, but in person, it’s really cool. A huge thanks to them and looking forward to seeing the country built out within the next couple of months.
Featured Article
CivSMP was an SMP-style Civ server intended to be a content creation server to publicize Civ plugins to a wider audience. Players that applied and were accepted to join the server were encouraged to record footage which would be uploaded and edited by the server’s owner, Owain_X. The server was also used to test plugins for their server’s upcoming iteration, CivRev 3.0.
Announced in October 2022, the server recruited 7 players, with episodes published weekly. Unlike other SMP servers however, all content was published from the CivSMP channel, not on the players’ individual channels. By the next month, it became inactive due to low activity from their players. General reception among Civ players were that it was a good experiment but the content was not engaging or interesting enough to bring players in, along with the slow progression due to fewer players. (Full article…)
This week’s featured image is a thumbnail of the first episode of CivSMP.
The News
Pacem’s Central Square. Finally, it’s getting built out!
So it’s kind of nice that we have two weeks to cover, right?
Thin Ice
Yeah, no it’s actually not very nice at all.
A significant portion of the next section was adapted from this post from Quanton Biscuit, which I will admit was posted at around 10pm Eastern time, isn’t that very fun?
- From last week, Icenia’s Anvil and Gang Shi’s squidhasthebad were pearled, however negotiations between the two sides seem biased towards Gang Shi:
- Icenia agreed to release Squidhasthebad, clear a griefed farm in Gang Shi, and Gang Shi in return would release Anvil, after two weeks.
- As you know already, PhysicsGamer also obbybombed Temporal Isles (not Empire), but Icenia believes this was the impetus to
- The previous week, when I was supposed to publish a newsletter, Icenian SpeedyJustice was pearled by Gang Shi by Kommi.
- While in Winterbourne mining, he detected Kommi nearby on radar, and logged out to avoid being pearled, however despite being reassured he was not logboxxed and would not be pearled, that very thing exactly happened.
- SpeedyJustice claims that it was an unfair pearling, after he was “peacefully mining in Winterbourne”.
- Toaxbis claims the logbox was located in international waters off the coast of Winterbourne, although I am unable to verify this claim until they are able to release the video with “more Kibbles confessions”, that literally isn’t a joke.
- The pearl was eventually moved to Gang Shi, but no reasoning for the pearling was given. Those in Icenia have generally accepted that SpeedyJustice has been reformed since his return.
- Reasons for his pearling ranged from continued punishment over shenanigans in Gensokyo the previous year, accusations over bombing an ice road, being too close to one, or retaliation from the Temporal Empire situation. From my conversation with Gwua, at least two of these excuses were used in this situation.
- The most likely reason ended up being “to get leverage”, which has been confirmed by other Gang Shi associates, saying it “wasn’t personal”.
- Icenia’s final accusation was that newfriend structures in their main city were being blown up, however, I do not have snitch logs to prove it was Gang Shi, despite their claims.
Gang Shi did post a response the following morning, but it was past the news cutoff for this week, so you’ll see my summary of it next week. Although there is some news below that was created past the news cutoff, anything I mention is generally non-substantial.
Possible Drama Things
Meracydia’s Town Square, photographed by Banyough.
- The Monument Bank sent a notice to all account holders a terms change, which include tiered interest, scaled account fees and the folding of corporate and credit accounts into a single holding account. Creepi0n has said that these changes were made to “encourage uptake of smaller accounts” and to grow the clientele of the Monument Bank.
- JuniorTide released another analysis for Icenia’s election last month, with SpeedyJustice obtaining his first Icenian senate seat after a heated race and a highly publicized campaign.
- Icenia put a bounty on three players, but agreed on reps shortly afterward
- Gang Shi and Yoahtl have agreed to a peaceful change of territory near their territory
- Yoahtl was also under some criticism from Torynado for being pearled for nearly one month.
- Torynado expressed frustration over the attempt of a “Mercy ban” and missing a whole month of play, but most comments were just critical over his comments to other players.
- I am deliberately not linking this one for reasons for possibly obvious reasons.
- Pavia welcomed Mount Augusta in a new Declaration of Friendship. along with Gang Shi, Amboise, Griffin and Icenia.
- You might have noticed that Gang Shi and Icenia are now both friends of Pavia. I’m just pointing that out, there’s no reason for me to do that.
- Oh yeah, and Mallace was reelected as Judge in Mount Augusta to nobody’s surprise.
- Griffin and Amboise signed a declaration of friendship between the two countries.
- Along with Kaota annexing Transylvania last month, they also annexed Tortugan, and is open to newfriends. Truly, they are growing by annexing tiny nations.
- Imperial Federation Chancellor Mat_Potato_King released a press statement showing how proud he is over the country’s revitalization as he ends his incumbent term as Chancellor.
- Janet Blackquill is giving up their ma seli land, selling them in a lottery — it’s utterly useless, but VilyanZ proposes just setting it up in a grid
Non-Game Drama Things
- TheJmqn posted his claims map for November 2023, showing a good amount of consolidation from a bunch of nations as the school year forced many off. He also updated a heatmap of territory changes.
- Solitaire emphasizes everyone to vote for the server this month to raise the server’s ratings.
- CivMC Admin SoundTech announced he was working on proximity voice chat for the server, an increasingly common and very interesting feature that would increase player interaction on the server.
The Fun Stuff
A new render of Regensberg in the Imperial Federation.
Wholesome News
I’ve separated these sections because it’s actually kind of worth reading something a little more uplifting.
- Volterra hosted their Volterra Day celebrations yesterday, ranging from speeches to spectator sports to out-of-game activities.
- In the Daylight Savings-ravaged International Hockey League matches, the Shiroyama Tigers won against the Blue Cove Boars, and the Fempire Punks won against the SPQR Gladiators, setting up a riveting Shiroyama vs Fempire winners’ final!
- MotokoKusanagi released a Macro that notifies users when they are entering another territory. Yes, it reminds me of Towny, but at least it’s of player-created claims on the claims map rather than arbitrary things based on Towny.
- I released an update last week to CivWiki’s happenings and encouraging everyone to edit, so they can get their cool stuff on the newsletter next year, not to mention prizes from the Monument Group!
- Jaydon is introducing the Newfriend Investment Fund, intended to fund projects to kickstart gameplay, whether epic structures or organizing events.
Builds
The benefit of being a week late is that I get to stockpile builds for the next week!
- I’m two weeks late, but Shockton has a Halloween makeover that I really like
- Bronnakus reveals the Atlas Memorial Hospital for the Terminally Online in Nara
- Freeport saw the construction of Frihaven Guild Hall
- ItzHoover shows off both the interior of a new Volterran apartment, along with the exterior built by Mickale.
- Pavia was hard at work last week:
- not only building this embassy in Baile…
- but also hard at work on their new train station expansion, which is probably the most lavish and detailed station on Civ currently
- not to mention that over by Vetranio, an entire couple of lakes were terraformed within a week
- meanwhile, Aetherix throws out a stunning render of Vetranio Castle with late-Autumn leaf colors
- Amicitia quickly pivoted from Halloween decorations to Christmas decorations
- Vinland wasn’t only the highlight for this week and graciously gave me a tour of their amazing country
- But also opened up an ice shop on Main Street in Pavia
- Banyough’s world tour brings them over to Meracydia, whose shaders look way better than mine
Cool Content
- iinkuu draws a representation of catching walkers in a fast-food establishment, insert shocked MrBeast in a MrBeast Burger here
- Meanwhile, Butter_villager has made a profile picture for Boar enthusiast Zolo
- Oh yeah, also how about this Gang Shi art piece from both of them from the Sloth trial
- This Tiantang EAS emergency announcement, while pretty humble, is very commendable for its worldbuilding, not to mention very well-spoken Mandarin
- IceBoy posted another, and final update to the Civball map of the world, this came along with updates the past few weeks with:
- Lambat, Chungia & Exilus from Banyough
- Midnight Isles from Zeldrin
- Mount Augusta, New Jersey, Slothistan and Baile from Altelier
- Melonwood from Ke
- Kallos from Butter_villager
- Yoahtl-patriotic Exilus, Capitum and Reunan, from Cosmo
- Butternut County, from Butter_villager & Altelier
- Khione, Icenia, CaneCorp, Valyria, the Spidermen Temporal region, Bloom from IceBoy, holy crap he’s busy
- Chad Dirt from Hakr_
- Big Business Pacem from PacGaming
- Yngland from Spectre
Memes
- Forged goes dark and did something that even Rhode Island couldn’t do
- I made a meme for everyone to use when there’s no newsletter
- I didn’t even know we had workers there
- Yeah I think Gang Shi just thinks that Icenia’s fucking hot, where’s that stupid Civball comic of Icenia kissing
- Gonna be honest, Slushhi, this does look like it was made by AI
- Oh no i was pearled for 27 minutes
Non-Civ Content
- I still have baseball news, because in Japan, the Hanshin Tigers broke a curse dating back to 1985 with a win in Game 7 of the Japan Series last week, which involves Colonel Sanders, Bridge Jumping and Randy Bass. You might want to read this one.
- A lot of people in Pavia are very much satisfied of the work on Loki season 2, and it was a great season to watch unfold. While I’m not happy that we probably won’t see more Loki in the future, the series was really well written. I hope we’ll see some of this quality in the movies, not to mention I hope the characters show up in the main canon.
- Speaking of Disney that’s good, if you’re looking for some Disneyland nostalgia, there’s a free website that hosts Disneyland music, with perfectly decorated vintage ’60s posters of attractions, areas, and even parades at the parks. Listen to hours of music here and it’ll feel like you’re at the parks.
- SpeedyJustice is making donations in light of his post, not for free clout but just because he wants to be generous.
- His first donation was to the Philadelphia-based Bethesda Project
- His second was to the St. Jude hospital,
- His third was to the Cold Case Foundation, an organization set on revitalizing unsolved cases
- His fourth (and fifth) was to the World Wildlife Fund, with an anonymous donor matching his donation.
- Honestly, just glad that Civ is making a difference on something.
- I am desperately trying to get people to play Insane Monopoly: Pyramid Scheme Expansion but I wonder why nobody’s going to bite? Come on, doesn’t anyone want to play a 40x more complicated game than monopoly? After all, Monopoly is boring on its own…
Poll of the Week
Last week, we had 62 responses for the poll. I think that’s a good enough sample size…
The first question was a bit of a softball, “Are you dressing up for Halloween?”
Well, I guess I should’ve expected this knowing most Civ players are politics or metagamers. Not much role-play on this front, even for me. Good on you for those who did enjoy the holiday though!
The second question was “What social media do you use?” This question was purely out of curiosity and kind intended to see where the core audience of Civ generally remains.
It’s kind of telling that everyone concentrates around the regular spaces of Reddit, Discord and YouTube since that’s where all the main Civ content is. But the diaspora on TikTok, Twitter, or Instagram is interesting, since these are audiences Civ has never really tried to attract, yet have massive potential.
Increasing the amount of short form content could be a massive boon to advertising in the future, but in my opinion, the likelihood of anyone on Civ actually having success on attracting via short-form content, even via shorts, is pretty slim.
Just Ask a Question Already!
Well, I’m actually going to flip the tables on you:
Yes, for the first time on this newsletter, you can input a text answer into the poll! You don’t have to answer the short response questions if you don’t want to.
If you need help writing a page, feel free to introduce a ticket on the CivWiki discord!
Fireworks Cry for Help
Fireworks on Volterra Day. Isn’t it cool? Courtesy of Hazelbasil & ItzHoover.
Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter!
As a reminder, last week, the CivWiki & Monument Group announced an editing palooza, with diamond prizes for those with the most substantive edits! See more details here! It’s easy to get started and you could win huge diamond prizes!
A shoutout to SpeedyJustice, Toaxbis, Gjum, and ItzHoover for helping out with some minor details this week.
I hope this newsletter is a little more joyful than most, because I think we all need that in our lives right now, not for any particular reason. I’m working on being a little more productive within the next couple of months, and my current state of not being motivated will hopefully improve very soon. But regardless, once again, thank you so much fo reading, and I will hopefully see you all next week!
Until next time…