CivWiki Newsletter for November 18, 2024

Good morning and happy Monday from the Pacific Northwest!

I hope everyone has had their fill either complaining about the grind, or complaining that other people get to grind and you don’t. What a lovely setup we’ve got here this week!

There’s not much more I can say about this week that won’t encapsulate all of your frustration besides I hope you’re doing well. It’s been a pretty stressful weekend for a lot of players and has been a crazy ride. Are we ready for the news?

Featured

Featured Image

This week’s featured image is actually not player-built, but rather the lobby on CivMC’s new PvP server. It evokes a certain type of winter village vibes that only a few other areas on the server really have, it’s very creative. Now here’s the joke though, I have gotten a source from RedDevel that he didn’t make the lobby and just grabbed it off a world download. It’s quite over, unfortunately.

Featured Article

Pylons were a gameplay mechanic in Civcraft 3.0 that tied XP generation to a shard-level limit. When the limit was reached, crops within the world would have slowed or stopped growth, overriding Realistic Biomes rules. Created initially as a concept in 2013 and intended to create scarcity around a valuable resource, the limits were set relatively low within the server’s short lifespan which created diplomatic challenges among prospective nations.

The concept was initially attempted on CivTemp to relative success due to the low amount of countries within each shard. However on the mainline 3.0 server, pylons stoked mass conflict as there were very little measures made to prevent a nation from creating a pylon. Shards that had biomes with viable crops — namely Rokko Steppe, the plains shard — saw mass amounts of conflict because of the high amounts of pylons that blocked crop growth. It also blocked out newer players from establishing themselves within shards, as well as frustrating established nations intending to maximize output. The mechanic was not popular, was one of the main reasons for the server’s downfall, some also compared it to Nether Factories for its failure.

This week’s featured image is the final state of the Crocodile Isles in Rokko Steppe, Civcraft 3.0 (cr: me)

This Week In Civ

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The News

Katipan, Lambat as viewed at night, one of the major crossrails of rails on the server (cr: me).

CivMC Update

CivMC was updated to (internal version) 2.4.0 this past week, its first major content update in quite a while. I would consider its last major content update February 2024, Fishing.

While this was headlined to be the PvP update, there was also a considerable amount of content added to the core game, so much so that for players, the sole focus was on the gameplay additions:

• Heliodor, a new plugin native to Civ was added, which adds Meteoric Iron, a new top-level tool material for Civ.
  • Heliodor can be used to make a pickaxe to locate Meteoric Iron veins.
  • Meteoric Iron can be found near the surfaces near (existing) Nether Portals.
  • When smelted, their axes, pickaxes, swords and armor have significant buffs over their vanilla counterparts.
• Adds backpacks, one of the most highly requested features on the server.
• Adds factory upgrades which can speed up or reduce consumption for existing factories.
  • Both of the above are crafted using meteoric iron.
• Adds a bonus to wearing full Netherite, a fire resistance bonus.

You’ll later see why this update was so polarizing, but it’s worth noting here that this update was pushed to live without player feedback.

• Because of the nature of how Meteoric Iron spawns, players were angry about a wide variety of problems about this update, including:
  • Locked behind nations who already claimed portals
  • Backpacks being restricted to massive nations who, of course, have access to these portals and not a QoL addition
  • Not going to the community for feedback about these massive changes to the metagame, which makes this comment all the more funnier

The Scramble

Caernarfon, Salerno on a quiet, still night. (cr: luminous15).

There were two immediate side effects when the update landed on Saturday:

• XP quickly became out of stock in nearly every place across the server and prices rose considerably
• Nether Portal access was blocked off by every country

Of course both of those reasons were because of Meteoric Iron, but I’d like to talk about it more… specifically so I can draw out this newsletter to make you read longer.

• For those who did not read the full wiki page, a considerable amount of emerald blocks (~1600) were necessary to construct the Gem Factory, where the Heliodor pickaxe is created, the Heliodor gems and infuse Heliodor gems (not to mention refresh them as well).
• This creates an substantially large late game sink for experience, of which emerald blocks are constructed out of for those unaware.
• As a result, every XP exchange was basically rummaged when the update launched in order to fund the Heliodor manufacturing process.
  • This meant that most countries’ XP exchanges, notably Icenia’s, Pavia’s and Yoahtl’s, among a slew of others, were completely out of stock or pulled from sale.
  • Interestingly, Icenia reverted their system back to the start-of-the-world Crop Exchange.
  • Most vendors, including Tusk Armory and Raven Raiments paused ALL orders, presumably to prevent fluctuating prices.
  • However, recent XP Prices are currently hovering around 2d/block in Pavia; I don’t think I would say the prices are unreasonable, but ordering in bulk may suffer for a while.

Nara were the first ones to get the Heliodor pickaxes after a quick hotfix earlier in the day which prevented them from making it, but several nations quickly followed. It now came time to search for meteoric iron.

• Because Meteoric Irons veins only spawn near Nether Portals, when the update launched, nearly every accessible (and even non-accessible) portal was cordoned off as a exclusion zone. And specifically, 300 blocks around it because that’s where it spawns.
  • Interestingly, Yoahtl announced that government permission is required and not even regular citizens were able to mine near the portal
• Normally veins spawn once per day (using this algorithm written in pseudocode), but for the first day, the max limit of 19 veins were spawned.
• This resulted in a mad rush to get the first meteoric iron, as expected.
• Pavia proved to be extremely lucky as three veins spawned at their portal near Lambat on the first day and also were the first to get the iron.
• As a result, Pavia was the first to make an elite ore smelter as well as the first Meteoric Iron Axe.

Okx did not expect players to craft it this quickly, which actually resulted in a funny coincidence:

• The Meteoric Iron tools were extremely powerful; among these were Iron Axes, which initially could instantly break all wood products, including chests. (I don’t have an official screenshot, but this was a well known complaint among Civ players.)
• Because of the implications this could have on established nations’ wealth, this was changed to break wood products in two ticks, which at least gives people some lag time to respond to issues but still giving a speed buff.
• Funnily enough, the axe’s functionality had not been changed yet, which meant that technically, Pavia, who are buildfriends, are in possession of one of the most powerful tools on the server. Isn’t that fun? (quick edit this is no longer the case as of the update this morning)

Things That Aren’t About Meteoric Iron

Brunsvik, Salerno in the dead of night (cr: realmichael).

Ok, I hope you’re satisfied and now I can talk about more menial announcements or things that just couldn’t find a spot above but are at least worth mentioning.

• Although mentioned previously in passing but not highlighted as its own bulletpoint, Groveheart seceded from the Great Western Bay, forming their own nation.
  • However, Withervale has mentioned that they are active and of course, real life took precedent as usual.
  • Would it be worth it to merge Withervale, Salerno, and Groveheart as a super duper mega Great Western Bay? Eh, just spitballing here.
• Because of the above scramble, Monument Bank posted its highest deposit day ever, with 40k diamonds deposited.
• Also as a result of the scramble, several nations had also announced some ownership changes that had been implicit but not explicit, including the Hello Kitty Islands owning the Joja portal.
• Salerno announced they would actually be keeping their portal access area open, but would only be restricting mining within the areas.
• Salerno also announced a minor cabinet reshuffle with godoftired, luminous15 and n0stalgiic joining the nation’s cabinet.
• The International Hockey League held a game between Icarus and Yoahtl over this busy weekend, with the Boars winning 6-2.
• Shockton announced that they would be decorating the town … uhhh i mean a Snowstorm rolling into the town with a bunch of snow onto the country’s buildings
• There were a couple of people that wanted Estalia to free Toontasker, but did that really do anything?

Metagame Highlights

• CivModern updated to overhaul configs as well as push a fix when a player name doesn’t look right on radar
• Even though there are physically less connections on this latest alliance chart from VilyanZ, I still find it confusing, lol
• Estalia gets voted as Lawful Evil, but Kallos just wants the Neutral Evil slot (even though it kinda fits) because it’s purple
• Blackgold, Forged and Bobicus_IV were announced as winners of last week’s Dice Day!

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The Fun Stuff

St. Rafael, Imperial Federation at its town square in Karydia Imperial. You can kind of see I’m going for a night theme of pictures, I hope (cr: Potato_Duke).

Calendar

Wow, this calendar really got decimated after last week… I really couldn’t find more stuff for this!

• November 22 - Tatsu & natls announce the fourth week winners of Nice Dice Friday!
• November 23 - 24 - The IHL hosts the Exilus Exorcists vs. Icenian Isopods in the semifinals!
• November 24 (5pm EST/22:00 GMT) - The Pumpkin Jacks are recruiting PvPers with a Battle Royale competition! More information here. (this was delayed from the previous week!)
• Ad-hoc, ongoing - Civ Poker has returned! Gamble your money — it’s only temporary e-bucks anyway.
• Sometime this year - Volterra formally celebrates its 10 year celebration!

Builds

• I think this may be the first we’ve actually seen of Caernarfon in Salerno, and it’s really well aligned with the rest of the nation’s stuff! (cr: Luminous15)
• Well, I’m also not forgetting about Brunsvik too as well (cr: realmichael)
• Cortesi… I mean Iaumea still looks like a fantastic urbanist city along the Medi Sea (cr: AdrianIsHere)
• Karydia Imperial uses a very unique color pallette to stand out amongst the lush jungle landscape (cr: Potato_Duke)
• RedDevel stole a world download and then put shaders on it to fool everybody that they did it (cr: nobody)
• Sometimes shader skyboxes look great especially on a city (Pavia) that usually doesn’t look like that (cr: Fendrell)
• Lambat is alive again showcasing their old builds in New September and Pampang (cr: Kaprediem)

Cool Content

• The urge to say “nothing ever happens” fighting the urge to say “History repeats itself”
• MoistCritical weighs in on the CivMC situation

Memes

• I think i’d still take the 10 mil
• I think I would have preferred a different meme format for this but we are daring today, aren’t we
• Who in their right mind would actually propose an alternative currency based on potatoes
• the last frame is just me every time another one of these stupid news things drops
• imagine pinging everyone for nothing, my notifs are going to cry
• I will simply leave this here for your consideration

Non-Civ Content

• If you’ve talked to me in the CivMC general chat, you’ll know that my obsession this week (and probably a few weeks going forward) is Stardew Valley. Not because of the new update or anything, I literally haven’t played past Summer 3 Y1 in my previous saves and I’m about to head into fall. So… will I be focusing less on Civ?
• This is quite a bit late, but I forgot to announce that George Washington, Danslief’s frog, sadly passed away. Here is a picture in memory of him.

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Poll of the Week

Looking up amongst the stars around Windermere bay, (cr: Fendrell)

Last week, we had 49 responses.

Former Civ Servers

This question was suggested by toontasker!

I remember asking a variation of this question a while back, and these results are not very much different to what I personally remember was the case; the only major difference I remember is that more oldfriends these days are hailing from Civcraft 2.0. I’m not sure if it’s because there are now more oldfriend-centric communities in very legacy communities like Mount Augusta, Yoahtl, or Icenia, but an interesting thing to research in the future. CivClassic, as expected as it’s the longest running server, does have a surplus of people hailing from that iteration, not to mention its relative recency.

In a way I should have asked Civcraft 3.0, but I considered Devoted a part of that crowd, as well as expanded on what “Other” meant.

Finally, assuming that everyone who answered that CivMC was their first server with no other responses, more than half the respondents are technically newfriends. However, I’m pretty sure that’s not accurate, especially with the small sample size of n=49.

Wholesomeness

I asked for wholesome stories, because, well why not. I am planning to do a “Compliments” question next week in honor of US Thanksgiving, so look out for that.

I successfully fooled everyone into thinking I was a newfriend on Classics and just lived out a wholesome life building and grinding, without suspecting my dark and mysterious past.

Is this a confessions thread? Regardless, that’s great. Honestly, I personally think I convinced people I was an oldfriend on Civcraft 3.0.

I was an ordinary newfriend at the time, I decided that it would be funny to visit Gang Shi [and deliver some cocaine]… Came back a bit later on. Got chased by Highroll and delivered more drugs to Gang Shi. Fun times.

I mean, people will do anything for drugs, haha.

An iron armor newfriend of mine talked shit at the wet bandits for [a] solid 30 min. It was wonderful and they didn’t get him. He even broke their bastions xD

Damn, what a steal!

Raiding people as vikings on TheRealmsMC by riding out to sea on actual viking ships as TheRealmsMC had movecraft is probably the most fun I’ve ever had on Civ.

That’s some incredible roleplay for Civ. I know Civ servers today don’t really like Movecraft but roleplay wars would go extremely hard on modern-day Civ if that was enabled. Not like the Danzilona border war stuff that was just building.

writing “Take care and keep being the amazing peeps that u all are ^v^” in hopes of making someones day better

Lowtuff, is that you?

Halloween 2016

Hmmm, going to have to look that one up… is it supposed to be important?

Spending nearly a week designing and bulding a horse racing track at the very last minute for the Yoahtl Olympics (and then all three of the medals for that event going to Yoahtlans)

Hey, it looked good!

Vote Now!

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Meteoric Cry for Help

Several Pavians posing inside Cape Cocoa station in Lambat, following their excavation of the first meteoric iron (cr: Cissonius). Totally not Pavia biased lol

Thank you for reading this week’s newsletter. (Don’t worry, it wasn’t actually that painful to write unlike most major drama events that happen.)

Huge thanks have to go out to the following players for helping out with general news requests: BritishWanderer, Cissonius, Shadno, MechanicalRift, GriffSuperShot, Gidein, Tatsu, ArtificialDriver, Huskydog9988, Okx, stratmatt57, and whoever else I missed. Some of it has to do with this week, some of it on some errors I made last week (which is why you see a few corrections made in the news today.)

As we’re heading into the last FIVE weekly newsletters before this becomes monthly (as detailed previously), this is now your LAST chance to contribute to Featured Articles to get your writing featured quickly (else it will take at least a month!) Message me @specificlanguage for more information and if you’d like to help out with any news. Or even if you’re interested in beginning a column when this turns monthly, message me as well.

Anyway, that’s all the things I think I have this week. Have fun playing and touch some grass! Until next time:

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