CivWiki Monday Newsletter for November 21, 2022
Good morning and happy Monday from New England! Another solid week for everyone hopefully?
Finally, I’ve gotten a lot of workload taken off my back and I’m hoping to return to production on the long-awaited Mount Augusta train station starting next week, mostly because I just want to finish it at this point. People keep saying I shouldn’t but at this point, nobody wants three different train stations in a big city right now, especially one considerably more active like MtA right?
Anyway, news time:
Enough rambling from me, it’s news time!
Featured
Featured Image
There were a lot of great pictures this week (which I’ll probably feature in the next few weeks), but I’m going to give a shoutout to Griffin this week. They’ve recently returned to play for realsies this time, and this particular build is in their capital, Adria. Focused on building up a close-knit community, the kingdom’s land is split up into multiple different duchies that can be home to many different types of players. You may recognize them from past nations such as Fish and Kraken. Can’t wait to see where this goes!
Featured Article
The Kingdom of Prussia, more commonly known as simply Prussia, was a nation on Civcraft 1.0 and Civcraft 2.0 as a country themed around the pre-World War I German Empire. Originally formed through the /int/ board on Krautchan, Prussia grew to be both a political and diplomatic power, starting with being part of the Southeastern Alliance (SEA) on 1.0. On 2.0, they were involved in several complicated relationships with the alliances of Civcraft 2.0 including joining with Grundeswald to form the Holy Krautchan Empire, participating in the Goten Secession Conflict and having crises with Holy Tree and New Phoenix.
Prussia was mostly known for its cultural aspects, along with their strong monarchist German theme and style of government, the country was also the founding place of the “Church of t”, similar to the modern day “g”. The country was also notable for hosting numerous megastructures especially on 2.0, whose builds included an opera house (which hosted the end of the world celebration), cathedral, harbor, numerous ships, university, palace, and palace gardens. After 2.0, Prussia announced they would not return for future iterations, although Prussians founded a new country called Sigmaringen in CivClassic, but have not returned since.
A render of Breslau, Prussia’s capital in its final state at the end of the world.
Current Events
This week’s featured image is the Kilhajio Chōyakuba, the location of the summit for several countries on the Western Continent to form Karydia, a separate continent on a new landmass. Maybe a certain someone will forgive me now for doing absolutely nothing?
- Remember this incident between TheBoss, Rozia and Ila’Kyavul from last week? This is going to be extremely underwhemling of something that looked to be an up and coming source of drama.
- Despite accusations that the bunker was not reinforced, it was reinforced with IRO.
- By Tuesday, with the ISP having the understanding he would not accept the proposal, they made the appropriate action of disabling the bunker by “turning it into a kiddie pool”
- Rozia has been so bad at PR that I couldn’t even glean from what happened from the sub posts that week, so thanks to Yodabird for providing additional support.
- Pavia’s current Crown Prince, Creepi0n I, has entered an elite group after he survived his second dice day; all other Crown Princes besides BritishWanderer III died on their second dice day or earlier.
- Saturday saw the first Farley War event on the server in Pavia, a light-hearted PvP event named after Farley50 where players can only fight in weaker gear unlike the many PvP wars on the server.
- The winner was Sdorr who won 32 emerald blocks, with Gamertime and Shadno rounding out the medals.
- Several countries along the Western border of the map signed a treaty in Western Boundary this week to formally create a new continent, splitting from the now-unfittingly named Western Continent.
- Some in the mapping community have expressed concerns of this split, as it is purely a political split rather than one that’s geographical (like all the other continents).
- I.F. Chancellor Southw3st was also pearled temporarily by other goverment members after bombing a cathedral “following threats” to King_Cupar. While further actions occurred, the country maintained its commitment to the king. Crossposted from the Federatlist Papers.
- While this is technically not news, but is drama, the Imperial Federation made a documentary “exposing” Bronnakus’ bias against the I.F. with relation to Nara. I know this was all in fun jest but it’s not like he wasn’t cringe on the subreddit before this
- It’s caused “a stir” in the Nara Discord but you know we’re all fine people here and we’re all completely fine in both countries and nothing happened in the State of Ohio on November 20, 2022
- I did already say this above but the High Kingdom of Griffin has returned from their period of inactivity and are fervently planning and building to expand the scope of their nation.
- Icenia has recently completed a national census, determining that despite their many nationalities, the country still maintains a strong internal culture with the country becoming an industrial powerhouse over the past weeks.
- CivMC admins “made some changes” to their backup strategy to make restarts faster.
- Despite the anticipated hype for CivReign, admins announced another delay to the server’s launch, apologizing after building hype for weeks, citing a need of a large overhaul of a mechanic.
- After a long, rigorous period of applications, CivSMP has launched this past weekend. Over the next week, Owain_X implores you to keep an eye out for the first videos in this new series sometime next week on Civ discords & subreddits.
The Fun Stuff
A view of the Fish Lady statue among the streets of Santiago in Cortesia del Mar.
Builds
- I was very close to highlighting the before/after of Jah Park this week but decided against it because I want to bring in a new nation and not all the old ones, but it’s a beautiful render courtesy of TolypeVelleda
- As part of the CivMarket build contest, Pavia has built an embassy plot for the competition, and it’s in their classic Pavian style
- A couple more pictures of Imperial Federation locales:
- Regentsburgh looks like a bit of an upgrade, especially with a brand new tower and several buildings accentuating its Viking theme
- Godhaven still looks like Ohio, but now there’s a castle, so I guess it’s more like northwest Vermont now
- And lastly, a brand new keep in Western Boundary
- And back to the pictures that were highlighted…
- Keeping with the Imperial Federation theme, another Western Boundary structure that hosted the summit, the Kilhajio Chōyakuba (although I’m starting to think maybe “Western Boundary” isn’t the best name for a Japanese RP)
- MrDoomBringer snapping a picture along his travels in Santiago in Cortesia del Mar
- And lastly but not leastly, Adria in Griffin’s wonderful summer square
Multimedia Projects
- Big shoutout to Yodabird for producing this exquisite infographic displaying average online players for each nation, as a graph semi-professional, the presentation of it is quite incredible
- A bit late but I guess RektTangle did get an AI to accurately recreate the Pavia town hall
- I’m pretty sure this Winterbourne image was made using an DallE image processor but who cares
- A new map that’s actually different than the Jmqn ones that is a great representation of Karydia alongside a brand new continent and ocean display map from TheJmqn.
- Another cool map in pastel Minecraft style of the Griffin area by Seekinq
- Kind of like the 16-bit style map here of the Commonwealth, very cool
Memes
- I really should be giving a whole news section to the VilyanZ who successfully MS-Painted several Civ flags to be as shitty as humanly possible.
- It even made several countries’ discords change their logos temporarily to his interpretations (not shown here is Pavia’s)
- When is wjkroeker going to make a low-quality Civ youtube channel
- We really NASA out here huh
- This Rozia meme makes even less sense
- What the fuck is going on in Pavia’s storage room
- Pavia’s Instagram vs. Reality (of which I just blatantly stole from their starboard channel)
Advertisements
- SirBoss has made an apartment in an area of Icenia very close to the train station and is currently auctioning it off at a minimum of 10d
- The first Maps, Naps, and Schnapps store has arrived in Pavia, selling maps and art (although I guess it doesn’t sell naps?)
- bitwyz has created a spreadsheet of all the current prices of Icenia shops! I still have a copy when I did this back in CivTemp when we still had Shardside, and this just threw me back several years so good for you and can’t wait to see what will happen in the future!
Metagame Highlights
- Turns out that the ChrisChrispie Guide to Protecting Wealth and Wasting Time is actually the truncated version of the LordofMarzipan’s Centre for Children Who Can’t Protect Their Stuff Good
- Here’s a survey run by Crystal to get a good opinion on how people interact with the economy! (Although should I really say where I store my wealth? I don’t even know where most of mine is)
Thanksgiving Cry for Help
A picture of all the participants of the Pavian Farley War in the courtyard across from the Town Hall.
Since this is the last edition of the newsletter before thanksgiving, I just want to give a big thanks to everyone who’s given me support so far. This is the 27th edition of the newsletter, so just over half a year of these extremely long writeups of probably useless news that very few people will actually use in the future but it’s always still fun to do.
Since it’s Thanksgiving this week in the United States (aka where I live), want to take a moment to shout out everyone who’s contributed to helping with the newsletter.
First, the bureaucrat and moderation team who’s immensely helped with the support of the newsletter in its early days:
- Gjum, who’s always there to provide support whenever you need it and always kicks ass every single day and there never enough words to describe him
- Metriximor, who’s been a grateful supporter of the newsletter and providing information about Lusitania and pictures all the way through
- Lodish, who provided invaluable feedback on editing and listening to all my suggestions and rants in the bureaucrats channel and provided this comment that I get to mock him for now
- tybug, although he’s inactive now like Metrix, provided a ton of feedback and revision support especially in the early days
Second, all the newsletter staff. If you don’t know, this newsletter is “peer reviewed” by several people who play on Civ and help provide news for everyone. I could say a million things about each of these people but I can’t so I’m just going to list them:
- animeme_master
- BritishWanderer
- Britisher
- cooliomoose
- Des23
- GetSkinny
- kaprediem
- prawny331
- Thraldrek
- Vedd
Third, all the people who’ve provided me with Featured Articles, Images, or other aspects. Thanks to you, this newsletter has allowed me to bring content from all over the Civ community and funneled out to several of you! I don’t have a full list but you do know who you are if you’ve helped me or not because I’ve reached out to you in one way or another.
I do also want to give a particularly niche shoutout to TheJmqn, who made the original featured article on CivWiki all the way back on May 16, 2022, inspiring me to commit to updating weekly and also posting the very first newsletter.
And last but certainly not leastly, all of you who are amazing supporters of something extremely stupid every week even if you’re not going to read this part because it’s just too long. Your readership (and I see it on AWS!) quite literally encourages me to continue this letter and put my hard work into it every single week, day in and day out. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you.
Anyway, speaking of Featured Articles, if you’re looking to get on the list above and help me further with the newsletter, please fill out this form to give your suggestions on whatever Civ thing you want me to research and talk about! I welcome all suggestions, and I’m also looking for op-ed writers if you’re interested, just DM me if you want to rant in a slightly public space :)
Oh, and one last thing…
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