CivWiki Newsletter for December 2, 2024
Good morning and happy Monday from the Pacific Northwest!
We’re so back but of course, I have to say the obvious, (which surprisingly I don’t think I’ve said before on this newsletter) nothing ever happens. Especially this week, you’ll notice that nearly everything I’m about to mention is all about metagame stuff because once again, nothing happened.
Although I traveled from the same time zone today, this is going to be a short one because I’m really, really tired. Turns out taking the 6am flight, both ways, is just not a good idea. Are we ready for the news?
Featured
Featured Image
This week’s featured image is Pacem’s town square. I think it’s just a coincidence that I might be highlighting Pacem on thanksgiving again, but of course it still looks as great as ever. The 1920s “Department store” vibe lives stronger than ever here and even years down the line, is one of the best build styles that Civ has ever seen. Although we’re a few years into this iteration I can’t wait to see how much more this evolves! Thanks to max_imil for the image.
Featured Article
This week’s featured article is a repeat of January 9, 2023, and was written by ArtificialDriver.
The Gabon Corporation was a publicly traded Gabonese multinational conglomerate corporation operating in the fields of industry, consumer goods, agrigulture and construction. The corporation was based in Salisbury, Gabon and was the first major shareholder-owned company to be established on CivClassic with operations in 7 separate countries. Its predecessor, the GabonXP Corporation was founded by FKA_Twink, Gobblin and BritishWanderer on October 7th 2020 as a means to profit off the server’s XP market.
Its goal was to produce affordable XP and ship it globally. The company went public in December 2020, allowing any member of the public to purchase shares for which the Corporation would pay out dividend every quarter. The Corporation would later merge with Salisbury Holdings and G&W Co. into what would be known as the Gabon Corporation. At its peak the Corporation would make over 6000 diamonds and pay out 1400 diamonds in quarterly dividends to its shareholders who held a total of 4000 shares. The Gabon Corporation’s spiritual successor, the Monument Group, is currently operating in Pavia on CivMC. (Full article…)
This week’s featured article image is the Gabon Corporation’s logo.
To place an ad here, take a look at the ads page.
The News
A decorative digsite in Pavia (cr: Tatsu, Amber, Gobblin)
Around the Server
- You’ll see several posts related to this later on, but Icenia held its December Senate elections. And oh boy, was this election quite contested!
- The Alenarith Protectorate held a debate on Black Friday, with Shadno being found the winner of the debate.
- As a result, the Protectorate endorsed several CRAP Party Candidates along with some allied candidates.
- Likewise, the CRAP Party won a majority of the seats, along with other Independents winning.
- Gjum posted this visualization of votes being cast in Icenia, as well as provided other utilities, such as a vote counter bot throughout the election weekend.
- Meanwhile, Salerno also elected a new slate of Senators this month, with most familiar players keeping their places.
- Monument Group saw another busy week.
- A few auctions were held the previous day for highly sought after sortcodes such as 0001 or 6969. Some of these auctions had bids over 200d.
- These auctions were then paused when the company announced custom sort codes to be purchased, which comes at a premium for letter digits.
- Additionally, the company released their November monthly report, seeing more continued growth.
- Not only did Raven Raiments re-open orders, but they also opened a new branch in New Callisto in the Imperial Federation.
- Karydia had some updates (courtesy of the Karydian Times, full stories on their discord):
- VolutionFS was tried and sentenced for various charges including treason; three others also held related cases but their charges were dropped. His presidential and senate positions were then replaced by others in the state
- Sodderike’s Senator election was tied and its decision came down to a coin toss, which while fair, doesn’t feel like a valid way to elect a leader, lol
- Vanani announced they would be moving out of Karydia into the formerly Cordoban territory.
- This is following an agreement with Salerno and Arx (which now is the RCAS, I guess) about overclaiming in the area.
- Kyojin Corp opened up an exchange within Shiroyama, for various commodities.
- Several players in SPQR returned and became government members, which restored the Roman governing body.
- Kallos announced the annexation of Calw.
- So MtFuJi got pearled by RedDevel. Uhhh…
Metagame Highlights
- A series of Vault Science posts got published to the subreddit this week dating back from CivClassic, including
- One about the history of Prison Beds, Pearls, and Vault Pyramids
- And another about the history of Vault Trenches and Bastions. Both are very well done!
- The CivMC unofficial claims map publishes its 32nd edition
- This was followed by another post making things a little bit more clear about where open land exists
- Followed once again by a video going over these posts, which is very cool (although from a 2022 perspective — which is understandable honestly since keeping track of history is very difficult!)
- Asgeir created an (unofficial) modpack for use on CivMC with a bunch of commonly used and approved mods. Great work!
- I do want to highlight that this post is just one of an example of those unapproved — which makes it incredibly difficult for newer people with new Reddit accounts to get any traction.
- At least for getting over the learning curve I’d suggest removing the karma limit for this, but I don’t know anything on how that works.
- Someone is quite surprised to find out that CivMC is now over two years old, and then asks how it’s going
- itslara13 asks if people want to play Risk on the giant CivMC Risk Map that VilyanZ made!
To place an ad here, take a look at the ads page.
The Fun Stuff
Some skyscrapers amongst the greenery in Mount Augusta (cr: Jaybirdino)
No builds or calendar this week, a little bit rushing to get this one out. I promise, one big chunky one next week.
Cool Content
- While I do commend this visualization of IF votes, I feel like this is not very readable — the colors and fonts literally don’t match up to make it a good visualization. (cr: TheJmqn)
- Did you want election stats content? Here’s one from Gjum regarding Icenia’s most recent election. Even though it’s Google Sheets, it’s a very good visualization!
- It’s technically a meme but this Icenian political ad has actually some pretty solid editing & framing (cr: Dr_Bacon_Hair)
- Already mentioned earlier but I would like to see more explainer videos from Pandastical, here’s his video on explaining historical claims
Memes
- Most hinged Icenian campaign (but the map art is very good)
- “Occupy Bloom”
- A little late for Halloween there bud
- I’m going to unelect Shadno from becoming a moderator because of this meme
Non-Civ Content
- Music corner returns??
- I am incredibly attracted to meme edits that take one single concept and go wild with it, so here’s one about classical music and FNAF
- Am I legally allowed to say that I am slightly underwhelmed by the rest of Schlitmas’s album? Don’t get me wrong, he sings awesome but I think some of the backup female singer mixing ruins it for me. The solo songs are amazing though.
- Any advent of coders in the chat?
To place an ad here, take a look at the ads page.
Poll of the Week
A pictureseque cabin in Groveheart (cr: Gidein).
Last week, we had an embarrassingly low amount of responses, which is indicative of the fact that it was an open-response only poll this week. Usually, the bulk of the responses come from multiple-choice questions and I always then leave a second question for people to voice their opinions. However, it being a standalone open-response it did turn people away this week.
Compliments, or I guess #thanks
While we didn’t get a lot of compliments this time around (which I’m going to send later this month), I think this was easily remedied by the converted #today-i-am-thankful-for channel, so I’m going to just highlight some of my favorite thanksgivings here. Well, besides the ones I know about.
I am thankful that I no longer need to be involved in CivDev and the great @Admin team and their development group are absolutely kicking ass keeping things going. ~ [ProgrammerDan]
I think it’s actually kind of nice that even with the developer teams moving on, we’ve had a pretty stable team that works on the core of Civ these days. Great to see Dan enjoying Civ retirement.
Today I’m thankful for being able to play in this immersive minecraft community. I’ve enjoy the politics and bickering a lot. No hard feelings for those who I may have offended with my antics ~ [AetherStarborn]
I think definitely people take this game for granted because where else can you have some sense of actual diplomacy with real(-ish) stakes in Minecraft? Sure, there’s some of us that do not enjoy yappers or antics but they make the game mroe alive.
I am thankful for my time in Gang Shi and Pavia. I am thankful for @Arconis000. I am thankful for all of fempire and exyria ~ [Toaxbis]
Please come back!
I am thankful for all the nice people I have met so far on civ. Too many to ping. So if you talked to me in any way be it telling me to get the fuck off your land or doing fun stuff together, know that I am thankful for every moment. Civ players always get called obsessed or angry but I think the Civ community is very friendly and kind! ❤️ ~ [Nekroz]
It’s nice to know that every time someone yells at a newfriend jumping into a vault, it’s out of compassion.
tal/butter_villager, you are simply a delight and one of my closest friends. An incredibly kind & wonderful human, can always make people laugh & has done an incredible job ~ [Anonymous]
mTfUJi is very nice to newfriends and expeirenced[sic] players alike unless the newfriend has a funny name then he scams them for their spawnbook ~ [Anonymous]
Isn’t this just the classic Newfriend gambit?
i’m thankful for @HaKr_ . without him, i wouldn’t know when restart is ~ [Stratmatt]
When is CivMC going to add a restart warning :(
i’m thankful for not playing civmc regularly (i touch rock and have a girlfriend, those don’t mix with civmc) ~ [grepsedawk]
This is the real winner of the Thanks thread, right?
Vote Now!
I would like to point out for this first question below: An answer at or above “two years” will have you predicting that CivMC will be the newest longest-running Civ server.
Nothing Ever Happens Cry for Help
The Neo Sol - Iaumea “Ruby” bridge, spanning the Medi Sea. Although it might not be a huge architectural wonder, it’s going to provide a major link between the two continents it spans (cr: a1exf).
As you can see I’m just getting less and less time to write these closer to the deadline so I don’t really have anything to say here. We have three editions left before the format switch, so I guess I should put the schedule for what’s up next here:
- Dec 9: normal newsletter, normal time
- Dec 16: normal newsletter, normal time
- Dec 24: FINAL normal newsletter, but specific time will change because of my travel shenanigans
- early/mid January 2025: First edition of the “new format”
- Continues every first Monday thereafter
Ironically, I haven’t figured out the new format yet, but I would imagine the core structure of the current newsletter will not change. If you’d like to contribute something however, I highly implore you to message me @specificlanguage — if you just want to do a one-off or even a monthly commitment, either is fine with me. As long as it’s Civ related, anything is fair game in the newsletter.
Thanks for reading, and until next time:
- < < < Last week’s newsletter (November 25)
- Suggest a featured article to
@specificlanguageon Discord! - Submit an ad for the newsletter!
- View and post comments on r/CivWiki
- View a shortened version of this newsletter on CivWiki