CivWiki Monday Newsletter

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


CivWiki Newsletter for December 5, 2023

• specificlanguage

Good morning and happy December from New England!

I know that there’s been a good lot of stuff that happened this past couple of weeks, but I think I needed at least a few weeks to manage anxieties and enjoy myself while currently being a little on the “what the heck am I doing in life” side.

I highly imagine that newsletters are going to be slightly more sporadic going forward, especially during this busy holiday season, not to mention that news is getting a little more sporadic as we enter a period of relative peace.

Although the goal for publishing will always be Monday morning, I hope you can forgive me for writing these newsletters a couple days late, like today. Don’t worry, usually I’ll have a really good reason for missing a couple of weeks.

Funnily enough, because of my delay, the URL now collides with last year’s edition, which was the longest at the time, so you might notice that there’s a year after the URL this time.

Ok, let’s look at the news…

This week’s featured image, for obvious lack of actual subtlety here, is Margaritaville decorated for Christmastime. I was saving it up for the Christmas season, and especially so considering this is pretty much one of the only Christmas decoration that I’ve currently seen so far on any server. However, this is really well done, and does a really good job doing Christmas decorations in a tropical setting, which is a rare feat, where the only one actually able to do this correctly is Hawaii. Looking forward to more redecorations from MaybeGravy soon!

Featured Article

Devoted was a Civ server running as a experimental Civ server that intended to continue Civcraft’s political framework while also emphasizing PvP interactions and new gameplay designs. Founded by ProgrammerDan and Bonkill during Civcraft 2.0 in 2015, the server initially ran two iterations. Its third iteration is the franchise’s most well-known, as it became generally recognized as the mainline server following the failure of Civcraft 3.0 earlier in 2016. Wars were generally frequent on the server with frequent targets being Persia, Volterra, Ruin, and others.

Devoted 3.0 also included nations on Civ that had little or did not pursue involvement in wars. Mount Augusta hosted the Maester Library on Devoted 3.0 and became the main city that the Maesters played in for future iterations. Aquila, one of the largest cities on the server, had a capital city shaped like an eagle’s head. The server waned in activity following the launches of CivEx 3.0 and CivClassic 2.0, and shut down around October 2017. In 2021, the franchise launched Devoted Hell, an iteration of Civ that was only playable in the Nether. Today, Devoted has been a major influence of Civ to this day, with HiddenOre, CastleGates, and more evergreen features originating from the franchise.

This week’s featured image is Aquila, in Devoted 3.0.

The News

CivCubed Launch

The CivCubed lobby, made by Topaz and friends.

As some of you know, CivCubed launched on December 1, 2023.

I haven’t been talking about it that much because a lot of information was thrown at me during the last couple of weeks, which I didn’t even publish a newsletter for, oh well.

After playing for a little bit and rummaging through their features list, CivCubed is very much like the Civ you know and love, but with a good number of features tweaked and modified to be, in my opinion, more accessible and updated for newer players.

While there are also other minor tweaks like an expanded ore and alloy system, you can read more on their discord.

As I’m writing this there’s only been a few days on the server with a peak of about 25. Launch went relatively smoothly and so far, there are people playing on a Monday night, so it feels pretty good. There isn’t any news that’s really important, with the exception of:

I hope this didn’t sound too much like an advertisement. It’s too early to tell whether this server is grindcraft or not, but it at least feels like a breath of fresh air the genre needed. I hope it lasts longer than CivReign!

CivMC News

Volterra’s massive buildings in their town square.

Metagame Highlights

The Maester’s library underneath Mount Augusta.

The Fun Stuff

The Commonwealth’s currently under construction Parliament building.

Builds

I quite literally only had a few builds this week, and the only one I could find that was easily accessible was the Margaritaville at the top. Technically, I did have two with Amicitia’s tree, but I’m attempting to stockpile it for next week’s feature. So some of the things I visited on my jaunt through CivMC this week were:

Otherwise, there was

And that’s it for this week, I guess. Bro why is the CivMC builds channel just #feedback now

Cool Content

Memes

Non-Civ Content

Poll of the Week

Last Week’s Results:

Last week, we had a total of 53 responses.

Our first question was about thanksgiving, whether people were travelling that week to visit family, friends, etc. This shouldn’t really be interesting, but I do find it interesting people didn’t travel a lot.

Our second question was about the controversy of art being present on Reddit, Do you enjoy seeing art on the subreddit?

I think people do like seeing art on the subreddit; but I think the thing that ticks people off is twofold:

These are just generally the responses that I’ve seen from the extra responses I got, and I think there just needs to be more variety of good content on the subreddit to detract from art posts and constant drama.

Brandon Commands You To Vote

I don’t know why I made the header like that, but sure. One simple question today, and I’m expecting to be a quick popularity contest:

Please note that all information submitted is anonymous. A red star (
*
) means that this question is required to submit.
Which nations (on CivMC) would you recommend for new players?
Select all that are applicable.
If you responded 'Not listed above', what other nations would you recommend?

Please note the order is the order of nations, roughly going clockwise around the server, do not use this as the order for best nations that I consider. Also assume the player joining is a normal Minecraft player with no prevailing preferences and just wants to get into Civ as a nation and has no experience aside from playing Vanilla.

This vote is also not legally binding and will in no way affect anything.

December Cry for Help

Pavia’s assemblance of flags who are in their CUB agreements.

Thank you for reading this week’s newsletter! I honestly don’t have much to say this week, but this is my first step at improving myself and getting back into a routine and doing something fun. Also, like, I really need to practice my writing skills again. Please.

As we now head into December, another reminder that 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!

Alright, that’s enough advertisement from me. Thanks to Lodish and Gjum for quickly reviewing this before I push this out the door. Thanks everyone for reading and being patient, and I hope to see you next week!

And, as always…


EDIT CIVWIKI