CivWiki Monday Newsletter

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

CivWiki Newsletter for December 16, 2024

• specificlanguage

Good morning and happy Monday from the Pacific Northwest!

I think I shocked people a little bit when I announced this is the penultimate weekly newsletter, honestly it’s kinda funny see at least a few people freak about what’s going on.

But I guess I need to let people know about it at the top — even though the weekly format is ending, this newsletter will become an expansive monthly publication. I’ll explain more after we get through a bit of the news!

This week’s featured image is of Pavia’s revamped town hall gardens. I’ve been keeping track of this work with Gobblin, Tatsu and the Dukes and they’ve really done a huge revamp. Although the most obvious addition is the Christmas tree, if you look further into the area they’ve got extensive water features, lovely arches, incredible bridges, and more creative flower displays to boot. We rarely talk about landscaping & nature-centric builds on Civ, but I have to say that good landscape makes the surrounding buildings & scenery even more beautiful.

Featured Article

This week’s featured article is a repeat of February 20, 2023.

CivRealms was a long-running Civ server, having storied history in the Civ genre. The goal of CivRealms was to provide a different mechanical experience than the mainline servers it ran alongside, like Civcraft and CivClassic. Its most well known iteration, 2.0, ran from May 2019 and well into 2021. The administration were also much more involved in player interactions; although making controversial decisions, they were committed to making the server a safe and enjoyable place for its playerbase.

Many countries who were active on other servers, such as CivEx or Devoted settled on the server. Throughout its lifespan conflicts between players emerged, including the Hell War and the Great War. Additionally, several countries emerged with their own culture, like Carbon and Alexandria, as well as other nations on the server’s expansions, the Thomas Archipelago and the New World. While CivRealms is no longer an active server, its philosophies have continued in the development of other future servers. (Full article…)

This week’s featured picture is the city of Zexenia, on the coast of the main continent of CivRealms.

This Week In Civ

On the week of December 16 - December 22 in:

2022:

  • Ocala was obbybombed by Arnen after the territory was dissolved and annexed by the latter country.
  • CivMC admins discovered abuse of the Brewery after finding out players were brewing powerful utility brews, and rebalanced recipes to compensate. Superbgamer was one of the primary offenders.
  • The Monument Group based in Pavia held the server’s first public stock sale, raising over 2,000 diamonds from investors.
  • Mount Augusta has reelected ComradeNick as its mayor, with laws passed to annex Juliana (formerly Zatoka) and broker alliances with New Jersey and Gang Shi.

2023:

  • CivMC released a well-received fishing update the previous weekend as a celebration of the holidays; but due to continued crashes and lost reinforcements, the update was eventually rolled back only a couple days following its launch.
  • The Grasslands Gambit reached its conclusion after Gang Shi fighters were pearled and the Dawn Guard Pact, consisting of Yoahtl and Icenia, broke the Butternut County vault. The countries unclaimed most of Gang Shi’s allies’ land.
  • Following the conclusion of the war, Gang Shi groups were handed to Estalia, with minor conflict over the handling, possession of and continued construction within the territory.
  • Arsenia and Mount Augusta, along with other BUILD allies, declared war on Doom City citing raiding, harassment, and communication issues.
  • SPQR held a Saturnalia festival to celebrate the holidays; their allies, Vinland also contributed by hosting cat girl caroling across the server.
  • Monument Group’s flagship store in Pavia received a massive renovation over the weekend, expanding its number of shops.

To place an ad here, take a look at the ads page.

”New Format”??

Here’s a sneak peek of what the new format’s going to look like! In the virtue of looking closer to a news-magazine (such as the The Atlantic or The Economist), nearly every one of these sections you’ve been reading will be expanded, along with new writers to fill in some of their own items.

This will range from opinion sections (like SpeedyJustice’s opinion sections he wrote earlier this year), to more specialized news sections (like economics, of which I usually have limited visibility for), interviews, and a whole lot more.

Because of the length this will inevitably take, I’ve split this up into multple sections for readability, so you don’t have to keep scrolling down to find your news, it will all be in one place (generally).

Now, I have to stress — nearly everything you’ve come to know and love about the newsletter will not be gone. Polls, fun stuff, and yes, even the Non-Civ Content will remain — albeit in a slightly revamped format.

TL;DR, the newsletter won’t gone, we’re just evolving!

Come to Bob’s Auction House this Saturday (December 21) for low-priced commodities and rare treasures. A recent low attendance auction means more savings for YOU, including 12 diamonds for cs’s of obsidian, 3 diamonds for cs’s of stone, and 40 diamonds for cs’s of nether stem!

Take a look at our discord: https://discord.gg/HCgkhcyvgD

To place an ad here, take a look at the ads page.

The News

A beautiful cozy housing area located in Groveheart (cr: cynx_n50)

I’m putting the Christmas pictures on next week, sorry!

Server Update

CivMC made a minor update this past weekend. This included:

It is worth noting that the old Meteoric Iron Tools and Armor do not have their values updated, you have to request an update from the admins themselves via a Discord ticket.

The update however, broke some old bots as they also sneakily updated anti-cheat within this update, Okx have said they would further update the server the next day.

Around the Server

North

South

Metagame Highlights

To place an ad here, take a look at the ads page.

The Fun Stuff

A picturesque city out by the waterfront in Bloom, Icenia (cr: Xcios)

Calendar

Builds

So here’s the Christmas decorations that I’m not highlighting as show-pictures until next week:

Cool Content

Memes

Non-Civ Content

Buy Raven for all your armor or tool related needs! We do deliveries to Pavia, Transylvania, Accra, Yoahtl, and Exilus as well as Lambat Portal and Titan Portal for our pearled customers. Make orders by joining our discord:

discord.gg/nnRdn6CYFY

To place an ad here, take a look at the ads page.

Poll of the Week

A village amongst the snow in Alaska. Yes, alright but I think it looks pretty good. (cr: Not90)

Last week, we had 40 responses. A little low in general, but these questions were not that compelling this week.

Ticket Effectiveness

I asked this because I find this an odd progression with how Civ works in this modern age: modmail tickets evolved from Civ’s usage of Reddit, and likewise we now have nation tickets from Civ’s usage on Discord. Despite this though, a considerable amount of people dislike modmail tickets because of how non-communicative they are — this generally goes the same for Discord in many cases.

I am pretty surprised that “Yes” is the most prevailing option here, essentially, but I think it may not have been a great question. How many people are just annoyed with how tickets work, you know?

Newsmagazine Features

While there’s a lot of the framework of the new format set in stone, I did want to see what I’ve been missing from the plan:

You to not scare the life out of us, that youre gonna stop with the newsletter stuff

Oopsie (but I am and moving monthly)

Player spotlights / interviews

This was the top most requested item entirely. I do remember that Lodish did these player spotlights back in the day, and I definitely think a return would be very cool — however I am personally not amazing at interviewing, and transcribing it would generally be a pain with or without AI. Still, I would definitely want to find a way to integrate that! I think in nature I try not to focus on individual players in newsletters, but it might be worth it to put a spotlight on some people who are mainstays and make the game as it is.

I wonder if a cartoonist would be possible? Even just like a civballs comic in each magazine could be cute

Another excellent idea. Civball comics are pretty sparing though, and even Stoomer has had trouble getting people motivated for a map of the world this year. How will I even be able to get a comic out monthly here?

Maybe individual nation/subnation spotlights going over history, culture, political systems, etc? Getting into the server it’s hard to get a feel for the many different kinds of playstyles and communities that exist here, and the newsletter’s always been good at breaking into that, but a more focused approach especially on communities like Prussia or Icarus that are storied in their own right but within larger nations could be enlightening even for older players

Featured articles sort of fill the niche there, but a recurring intro Travel Guide kind of thing would be pretty cool to see.

Opinion pieces. I want to know what you think of certain situations as well

I’m so detached from Civ lately that I personally wouldn’t write opinion pieces, but I know so many others would line up at the door for this. If you’re interesting in filling in or writing about any of the above, feel free to message me @specificlanguage on Discord!

Vote Now!

Please note that all information submitted is anonymous. A red star (
*
) means that this question is required to submit.
What kind of Civ advertisement(s) would you think people would click on the most?
Select all that are applicable.
What's a hot take (if you have one) do you have about Civ?

To place an ad here, take a look at the ads page.

Penultimate Cry for Help

Players at the Exilus Exorcists vs. the Icenian Isopods (cr: RedDevel)

Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter!

Just a note that while this is the second-to-last edition of the weekly newsletter, I will most likely publish the next week’s newsletter on Tuesday rather than Monday — simply because I’ll be travelling halfway around the world next week, which will prevent me from publishing at the normal time corresponding in Pacific Time.

I didn’t have any help with this newsletter (which will probably the best last one I don’t get help on!). If you’d like to help me in the future, give me a shout at @specificlanguage on Discord.

I’m looking for anyone who’s willing to write regularly each month — whether it’s columns, interviews, or journalism, as long as you have something to the table, I’m happy to hear you out!

Thanks, and until next week…

EDIT CIVWIKI