CivWiki Newsletter for December 18, 2023

Good morning and happy Monday from New England!

We’re zoning in on the Christmas season, and I’m not sure if it’s just me, but I’m seeing a surge of newfriends as we end up toward the holidays, with activity starting to ramp up again. I truly hope everyone has a restful and lovely holiday season. Not to mention that next week’s edition falls on Christmas… But I’ll talk about that in a few more sections.

We’ve got a JAM-PACKED newsletter this week; you thought last week was long but we’ve got several different sections happening this week that make this newsletter even longer.

Are we ready to dive in?

Featured

Featured Image

This week’s featured image is a much busier and more festive tree in Pavia’s Town Hall in Pavia. Unlike last year’s tree out in the town hall’s courtyard, they somehow managed to fit an entire 50-block tall Christmas tree inside in the main town hall, where they’ve said it’s more of a Norwegian-style Christmas tree and it’s a bit crooked at the top. Honestly, it was actually kind of tricky trying to frame the shot to get the whole Christmas tree, but it still looks really nice. They’ve been building this like crazy the past few weeks (not to mention my own building) and it’s of course resulted in an amazing tree. Looks amazing, can’t wait to see more!

Featured Article

The Somber War was a global military conflict between Lexington and several economically and militarily powerful nations, loosely defined as the Western Alliance. The war was sometimes regarded as a natural successor to the Titan War during Civcraft 2.0, as many of the belligerents and grudges during the war were passed down from Nox. The conflict started as skirmishes and small conflicts in The Commonwealth and their boroughs in late 2017, however following a large-scale obbybombing in their capital, Westminster, the conflict became global as allies rallied their support. Several notable Commonwealth players were pearled in the End, and fights broke out between The Commonwealth’s ally, Hjaltland, and Lexington.

After a long period of inactivity in early 2018 and an update to the newest version, the Western Alliance destroyed the Lexington Vault during the Fall of Lexington, where nearly all players who were pearled were freed. Although a period of peace lasted throughout the rest of 2018, continued grudges from some of Lexington’s supporters led to the Infinity War.

This week’s featured image is a view of the Lexington Vault siege from Dsclouse.

This Week Last Year

The News

Server Updates

On December 16, CivMC released a Christmas Miracle update (1.25) with a considerable amount of content; their previous update was on October 27. If you don’t care about the technical changes, then continue on!

Additions to the server included the following:

• The long-awaited fishing plugin has been added, with players able to fish for
  • different custom fish that are biome-dependent,
  • decorative heads (à la FactoryMod fossils).
  • Future additions to the plugin will be available soon.
• Global chat and local chat have very intuitive commands, such as /global, /local instead of /g ! (from Walkers)
• A fix that allows players to compact and decompact lored materials (from MrJeremyFisher)
• Block anvil usage by NameLayer group (from Orinnari)
• Make moss spread logic consistent on NameLayer groups (from melncat)
• Makes combat loggers use NPCs and their respective skin (from xFier)
• Add feedback to Citadel’s patch mode (from Orinnari)
• Update the runtime of the server to Java 21 (this requires no technical change from players, but improves server performance)
• Update a ridiculous amount of methods, processes, and internal work

See the full update for more information.

RedDevel additionally announced this year’s Christmas event which, was incredibly restful as CivMC is now the latest game in the 2020s which has added a fishing minigame.

• As the story goes, Santa’s reindeer didn’t quite account for the wind speed so a lot of Santa’s presents are in the ocean and so, presents might show up during your fishing adventure!
• Earyx did a lot of work picking textures for fish heads and decoration skins, and so did a shoutout for him.

The update however did not go smoothly.

• During the update process, SoundTech was notified that a DDOS attempt was mitigated, and so the update was delayed while it was being managed.
• Unfortunately, DDOS issues continued into the weekend disrupting play, with some, either jokingly or seriously, suspecting Gang Shi being behind these attacks.
• Additionally, those on the server may find that some SimpleAdminHack changes, notably One Time Teleport and SafeOreBreak features, were disabled by default and would be restored in a smaller update sometime later.
• An update the following day removed the very out-of-place periodic fishing competitions on the server.
• SoundTech has apologized for the many issues that had been plaguing this update’s launch, and would be working through the ticket backlog but asked for patience while this is being resolved.

SoundTech was eventually forced to do a full rollback of the previous fishing update to stop the constant crashes that happened, as a “hail mary attempt”. He’ll be working throughout this week to find the causes behind these crashes.

However while it was active, the fishing and Christmas update has been perceived very well among players so far with players enjoying the fishing craze. CivMC has been adding features slowly, but each feature added has been perceived well.

The End of a War…

A tropical Christmas tree in Altepetl, following the war, from x1025.

We left off the newsletter’s incredibly long war section with the successful Yoahtl skybridging and other associated pearlings. If you want some context about this next section, please read that first.

Following the sporadic fighting, an attack bunker was cut off from the rest of Gang Shi’s ice road network. This prompted Gang Shi fighters to relocate to Butternut County’s vault, the last remaining active vault they had access to. While doing so, Icenia was disabling some other attack vaults, when an interesting development occurred:

• On December 12, ComradeNick agreed to give ownership groups of the Butternut Vault to Icenian and Yoahtl leadership. He posted information regarding his insiding of the Butternut and Gang Shi vault on December 12.
• In short, he believed that continued actions of revenge was not viable, and that he regretted and disdained civilian bombing actions both during his time as leader of HJE during the Infinity War and as a bystander during the current war.
• As he had an opportunity to end the fighting during this war, he believed the best course of action, was to give groups to end the war quickly to “stop people’s sadness, feelings of betrayal, or worries of betraying someone, or being manipulated.”
• The post was met with support from the Dawn Guard crowd, particularly bgbba, with the reasoning that normal citizens would now have the chance to rehabilitate and play in peace instead of stewing in anger at their coalition for years on end.
• A follow-up post from Toaxbis, a Gang Shi citizen, posted a post-war reflection, saying “I was fighting a war against the people[Icenia] who hurt my friends. The people who perpetuated the cycle of hate…”
  • Her post was also met with a positive response and general regret of the hate cycle that has been perpetuated for the past three wars.

The vault was eventually broken quite soon after, with the Dawn Guard Pact claiming most Butternut and Gang Shi-aligned territories, including Florence, Lambeau, and the Holy See. They intended to declaim all unmilitarized land shortly after.

Chosentwicelol did continue to show up in Icenia, notably on December 11, although following Icenia’s pearling of his associate, Squilliam, he has retreated with no further attacks being made. As of now, the two remaining bounties are for Kibbles, for 64db, and Chosentwice, for 192db.

Final Results

The Nassau town hall among the tall forest trees.

With the vault broken, the Dawn Guard Pact has essentially declared the war to be ended. On December 16 (shortly after the update went “live”), sentencing and land claims were posted.

• Most players are planned to continue to be pearled until January 2, and are set to pay about 16 diamond blocks worth of reps for being present on the Yoahtl skybridge.
• One notable exception is Highroll, who is set to not only pay four times that amount but must write an essay on the Stonewall Riots, as punishment for homophobic behavior.
• Nearly all claims made earlier during the war were released, with Icenia and Yoahtl taking large claims in Butternut and Gang Shi, respectively.
  • One territory to note was Asgard, as it was folded back into the Imperial Federation, following its secession last summer.
  • A small dispute between the Deepslate Corporation and Icenia was also resolved following their claims near Florence. A short note on that later.
• Later on Sunday, XxTBxX3276 also surrendered to Icenia and gave his due of diamond blocks.

Nearly the entire reaction to that post was “holy crap he has to write an essay on the Stonewall riots lmao”, but I think that means the reaction is positive.

However, Gang Shi handed over their ownership groups to Estalia, so currently, the territory is under Estalian ownership, but no changes to the territory have been made besides the ones above.

• On Sunday, Estalia announced they would claim all of their previously existing infrastructure including the vault and Blacklight for “historical sites”. They note any Gang Shi players who wish to continue building in the city contact them.
• This has proven to be a controversial claim among the Dawn Guard Pact crowd. bgbba made a post trying to appeal to Estalia to allow Gang Shi players to return to their lands, as a sign of friendship and genuine connection and rehabilitation following the costly war.
• I should however stress that both sides are only disagreeing on the fate and mercy given to Gang Shi and I don’t expect this to become a war anytime soon. Both sides are aware that any war between the two sides would engulf the entire server (a Cold War, of sorts), and the Dawn Guard would rather drop the debate on this than sustain it for further conflict.

Hopefully, this series of wars between Gang Shi and Icenian allies is finally over. Everyone and their mother probably wants to see this Stonewall essay though, it’s going to be fire or another Coolchacha dud.

The Start of Another?

The voter tree and town hall around Mount Augusta.

Starting another war is a bit of an exaggeration, but on December 16, Arsenian leader SQOpenSpellbook posted an explanation on Reddit following the pearling of SymSquid:

• Doom City had built bunkers across some bridges near Mount Augusta, one of Arsenia’s allies in the BUILD alliance. Additionally, SymSquid, a citizen of the country, expressed extremely inappropriate comments towards BUILD citizens, which I honestly think is just bannable in itself.
• However, a few days later, the Arsenia factories were raided, along with attempts to raid another Arsenian bunker near other ice roads in the country.
• SQOpenSpellbook announced he had pearled SymSquid and demanded reparations from Doom City following the incident, which are not very light.

The comments were either met with confusion along with general disdain for their attempts at “de-escalation” while at the same time demanding reparations.

• ShadySauce’s response clarified that they were away (the post claimed they refused to respond), along with disdain for them conflating an ice road situation that they did not have access to. A further argument is in the comments, so that’s fun if you’d like to see people yell.
• While pearled, SymSquid blocked the Mount Augusta nether portal. Likewise, Doom City expelled SymSquid from the country, revoking their citizenship.
• On Sunday however, SQOpenSpellbook was attacked by three Laconian citizens; although he was not pearled, he closed Arsenia’s borders to any visitors, although rails are not subject to this decree.

This conflict is still pretty new at the time of writing and it seems pretty localized to Alenarith, so I hope this isn’t a war that goes over Christmas.

The Rest of the News

A snowy day along the plains of New Callisto, Imperial Federation, from Torynado.

As if I didn’t have enough to talk about.

• Princess Bow of Winterbourne announced that they are marking JeanLucRocco as pearl on sight after a suspicious login in an extremely verbose post that made it hard for even me to read, so thanks for that.
• ProgrammerDan unclaimed his Maelstrom territory, only requesting that Westernesse builds be preserved.
• Northfort and Baile agreed to split Caerdun, the former Salerno territory in the north following the war.
• ItzHoover announced the Shockton Party in Volterra, advocating for newfriend inclusion, a community hub, and an active presence online.
• Volterra also agreed with several parties to annex a small portion of Butternut land to further their XP production.
• SPQR announced their Saturnalia celebration, a week of festivals in the country. Along with a fishing competition, this somewhat culminates in an event on Friday, December 22, a Dirty Santa game.
• Kallumbia is opening an embassy exchange program to anyone interested in opening diplomatic missions in the territory, with hopeful selling points to bring embassies into their nation.
• Kallumbia also reached an agreement with the Deepslate Corporation in Florence, as well as an additional claim to their west.
• Mount Augusta held another mayor election, with ComradeNick not running. Sakanaotoko won with 11 votes.
• Players of Vinland toured the server last night Christmas carolling in cat costumes.
• Artificial Industries opened a popup store selling fishing rods, along with selling crates, bells and sunlight detectors in the Spark Electronics shop.
• The Monument Group’s flagship Pavia store underwent a renovation to create a bigger space and more shops.
• TophatGamerAlex went around CivMC giving cocaine to people. I hope the FBI doesn’t arrest me for publishing this, this is legally a joke.

Metagame Highlights

The Monument Group’s renovated and expanded shop in Pavia.

• One of the more polarizing things this weekend was that CivMC announced a program of mutual advertisement with other servers.
  • The first one, announced on December 15, was CivExp, a self-described Civilization experiment, a semi-anarchy survival server, advertising a player base that has substantially more players than CivMC. (This is not to be confused with CivEx, which is inactive.)
  • As the server is dormant as they are awaiting Season 3, CivMC saw a slight surge in newfriends over the weekend, although CivExp is much closer to a classical survival server, leaving new players relatively confused as they assumed the server is closer to an EarthMC-like server.
  • I believe that promotion is a good idea, but access to information is still a learning curve for new players and is a crucial aspect to get newfriends integrated on the server.
• CivWiki is still trying to figure out what a good name for the war is, and after numerous complaints on Monday morning (thanks guys), a poll was put up by Yoahtl because people are mad we wait until the end of the war to name it (sarcasm);
  • I don’t like the fact that the Post-Nut Clarity War won, even if it’s somewhat accurate, because I don’t want to write “Post-Nut Clarity War” on the wiki.
  • I think the prevailing option is the “War of the Dawn Guard Pact”, but honestly, this could be the war where we have three different names for it…
• Alexkyry announced he would be quitting, reflecting on his experiences in Gang Shi and saying thanks to others, with a positive spin. He also quite literally said “I have no idea what’s happening”, so good for him!
• Lambat president Kaprediem talked about how much he missed CivMC and how much he wants to come back (he has!)
• PresidentofYes also takes some screenshots of the aftermath of the skybridge in Yoahtl on Day 1 as well as Day 2.
• Speaking of the aftermath, look at how much the minimap is drenched outside Altepetl
• The server being inactive has somehow done wonders for Civ history debate, with TheJmqn posting a survey asking who are the greatest and most villainous players on Civ. Please be warned though, as it does mention out-of-game villainy, which this newsletter, nor any server, condones in any way, shape or form.
• There isn’t much news recently from CivCubed this week, it’s mostly about addressing bugs, showing off cool screenshots, and more.
  • But the discord is still active, and Janet and friends are still doing development, which is pretty promising for the server. As much as I haven’t played that server in recent weeks, I really hope that on full release, it’ll be something worth playing on.

The Fun Stuff

A random house in Pavia… wait a second, that’s my new house that I just built this weekend!

Builds

So obviously we have Pavia’s Christmas tree but Gobblin’s been hard at work with organizing newfriend buildings:

• Of course, I’m going to highlight my house, it’s much bigger than it looks on the inside, it’s literally a tardis
• There’s also a bunch more in Windermere, including several houses including Bronnakus’ and the Imperial Archives
• Gobblin is probably going to curse Solitaire7 for painting his house pink
• The Monument Group’s aforementioned renovation of their flagship location is pretty cool!

It doesn’t help that I’m a citizen of Pavia now, so I can have access to all these incredible views. Anyway…

• I pulled Mount Augusta’s voter tree for this week’s newsletter, but I took a lot of images during my visit last week, including their train station, quaint garden houses, and colorful brownstones.
• I was also forced to go find another picture for this newsletter which made me end up in beautiful Nassau, north of Icenia, the architecture style is great.
• New Callisto even looks amazing even during a snowstorm…
• There’s also a new tea shop in Nara, Teas and Thanks You!
• Not to mention a dock expansion in Nara just in time for the fishing update
• Can’t forget a quaint Christmas tree in Yoahtl
• Plus a large tree in the snow from Torynado

Cool Content

• After quite a few recruitment efforts, IceBoy unveiled the Civball map of the world for 2023! It’s well made, with a whole bunch of different balls and it does feel like a full, lively map. Way to go, everyone!
• TheJmqn gave us a slideshow of the current state of the server, from pre-Gang Shi wars to the end of the current one. Quite a stark difference.
• He also quickly went to work on another claims map for postwar affairs, so here’s another one postwar, showing a lot more unclaimed land on the map.
• VilyanZ posts some nice war propaganda OC
• Ascantt compiles a nice slideshow of the war as we head into Christmastime
• Butter_villager publishes a book cover for Arsenia while pearled
• You know what they say, “the bigger ball gets the Gang Shi loot”, a Civball comic from Eddie
• You know what, AugustusVex, your video is quality enough that this gets put here because of the symbolic value it holds, good job

Memes

So uh, the above picture is when BritishWanderer “accidentally” lost his entire inventory while Vinland was performing their Christmas carol. It’s so over for him.

You wanted this. You’re getting put on a tier list, for example:

• Lmao, I did find this pretty funny because of the CivWiki situation, but it’s such a used meme format that it didn’t make me blow mucus out my nose. (B+ tier)

Alright now that I have my obligatory self-deprecating meme out of the way, and that you have an example of how terrible my actual humor is, let’s sort the tier list…

• Copying memes from TV is lazy and dumb, Hass (F tier)
• Where we droppin’ boys? To the bottom of the tier list! (D- tier)
• Wow, another meme that lazily just claims a contested area, or the world (D- tier)
• If I had a nickel for every Hitler dub meme this week, I’d give Cakeman a (D- tier)
• Wow, here’s the second one that’s even less funny (D- tier)
• I know this is a copy of events but this is just dumb, why does John Wick have to do with anything (D tier)
• Is this… supposed to be funny? I don’t get why we’re slandering Finn today (D tier)
• Guwa + over is not that funny of a meme as you think it is (C- tier)
• Either this is supposed to be funny and surreal or it’s just bad (C- tier)
• I highly doubt the King would even want any of Gang Shi obsidian (C tier)
• Even though I know the context of this, reff, it’s just ok (C+ tier)
• Seems like you “dropped the raccoon” there! Get it? Because there are raccoons? Wow I need to work on my puns (B tier)
• The fact that you dubbed the whole Hitler war room sequence is actually what made it better, not to mention actually funny jokes (B tier)
• This meme made me chuckle out of context, this is totally how Gang Shi works (B tier)
• It is just a bland Tom Scott meme, but I like Tom Scott memes (B+ tier)
• “we didn’t lose we just left…” wait yooo clippy is here! (B+ tier)
• You know what, this is honestly pretty good and I like the funny details at the end of it, not to mention the song (B+ tier)
• Kira, please STOP PINGING @EVERYONE AAAA (A- tier)
• Quality EU4 meme of how long the stupid treaty is (A tier)
• “Let me in, let me iiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnn…” (A+ tier)
• “Updating group to rare good Citadel meme from SPQR”, (A+ tier)
• My only gripe with the slander meme is that I was portrayed as Andrew Tate (A+ tier)
• A clever subversion of the senses meme, great job from mtfuji (S tier)

If you don’t see yourself here, then you weren’t worthy enough to even be tier’d.

Non-Civ Content

• Uh…what is there to talk about this week? I honestly don’t know, I didn’t do much besides…
• It would be fun next year to do an in-server Secret Santa with players, would take a bit of organizing but it’s very possible to be done. I did a Secret Santa with some IRL friends and I loved it.
• I finished Oppenheimer this week. I need to remember to next time mentally prepare myself to watch a Christopher Nolan movie.
• I’ve got a list compiled for my best of 2023, maybe look out for that sometime in a couple weeks?
• Hey, what about the football pick’em? Looks like things are finally starting to spread out with Griff poised to take the win in a few weeks!

Poll of the Week

Last week, we had 57 responses to the primary question: “What playstyle (or kind of player) do you consider yourself to be?”

This is the part where I’m like, “There aren’t that many builders on Civ,” where people “say” they’re builders but fall into many of the other categories, which can sometimes be typical for the “innocent buildfriend”.

As far as the rest of these categories go, it’s pretty expected to see that some of the highest categories are Grinders, Leaders, and PvPers, which are also very high makeups of the Civ genre anyway. But what I find more interesting is the Explorer, Organizer, and Newfriend/Oldfriend categories.

First, it’s interesting that a lot of people self-identified as “Explorer” and “Organizer” since there are very few reaches of the map left unexplored, or few people who are just taking pictures of sights. Similarly, I thought Organizer fell into more administrative positions, like welcoming newfriends, delivery people, factory workers, or random non-military people that continue to keep a nation running. I know I made this poll a week ago, but I’m interested to see what people thought this was…

I expected a lot more people to self-identify as an Oldfriend since this iteration is filled with a lot of players returning or continuing after playing since Civcraft 2.0 or earlier, there’s gotta be more than 11 of you.

Enough Yapping, Give Me A Question!

Alright, fine, I’ll give you one, sheesh. These next set of questions have to do with communication on Civ. And is totally not because of a related outage.

For this question, consider all discords, including nation, alliance, and server discords, meta-Civ discords (like CivWiki, Civballs, or the Maester Alliance), and anything that has to do with Civ and is not directly tied to anything related to outside of Civ.

About the last question, as I’ve started playing the server a little more, I’ve seen a few requests to run ads, either as jokes or as completely serious ventures. I want to see if companies would pay for these, and I’m trying to figure out what would be the best way to set these up again, after the very underwhelming response last time.

Home for the Holidays Cry for Help

The Civball Map of the World for 2023, from IceBoy and way too many others to count.

Thanks to rt, DSbulldogs, and Metropolitan for a riveting Christmas carol while I finished my newsletter this evening. But more seriously, thanks to BritishWanderer, Toaxbis, and Shadno for some administrative help and editing aid this week, along with the Pavia VC for some general support.

Currently in the lead with edits (in terms of quality) is reffelruz’s giant edit of Peter5930’s page, with several honorable mentions being Icenia’s CivMC page, Rijeka, the Monument Group and Monument Bank pages, Arsenia, and Civ101. You’ve still got a few days to edit and rank in the leaderboard!

So, if you might have noticed, the newsletter’s next publication, if it was to go to plan, is Christmas Day. I’m not setting any expectations at the moment, but you’ll probably see the newsletter either later in the day, or on December 26 instead. This week, I’ll try to write as much as possible beforehand, but I cannot publish a newsletter on Christmas Day at the normal time, for very obvious reasons. Take this time to enjoy your Christmas day with family and friends.

If I don’t publish on Christmas Day (although I will try to write as much as possible before hand), merry Christmas and I’ll see you all sometime soon!

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