💾 Archived View for quasivoid.net › gemlog › 2021-05-01-civcraft.gmi captured on 2021-12-05 at 23:47:19. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2021-12-03)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Last night I posted that I was thinking about starting a Minetest server where we LARP as city planners, build trains, intentionally blow up the nuclear power plant and hold council meetings about how we're going to deal with the fallout. I reminded myself of the existence of the Civcraft genre of Minecraft servers.
Civcraft is a server genre for people who want war and politics in their childrens game. As far as external administration goes, the rules are effectively don't harm the integrity of the server itself. Otherwise, it is built up from custom mechanics that give organizations of players (typically nations) tangible power in proportion to the size of their organization.
It's easiest to explain how Civcraft works by explaining its included mods, and then describing the behaviour which they give rise to. This isn't a comprehensive overview of all the mechanics a Civcraft server adds, only the core which define the archetypal Civcraft experience. These core mods are Citadel and Exile Pearl. There are some other important mods which are deeply intertwined with these, but they can be explained in terms of the mods they are intertwined with.
Citadel is the core protection mod of Civcraft. Essentially, instead of pemanently making regions invincible, you reinforce individual blocks such that they are much more difficult to break. This means griefing or infiltrating protective structures require a sustained, sometimes multi-day long attack.
Exile Pearl allows players to imprison (in effect, ban) other players. "Pearling" a player alerts all other players, and the location of the physical item used to imprison them is available to all. Keeping a player imprisoned requires continuous resource use, as well. If you act maliciously towards a nation, you risk being hunted and imprisoned. But if you are unfairly imprisoned, you can expect that others may hunt down your pearl to free you.
These two mechanics give rise to almost all of the dynamics that make Civcraft, Civcraft. Players build beautiful cities, or massive vaults which take years of player time to complete. Players engage in conflict, forming unions or going to war, building infrastructure or running the Olympics. It's partly nationstates roleplay, part simulator.
It's important to note that none of the mechanics imply the existence of nations, or actually enforce any particular behaviour at all. The mechanics are very focused, but they do encourage a particular mode of play. It makes for a very dynamic and engaging experience.
The server known as Civcraft does not exist anymore. After only a month into its' third iteration, it closed for good. Now, the only major successor is Civclassic, which many oldfriends from the Civcraft days participate in.
The scale and detail of the projects in Civclassic is incredible, and makes for a great walking simulator. Even if you don't have the time to dedicate (and really, you do need a lot of time to dedicate), exploring can be a lot of fun. Today I showed one of my friends around, after not having played on the server for over a year, and all the cities I remembered were still there, only larger.
Starting with the nation of Gensokyo, we visited its capitol Taozi, a more traditional city called Roe Island, and Tvtopia which was full of touhou pixel art. Gensokyo is extraordinarily expansive, with incredible skyscrapers and bridges of Taozi, or the botanical gardens of Roe Island. You can spend an hour exploring this nation, and get lost in its many streets.
Nyasaland was a cute stop on the way to Pripyat, which had a cute cottagecore aesthetic jutting out into the sea. And Pripyat was super cool. Very brutalist, with lots of humour sprinkled in, and next to it an accurate reconstruction of Chernobyl.
A lot of nations in Civcraft have a rich history, which is almost comedic considering they are built on a series of political conflicts in Minecraft. Way back when I was active in Civcraft servers I was associated with the Holy Jaded Empire, back when it was still the United Socialist Republic in the Civcraft days. Apparently, it has since been destroyed in an outside invasion.
Civclassic Wiki - Holy Jaded Empire
Gensokyo is another oldfriend nation, known for its' beautiful cities and being populated by weeaboos. There is a complete tome of history which predates my activity on their wiki page. They are one of the more welcoming nations to new players on the server.
Both of the wiki pages I linked here include screenshots of the nations. Check them out. They're wicked cool.
Same intersection. Different guy. Exact same behaviour. Red light because there are pedestrians on the crosswalk. Some dude thinks he is clever by making two right hand turns, in reality just running a red while swerving over a crosswalk in the wrong lane. I wrote about the first time I saw this happen, standing in the same spot, waiting for the same light, in my first log entry, Falling Over. These people aren't checking for any pedestrians, the reason the lights red in the first place. Some day someone who lives in my neighborhood, maybe even me, is going to die at that intersection because of some idiot swerving over the crosswalk to get somewhere faster thinking they outsmarted the signals.
I've seen a similar thing happen a couple times at another intersection on this road. I use the crosswalk. Some guy doesn't want to wait at the red, so he waits in the right hand turn lane. Only reason he didn't go for it was because I was extra visible, as in, right in front of him. So he did actually wait until the light turned green, but still went through on a right hand only lane. He would've ran the red, but cleverly, had I not been visible. What is it with cagers believing that it's not running a red if you do it from the wrong lane?
One of my net pals asked me what I think about e-bikes. I think they're cool. When I think about cycling as a sport, I have an initial negative recoil, but as a mode of transportation I think they will be extremely important in saving our cities.
There are a lot of people who are either not fit enough for an unpowered bicycle, or have no choice but to cover unreasonably (to someone who isn't into cycling as a sport) long distances in order to get anywhere useful. My minimum round trip if I just want to hang out with friends or eat a sandwich is twenty five miles. I love coming home and crashing out on the couch after feeling the burn, but for a lot of people that's an unreasonable ask. Similarly, I've seen grannies riding along a fifteen mile stretch on e-road bikes, a trip I doubt their joints would be able to handle otherwise. E-bikes are awesome, just not for me.