Cortesia Del Mar (CivClassic 2.0)

Cortesia Del Mar, officially The Republic of Cortesia Del Mar (often shortened to Cortesia or CDM), is a future constitutional republic in the ++ (southeastern) quadrant of the map. Currently run by a "transitionary oligarchy", the nation is founded on "the values of democracy, equality, liberty, and responsibility" , and is actively expanding northwards across its territory from its oldest city of New Sol. Its only land border is with Monterrey to the west, though it is politically close to Caledonia as a result of unique circumstances surrounding its continent. Though the nation is young, it is remarkably culturally concrete, as a result of having a long preexisting history.

Pre-Civclassic History
Cortesian pre-Civclassic history is just under four years long, stretching back to an indeterminate date some time in early 2017. As such, the full Cortesian history is not presented here. A slowly-being-completed document roughly detailing its history (only through September 2020 as of January 2021) can be found here. It is important to note that this historical document itself has historical context, as the majority of it (through May 2020) was written while Cortesia (and, as such, the historian, yodabird19) were establishing themselves on their previous server of MCAtlas, with the main source being a different history (through December 2019) written at and after the end of Cortesia's presence on its previous previous server of StarLegacy (September-December 2019).

In lieu of a thorough history of the Republic, presented below is a short summary of major events relevant to Cortesian culture and politics today:

Foundation (Unknown date, early 2017)

Cortesia Del Mar was founded by President Icecarim and MarioFanSG2 on a basic Towny server called RebirthCraft, on a subserver called Towny Awakened. Other core members such as yodabird19 and Brick_WallGaming appeared in the following months. The nation was a simple, poorly-thought-out republic, with two houses of government: the Cabinet and the Executive Committee, which nominated players to themselves without input from the populace.

First Ascendancy (June 2017 - December 2017)

Cortesia grew and richened on RebirthCraft at a steady rate, but in (northern hemisphere) summer 2017 this rate increased with the recruitment of adept grinders Ragsmel and Zhuge, and shortly thereafter their group of friends. Cortesia ballooned from ~15 members to ~60, becoming the fourth-largest town on the server and helping to form an (largely meaningless - there was no warfare) alliance on the server called the Towny Awakened United Towns (TAUT). Ragsmel and Zhuge especially boosted the town's productivity through pay-to-win donation shop purchases, topping off the First Ascendancy by opening an infinite money shop ("/warp profit") abusing a weakness in the server's economy, decimating it.

The Clique (August 2017 - April 2018)

Ragsmel and Zhuge's clique of friends' flooding of the government - first the Cabinet, and soon after the Executive Committee - granted the foreign group extreme sway over Cortesia's vulnerable republican structure, as they were able to organize outside of Cortesian channels and vote as a unit. The first notable exercise of this power was in the kangaroo court trial and subsequent exile of former clique member TheMadShadowLord over a real-life falling-out. This power would persist, causing similar issues until the end of the first Cortesian Republic, with President Icecarim spending more and more of his time stringing a "web of lies" to mitigate its worst effects.

Independence Day (April 1, 2018)

In February 2018, RebirthCraft was sold by its inactive owner Gold to two failures named Packet and Thugcrew for college money, which led to the server's almost immediate demise. The ensuing First Interim Period (serverless period) lost Cortesia most of its ~60 members, and amplified all tensions within the remaining government. Following a crescendo on March 3 2018 when yodabird19 was unjustly banned (for criticizing a typo) from the Clique's favored server, ArcticWorlds, to no effect on the Clique's desire to move there, IceCarim, yodabird19, Brick_WallGaming, and a few other members plotted and staged a separation from the decaying old Cortesia (renamed "Stanton City" as President IceCarim's final act), executed on April 1, 2018, to the tune of hundreds of @everyone pings. The Executive Committee was renamed to the Secretariat, and yodabird19 was made Vice President.

Fading (March 17, 2018 - September 23, 2018)

The freshly-liberated Cortesia moved to complex Towny server Maestrea, where it accomplished almost nothing, and went inactive. It searched for other servers, trying another called Wolfpack, which collapsed shortly after their discovery of it due to internal struggles among the developers. On September 23, yodabird19 proffered a server that he had been playing independently, StarLegacy, which the Secretariat (by this point the only part of Cortesia with a modicum of activity) ravenously agreed to join.

Exerticus (September 23, 2018 - December 21, 2018)

StarLegacy was a warfare-heavy space server, so Cortesians sheltered with the nation of which yodabird19 had been a member, Exerticus, for approximately three months, exploiting them for Cortesian gain and eventually declaring "amicable" independence, forming a Cortesian nation with settlements on four different StarLegacian planets.

Second Ascendancy (December 21, 2018 - April 29, 2019)

Cortesia neogitated its way into the alliance of which Exerticus was a part, the behemoth Andromedan Republic, run (later discovered, corruptly) by the server's owner, MicleBrick. Its youth on the server was prosperous, with every settlement improving, and more being added, as the nation recruited member after member, some of rather high status. It became the Andromedan Republic's "soft power" (diplomatic) center, complementary to Arimfea (MicleBrick's nation), its main military force. TheMadShadowLord, now named TurquoisesLight, returned and joined yodabird19's underwater settlement of Aquosum. The Second Ascendancy ended when two mass-leavings of new Cortesians hit back-to-back, with some members joining upstart mercantile nation VEGA and others starting a new nation called Orovika, reducing Cortesia back to its core members but largely leaving its diplomatic sway intact.

Playing Discord (March 21, 2019 - September 15, 2019)

As Cortesia became emeshed in StarLegacy's toxic political environment, it found itself head of war efforts, espionage missions, and tense negotiations. Though these skills would help it in the future, in the present they meant increasing disdain for StarLegacy and its overbearing war-happy environment. VEGA, the supposedly mercantile nation which recruited griefers ("pirates") with abandon, engaged in two cosmic wars with the Andromedan Republic, the first of which the AR lost, and the second of which was cut short due to threats from server owner MicleBrick to shut down StarLegacy if brutality continued. Though it would be a month and five days before Cortesia truly felt the effects of this long exposure to the worst of Minecraft, feel them it would, and on September 15th Cortesia cordially removed itself from StarLegacy, with IceCarim's famous departure message describing the experience as "playing Discord".

The Second Interim Period (September 15, 2019 - January 27, 2020)

Unlike the previous interim period, Cortesia was very active and very antsy to find another server on which to play throughout the four-month interregnum that followed departure from its previous server. Searching across Minecraft multiplayer for something it could enjoy, Cortesia found naught but failure for a harmfully long time, at one point even succumbing to a StarLegacy relapse and playing the server for approximately a week again. The Second Interim Period was marked by constant tumult within the Secretariat (again Cortesia's only active part), with strong feelings pervading that Cortesia was a lost cause. On October 13th 2019, yodabird19 remarked privately to IceCarim right after the resolution of an incident of a member attempting to leave the serverless nation, that "CDM is laced with dynamite all directions rn; so far we’ve contained each explosion...". In November, Cortesia discovered MCAtlas, but abandoned it, before returning in January out of what was later identified as desperation.

Atlas (January 27, 2020 - October 5th, 2020)

Cortesia's time on Atlas consisted of so little development that it can be summarized in a single point. The nation was never properly active on the server for more than a week, and though it built a couple of lackluster towns (each providing a small boost to the nation's activity when first created), recruited some members that never stayed, and started a number of community projects (especially a rail project and a history project) that diverted any genuine dedication to the server actually in the nation away from it, Cortesia was constantly struggling on Atlas to find anything to do. yodabird19 was perhaps the only member largely unfazed, but even his accomplishments - enriching the nation through constant grinding, establishing the unstable-and-shortly-doomed Dawn Alliance, and connecting parts of the server with rail lines - amounted to very little when Atlas's cracks began to widen. The server was approximately as old as Cortesia, and its faults - most of which revolved around a poor design philosophy and an incompetent (perhaps malicious) administration - ran just as deep. Though yodabird19 began tacitly server-searching from June 2020 (indicating his realization of Atlas's long-term unviability), it took until September 2020, with former enemy alliance E's declaration of the Consolidation War against the staff-pet Kongeda alliance, for Cortesia to realize how detrimental the server's administration and the server's boringness were to it, and, following its co-leadership of Atlas's failed third attempt at major reformation/revolution, leave it on October 5th.

The Third Interim Period (October 5th, 2020 - January 2nd, 2021)

Before Cortesia could finally make its way to CivClassic, it would first need to parade through Atlas's multitude of related servers, finding each an unsuitable home. Espero and Loka were the most notable, as Cortesia (or at least, one or more Cortesians) was invested in both, but the former was proven uninhabitable due to an incident with staff authoritarianism, and the latter following an extraordinary and lengthy debate between yodabird19 and IceCarim over the two server options at the time (Loka and CivClassic). Finally, after deciding to join Classics on December 21, 2020, Cortesia established itself as a proper nation on January 2nd, 2021.

Civclassic History
Cortesia's location and membership on CivClassic are the result of an extraordinary coincidence, as when Cortesia agreed to move to Classics, it encountered former StarLegacy friend EngineeringBean already settled in the city-state of New Sol. With Bean's permission, Cortesians began to operate out of New Sol from December 21st, 2020, building up the future first Cortesian city and connecting it via rail to the Entranan Transcontinental Express and the nearby town of Barcelona.

Cortesia was founded with a "transitionary oligarchy" and exclusion zones around historic cities on the so-called Entranan Continent on January 2nd, 2021. Caledonia, former stewards of the Entranan vicinity, assented to the claim.