Treaty of Serenity

The Treaty of Serenity was a peace treaty signed on May 13th, 2020 as a result of the Romano-Columbian War between the Roman Empire, Arelat, Meridia and Columbia. The treaty marked a formal ending to the conflict, and saw the territories of Columbia annexed by the Roman Empire and their population driven from the server.

Columbia Joins CivRealms
In early 2020, Columbia was a group and civilization that decided to branch out to CivRealms after having played several other prior iterations. On April 15th, 2020, Columbia officially announced that they had negotiated the transfer of a piece of coastal land from Moloka. Due to Columbia not immediately announcing their claims publicly and the release of two differing claims maps at the same time, there was some confusion regarding an island off the coast, which came to be claimed by a new micro-nation calling itself Christianada, which had been settled in the period between Columbia getting the land from Moloka and Columbia officially announcing their claims. This was quickly resolved by Columbia officially recognizing Christianada's ownership of the island under the realization that they already had more land than tiny Christianada.

Border Disputes & The Partitioning of ICOR
In the 2-3 weeks after Columbia's founding, multiple incidents occurred that raised tensions between Columbia and some of its neighboring civilizations. The first example of a dispute between Columbia and its neighbors was with The Roman Empire. Because of Columbia's relatively poor land in terms of its potential for development of cities, Emperor shadedoom of Columbia had entered negotiations with Emperor Marino94 of TRE in hopes of slightly adjusting the border so that Columbia would have more land to develop for its planned capital city nearby. After having been led to believe a deal was all-but imminent, shadedoom presumptuously bastioned the area of land in question, causing alarm in TRE about their new neighbors. Apparently, Marino94 hadn't even mentioned the ongoing negotiations to most of his peers in the Roman Senate. The situation was immediately resolved, with the bastion being removed within 5 minutes after not even fully maturing since it was placed, however, the incident was immensely frustrating for both TRE and Columbia, one now scared of its Southern neighbor becoming aggressive, and the other feeling strung along for over two weeks.

After the negotiations with TRE fell through, Columbia looked elsewhere in search of better land to develop farms and a capital city on. It found its answer in ICOR, a large nation bordering Columbia to the South which just-so-happened to be in the process of looking for smaller nations to give some of its lands to. At this same time, a new and not-yet-public nation called Meridia had formed out of much of the lands that used to be ICOR. In the following couple days after initial contact, ICOR would peacefully cede most of its unused territories to Columbia, Meridia, and Arelat. This situation was essentially without incident except for the fact that some leaders of Meridia, players who had been part of Columbia or had dealings with Columbia on previous iterations, were growing nervous about having a spooky powerful civilization on their Northern border, especially because during the negotiations with ICOR, Columbia had proposed adjusting the initial draft of its borders with Meridia to conform to geographic boundaries rather than haphazardly crossing through mountains. This would've been mostly in favor of Columbia, and although a totally peaceful request on the part of Columbia, it made Meridia fear Columbian expansionism, so they made a counter-proposal in which most of the land Columbia had asked for stayed Meridian, but a small strip was given to Columbia just to connect their two separate landmasses. In return, Columbia agreed not to claim any of ICOR's former territories South of a nearby river, which would come to mark much of the border.

Greater Columbia
Another incident in the prewar period was when Emperor shadedoom of Columbia posted a map in the ICOR partition channel depicting something called "Greater Columbia". On the map, Columbia was shown claiming over the territories of multiple neighboring nations. shadedoom had posted the image under the impression that the channel being used for negotiations was between friendly neighbors, and believed that the fact that it was framed in a literal meme format would suggest that it was an obvious joke. Meridia and Arelat disagreed, and believed it was a sign of aggression. Many world leaders later criticized the leadership of both Meridia and Arelat for clearly misinterpreting an obvious joke after shadedoom released the entire uncensored text of the channel, proving Columbia had acted in good faith, had been respectful in negotiations, and suggesting that there was a friendly atmosphere in the chat (while this all probably sounds like it has a Columbian bias to it, it's also the truth :glad:).

The First Romano-Columbian War
Main article: Romano-Columbian War

Declaration of war and initial fighting
On May 5th, 2020 Onederful, the leader of Meridia at the time, contacted shadedoom while he was at work and asked him to come online when he got home so he could go tour new progress in Meridia's capital city. shadedoom agreed, thinking it would be a friendly visit to a friendly neighboring state. When he got home from work and logged in to Columbia's city factory bunker, he found that he was surrounded by about 10-15 men in full gear and his bunker completely raided. He was pearled within 4 seconds of logging in. Immediately realizing he had been deceived by his neighbors who had merely been feigning friendship, Emperor shadedoom demanded explanations and began reaching out to contact just about every world leader he had a relationship with, hoping to win some potential allies. Soon after their deceitful sneak attack, the Roman Empire, Meridia and Arelat formally declared war against Columbia via a post to the CivRealms subreddit, citing "The prevention of current and future Columbian aggression" as their reason for their invasion. Using this as an excuse to justify their war, the anti-Columbia coalition raided and griefed the whole of Columbia, stealing everything from their newly-built town bunker, and completely removing the outlying Columbian town of Apoland from the map. The war had begun.

On May 7th, NotAnAlt69 (Incentives) and YourAverageClick (ComradeRick) attempted to dig a tunnel from Incentives' bunker at his farm in Moloka into the Roman Fort in the Roman Empire to scout the area where shadedoom's pearl was being held. While digging the tunnel, they were discovered by Tremerus, and Incentives was pearled, while ComradeRick was killed, but not pearled.

International Reactions
The invasion of Columbia was very controversial at its time, with multiple countries and players publicly denouncing the invasion, citing what they believed to be insufficient grounds for an attack. One of the examples cited by the Roman Empire, Meridia and Arelat, when retroactively justifying their invasion, was the fact that Columbia had recently bought around 200 stacks of obsidian that they found while raiding their town bunker. This was framed to claim that Columbia intended to use this Obsidian, either to make a Vault, or for other military purposes, or to obbybomb their neighbors. This claim disputed by MCSPenguin, who made a post where he argued that there were many legitimate uses for 200 stacks of obsidian, and that that quantity of obsidian was nowhere near the minimum amount required for even the smallest vaults. It later became a meme among those critical of the Roman invasion to jokingly ask people if they had an "Obsidian License".

While things were generally looking grim for the forces of Columbia beyond the apparatuses of discord and the subreddit PR campaigns, they had managed to gain some actual resources and allies in game. Over a dozen people contacted Columbia following the invasion offering support in terms of fighters, resources, and in the case of Icentives, a vault in which Columbia could store the pearls of Romans, Meridians, and Arelatians aquired during the war.

T-Day
On May 10th, Tremerus was pearled while returning from his beet farm. His pearl was moved to Incentives' Vault, which was located on the Wheatistani part of the Eastern Mushroom Island. Later that day, the Roman Empire and Savaguard, who had given their word that they would stay out of the conflict, along with help from Risunsky and Sons, who had previously offered help to Columbia, launched an attack on Incentives' Vault, which was being defended by many Columbians, most on unknown alts, along with some volunteer soldiers from a handful of other countries. One of the claims Savaguard used to justify their involvement and convince their people to attack the vault was that there were Mirians defending the vault, a common scapegoat at the time because of the post-Ez2Crew Invasion atmosphere of the server. No Mirians were ever found defending Columbia at any point, because there were none. It was another of Savaguard's many lies used to justify doing whatever they felt like. The attack resulted in a total victory for the attackers after just a couple hours of siege because most of the Columbian defenders decided Realms pvp was stupid and committed honorable suicide in the field of battle. Tremerus was freed, and shortly thereafter, the Treaty of Serenity was signed. The entire battle was filmed and uploaded to youtube by Saren, and can be watched here.

= Treaty = On May 13th, it was officially announced that the Treaty of Serenity had been signed. The full treaty can be read here.

Contents
The Treaty of Serenity saw the lands of Columbia being completely annexed by the Roman Empire, with Columbia pledging not to take any future military action against the Roman Empire. The treaty also stated that after a week, all pearled players, except for Incentives, would be released. Although the members of the anti-Columbia coalition, including Savaguard, The Roman Empire, Meridia, Arelat, and HiImPosey of R&S stated that their war was not an attempt to drive Columbians from the server, that is what happened, with almost the entirety of Columbia moving back to CivClassic or becoming much, much less active on CivRealms.