Custom CivRealms Physics

CivRealms employs several plugins to modify serverside physics, used to increase both difficulty and convenience. These changes are critical for new players to be aware of, as many of them create new dangers which can easily hurt or kill them, and will heavily influence infrastructure construction.

Tree Falling
Cutting trees down can be substantially more difficult in CivRealms than vanilla Minecraft. When a log block is broken, there is a high probability that others any distance above a small radius around it will fall to the ground. More specifically, trees will fall as you'd often expect them to in real life: the plugin uses code to realistically choose which blocks will fall, finding branches and other components of the tree as to not leave random logs in the air. Logs can also occasionally move a few blocks on the x/z axis before falling, making logging very unpredictable. Players hit by these blocks will take some damage and receive the nausea effect. The higher the log falls from, the more damage the player will receive.

Mining/Dirt and Cobblestone Falling
In CivRealms, cobblestone now acts like gravel: gravity applies to it. Placing cobblestone above air will cause it to fall until it reaches a solid block. When a stone block is mined, it will (eventually, see table below) turn into cobblestone, which won't fall out of the air and can be broken much faster. This makes mining especially difficult, alongside another change: mining ores and turning stone into cobble can cause some stone blocks around them to turn into cobblestone, which will fall if above air when transformed. Therefore, much caution must be taken when mining as to not standing under blocks that could be turned into cobblestone.

Mechanics for cobblestone transformation vary between pickaxes. See the table below:

Additionally, there is a small chance of a cave in occurring when using a non-mithril pickaxe, where mining one stone will cause other stone in a large cylindrical radius around it to all be turned into cobblestone. This can easily result in death.

Dirt is now also influenced by the effects of gravity, and will likewise fall if placed above air.

Fall damage
Fall damage is amplified on CivRealms - even on horses, falling from even small hills could be fatal. See the environmental injuries section below.

Environmental injuries
Several types of environmental damages are amplified on the server.


 * Fall damage: Multiplied 2x
 * Suffocation damage: Multipled 1.5x
 * Burning damage in lava: Multiplied 3x
 * Burning outside lava: Multipled 2x
 * Drowning: Multiplied 3x

Note that punching fires out will set you on fire, so you may want to avoid this.

Pillaring and Bridging
When you are not inside a bastion field owned by one of your Namelayer groups, several building restrictions will be present. Simply put, if you are not standing on a solid block (anything that isn't water, lava or air), you will not be able to place any other blocks. You also can't build while standing on the edge of blocks - more specifically, if your center of mass is over the edge of the block, you cannot place anything; so horizontal bridges are much more difficult to construct outside of bastion fields as well. Originally, these limitations were not removed even inside your own bastion fields, so birch fences were given the functionality of scaffolds to alleviate this and are climbable. This isn't particularly useful now, but still works.

Skybridging
When using skybridges (a bridge built in the air until the edge of an enemy bastion field, to break it more easily without having to deal with combat), one must figure out a way to place blocks within the other bastion field to damage it. Traditionally, one such method was "placing behind you": right clicking the side of a small-hitbox block on top of a regular-hitbox one at such an angle that the resulting block is placed slightly "behind" and to the side of yourself, while you are standing close enough to the center of the full-hitbox block as to not be hanging over it. This will not damage bastions in CivRealms: if the block you are standing on is within your bastion field and the block to be created is in another, bastions will not be damaged. Outside of bastion fields, blocks cannot be placed this way at all.

Another, much simpler technique, is to simply stand on the edge of a block on the edge your bastion field (like the second image below) and place a block on its side, which would damage the other bastion field. In CivRealms, normal blocks will not accomplish this, but end portal frames (made in bastion factories) will damage bastion fields this way. As such, end portal frames are essentially the only way to break bastions on skybridges.

Minecart Physics
Minecart speed by default is 8m/s on powered rails. Going diagonally, minecart speed is reduced by (√2)(original speed).

Ice Highways
Iceboat highways are disabled. Boats can no longer be placed on ice and will pop if passing over it. However, 2 blocks high corridor with ice on the ground can still be done and allow to go faster.

High speed rails
High speed rails are a more reasonable replacement for ice boats. On placement, minecarts start in low/normal speed mode. When a minecart crosses an unpowered activator rail, "high speed mode" will be toggled on or off. High speed mode allows minecarts to accelerate to up to 12m/s when going straight, and 11.3137m/s diagonally. Speed on inclines is unchanged from normal mode (8m/s). Note that you will be ejected if a minecart passes over a perfect 90 degree turn in high speed mode, so you will likely want to change to normal speed mode via another activator rail before this or make turns less jagged.

Redstone Mechanics
Mostly due to performance, there are several important modifications to redstone-related blocks.

Chunk limits
The number of some performance intensive blocks which can be placed in a chunk has been limited. These limitations are:

Pistons

 * Pistons do not function within bastion fields.

Hoppers

 * Hoppers only tick every 4 seconds
 * Hoppers can only pull one item per tick, rather than 8

Miscellaneous

 * Mixing lava and water now make stone, not cobblestone; if lava flows into water from above, nothing is created.
 * Several mechanics changes are present in the Thomas Archipelago, due to humidity there apparently.
 * Pistons can no longer push slime blocks (this also applies in the New World)
 * Sponges do not function in ocean biomes - they will not absorb water.
 * Bastions will not function when placed too far out in the ocean biome.
 * Bastions cannot be placed if a corner of their fields will reside on a land biome.
 * In the New World, bastions cannot be placed in deep ocean.
 * You can't build at all in the ocean shard.
 * Pistons will pop when placed within 3 blocks below the Aqua Nether ceiling, and within 2 blocks above bedrock.
 * Beacons can not generate the Haste buff in the New World and the Aqua Nether.
 * Boats can fall down air and waterfalls.

Thanks to 1Drop for some extra information on New World/Thomas Archipelago stuff