A brief account of significant events that have helped form CivClassic

''This page is currently being reformatted into a Civcraft 2.0 history page. Excuse the mess.''

A history of (the latter half of) Civcraft 2.0 concentrates on a focus on Papa Pound (who is referred to by IBGod - his main at the time), Sintralin and Lysika_Lantariel. These three were largely in the middle of almost everything for that time period. Admittedly some important parts of that time period are not covered here, or only briefly touched upon – e.g. the rise of Mount Augusta under Prof Tanstaafl. However, things like America, Titan, Libertas, Mir-Chan and the Nox War are. The formatting may be a bit off - feel free to neaten it up. Most of this is a first-hand account compiled by Lysika_Lanteriel, then translated into 3rd person - if something has been missed please add to it.

There is less mention of Civcraft 3.0 or Devoted 3.0. The former lasted a very short while but a few notable groups formed or began to form which are noted in the appropriate section.

As for Devoted 3.0, it massively added to the playerbase and there were a great many fairly small events (wars). I've decided to add some of these events as they did have a very meaningful impact on Civclassics - either due to much of the playerbase joining during this period or even nations like Mir (the second iteration) forming due to said events. Finally it should be added that whilst Devoted wasn't the best civ server it was an excellent pvp-civ-lite server, which combined with the relatively new and inexperienced playerbase led to many David&Goliath/Hero moments. As an additional disclaimer - I was absent for all of Devoted prior to the first world war - I think a lot of newfriend nations lived and died during this period, perhaps someone else can talk about them, assuming they had a knock on effect impacting Civclassics.

Background
During these time periods a fairly well-liked World Police lost all good graces – their reputation was tarnished probably forever largely due to their inability to subreddit pvp. It’s hard to imagine such a fall of grace repeating itself given the current level of discourse on the subreddit “Didn’t you quit?”. In those times a few Reddit posts were all it took to become a pariah. Wars began on the subreddit as an extension of affairs on the server, losers would find themselves at -100 downvotes and the significantly larger non-aligned audience would be persuaded on here. The effect on morale caused individuals to do stupid things, like forming Eden or disassociating entirely. Others went full retard and memed their way through it all (to disastrous external PR effect). One of the reasons Lexington was unable to enjoy the golden age Nox experienced was because of a weaker subreddit – and fewer people to be turned there, depriving the group of Sintralin’s main strength.

Subreddit pvp was mostly downvoting and nonchalant replies like nowadays, except then it was on a much larger scale with larger groups coordinating massive brigades or bots.

It is also worth mentioning Clones' vault (clone2204) as something like this could never exist today. it was a privately owned vault that almost every petty criminal on the map was put into. Nations could be sure that Clone would never release the criminal. Unfortunately, this made him a natural target for the coming backlash against the world police. During the Libertas and early Nox era, it became a popular opinion that everyone deserved redemption – through diamond reparations. This put Clone at direct odds with them and he became a wanted criminal himself – for unlawfully holding the pearls of criminals.

Another interesting change was that sovereignty stopped being a meme and became something individuals and to an extent, nations had to respect – largely thanks to Nox and Mt. Augusta. This change made a lot of sense for the larger nations that could defend themselves but the smaller nations with no pvp’ers were far worse off. Such a rise was of course matched by a decline in the world police. Nowadays instead of world police abusing their power, we have nations doing it instead. The more cowardly nations send alt raiders, others simply invade thinking they’ll be able to get away with attacking a weaker group. In the world police days Yoahtl’s attack on Laconia would have been destroyed in a subreddit post or two followed by a world police response. Similarly, the alt raiders near Vitelia would have been stopped after a raid or two – world police alts would be logged in the area, local national exclusion zones and pearling rights would have been ignored. It’s an interesting trade-off – the weaker nations generally seem to be much worse off.

Finally, it can be said that many of the powerful groups today formed around this time – or their leadership can be traced back to this period. Places like Mir, Hjaltland (a combination of the old town + much the 2.0 world police), Hallow (Hantzu/Channers), Yoahtl (Yoahtl joined during the America HCF invasion and Quahtl_Mia immediately pm’d Lysika asking to join) and Impasse (Orion/Senntisten). HJE is something of an exception with ComradeNick.

The America HCF Invasion
To set the stage the world was in a time of relative peace. The Recharge war had ended a few months ago with Recharge being completely ruined. Their town of River’s End was turned into a massive swimming pool and the vast majority of their core player base were pearled or banned for “e-rape”.

The world police were strong and more importantly aligned at this time. The city of Orion dominated with Carson close behind (Gordon_Freeman_Q was currently banned for world downloading a vault) but there were tens of towns around the world connected by the CIC rail network, each having one or two able pvpers who would contribute to keeping the peace elsewhere. The concept of sovereignty was generally ignored.

The World Police had free reign and for the most part, weren’t unwelcome in most towns – although there were some no go zones such as Grundeswald and to an extent Chanada. It should be pointed out that neither of these two nations had a single pvp’er to their name at this point in time – but they were isolated and kept to themselves, every now and again someone would go and screw with them but in general they were separate.

Bastions had just been added but no one really knew how to use them correctly. Despite this, they were still fairly deadly.

The world looked something like this:



Three Nobodies and the Formation of Eagle Crew
This will focus on three people initially. The first was someone called IBGod (Papa_Pound). He was an HCF player who had moved to Civcraft and was loosely aligned with world police types but would not have been considered world police. Notably, he led a group of randoms and world police on an unsuccessful attack on Recharge’s town during their invasion. He was also a very small time YouTuber and had many friends in the HCF community. IBGod had just stolen a beacon or seven from Nexus, a town close to the center of the map (founded by Dill_Weasel, although he was banned at this point in time). Soon after the theft was made public IBGod was lured into a pot bunker, removed from the groups and attacked by Jakebob and Jakemeister, two members of the world police. Somehow he managed to escape the bunker and his attackers.

In these times the world police were literally everywhere and went and did almost whatever they wanted. Towns were either affiliated with the world police – ie. their members were part of the WP, or in general, the towns had no pvp’ers and they just accepted the world police presence. In some cases, this was resented but in general, it was accepted and usually welcome given the propensity for random raider groups to show up. Most players were "prot pinatas". Even many world police were prot pinatas and there were no real PVP gods at this time (on the server). Days after the attack IBGod wound up in the Corum region, notable for the town of Iria and the much larger and more impressive city Hexagon (Fellowship). Sufficiently far away from Orion and Carson he was able to continue playing in relative peace. He planned to set up a town on an island to the north of Iria with Mt. Flushmore (Justiara/Batavis) and Arkangel, along with his friend Eldoorn. His friend Sintralin also lived in the area. She was a local, fairly small-time politician in the town of Fellowship who had just come back from a brief ‘quitting’ period. At this time it was clear she was fairly popular – her house in the Hexagon was completely covered in signs declaring how they would miss her and to come back soon.

Not long after IBGod arrived in the region he saw a player named Talydaria login – he recognized him a member of the Kitties from miner apocalypse. He joined the Kitty mumble and began chatting to Talydaria and several others. It turned out that they had just decided to join civcraft – having given up on miner apocalypse once and for all (the server was dead). The full list of people he met was as follows: Lysika_Lantariel, Talydaria, SonicDodger and Marfinator. They briefly discussed their intentions on the server – build a town, become known for being a strong PVP force, build awesome things etc – and jokingly free their old friend Jarl_Heisenberg from the Orion vault. IBGod then asked if they’d like to go raiding with him.

After a week of internal discussion, the Minerap players decided they would help IBGod raid. However, when the day came the only person around was Lysika who got cold feet and decided not to do it. The next day IBGod invited them again – and this time they went. Typically Lysika and IBGod would raid Fellowship in the US morning, abusing their timezone difference. Their raids were very successful due to this – and completely unopposed. However, pvp’ers want pvp – so later that day the entire group of them went to Fellowship in the evening and stood at the top, waiting for defenders to come and attack them. Notably, Mokuno (of Hexcorp) was the first to venture to the top – where Lysika kb2’d him off the edge, falling to his death. The next casualty was Sintralin – who came and memed around in gold armour (she was talking to them via pm at the time). Finally, a fairly large group of defenders arrived and after a brief fight, the raiders were sent running. Notably, IBGod was log boxed – and later was asked to guard the log box of his raiding alt on his main. There was an upload of him escaping this fight by pearling into a hillside and digging into it – none of the four people chasing him had a pickaxe. This goes to show that you need to always bring a pickaxe :)

There aren’t any recordings of the entire fight, but a video was taken a few months before which gives a good idea of how dangerous fighting in Fellowship was. It was also exceedingly computer-intensive.

Now a brief note on the third person, Sintralin. As mentioned before, Sintralin was a fairly popular politician in Fellowship, although distrusted by the surrounding regions, especially Iria who as a point of casual conversation told Lysika how power-hungry and obsessive she was on his first day on the server. But importantly, she was friends with IBGod. When the Eagle Crew raiding began she had a brief part in helping them – sometimes passing on world police movements and in one case telling Lysika that Jumpysnake’s helm was about to break. The biggest thing she did, albeit without realizing, was releasing an alt of Marfinator from the Fellowship vault. This caused some upset when it turned out IBGod had deceived her. It needs to be stressed she had a very minor role in these first months.

Over the next week, these raids continued – the subsequent fights went much better for Eagle Crew (as they were now known). Winning fights when outnumbered 2 to 1 they began to make a name for themselves. Their raiding credentials were also bolstered when they raided Shopside in the Commonwealth one day, and again on the next.

Things really looked good for Eagle Crew after a raid on Etherium, owned by Darkjesusmn (who still plays today). World police movements were reported back to the raiders by Sintralin and Eldoorn – apparently they were about to be intercepted by 9 of them. Eagle Crew fled a short distance south to some beaches and a ruined castle. Here they chose to fight. In the ensuing battle Riptide and TealNerd (the future owner of Civcraft and earlier head of Haven) were killed. In fact Teal was no potted at the start of fight by Lysika.

Formation of America
After a couple of weeks of raiding Eagle Crew lost a fight just east of Iria to a great many world police. Marfinator was pearled by Jakemeister123 (who, amusingly, later joined the America Invasion). The next day IBGod and Lysika sailed west. Subreddit posts were made warning of their movements and speculating on their intent. Then a newfriend, TheHobbyist posted the existence of new HCF pvpers in Carbon.

That day, more old HCF names began logging into the server. Names not seen since the Recharge days were spotted on snitches, XVSlol, Apogon, Tristram – all names that heralded the signs of much worse to come. These were the last remaining members of Recharge not banned and importantly they had moderator rights to all of the old Recharge infrastructure – notably two vaults. The purpose of the HCF movements must have become clear - they were giving the old River’s End and Aran vaults to Eagle Crew. This was a fundamental change. It meant that Eagle Crew, a bunch of mere raiders, was over. In its place a new group formed – an HCF invasion, later named America. Funded by the Recharge vault diamonds they were able to construct their own vault. Suddenly fighting them was no longer a safe bit of pvp – the risk of being vaulted was now very real.

There was a period of quiet. This was essentially IBGod and Lysika sailing around the world looking for a place to build their vault. The cardinal world border spots were taken so they wanted the straight diagonal border. At first, they went to -10.6, -10.6 and dug a significant part of the vault hole with the help of Vitacoco (on itankage). However, the landowner, FK_54 took umbrage to the HCF settling there and called in the world police who waited for everyone to log off before block griefing the vault hole (with coloured wool meant for an American flag…). In fact, after Tealnerd griefed the vault hole, he made a post charging the grief against the HCF. The important thing to note is the way he dictates the law despite not having anything to do with the land prior to griefing it – the old world police advantage on display.

The next day IBGoD and Lysika travelled to the exact opposite end of the world, +10.6k, +10.6k with three accounts each (they were all moved at once via rails or alt tabbing with boat momentum). At this new site they began building a new vault. The new vault should be noted as it was unique. It was a sky vault – the first of its kind, designed by Channer Shadyguy (and maybe Celoxia helped too - at least he was on the build server a lot). It was at this point that the America invasion picked up a lot of core civcrafters. Every day IBGod would announce some random civcrafter asking to ‘buy in’ or join America. Notable players included Stratmat, Cheshirelulcat, Jakemeister and EnragedAlmond. Others like Mt. Flushmore (Justitaria, or Batavis) dug supply rails all the way to the vault. A real sense of community and comradery began to develop – even Celoxia, who was still pearled at this time had a good time hanging out with them - and was fairly decent.

A slight detour from the main story - some Irians Jumpysnake, Tangentialthreat and a few others along with the Hjaltland leader BlueSylvaer travelled to the HCF vault to their own attempt at pearling IBGod. The hit snitches on ths surface of the vault hole baiting IBGod and Killaconcarne into chasing them. They had prepared a bastion trap for IBGod. The trap was incredibly primitive but it worked to an extent - both IBGod and Killaconcarne fell into it. Unfortunately for them IBGod was able to escape by having Killaconcarne knock him out of it with successive hits. Killconcarne was however, pearled.

So what was the HCF goal? Well, fortunately, this is well documented – IBGod had been joking to Clone that he was going to break his vault for some time. It held Celoxia who had promised IBGod 2000 diamonds to be released. The voices in the following video are IBGoD and Celoxia joking about breaking the vault “tomorrow”. Other players that can be heard are MCFTW – a member of the world police, famous for later winning civcraft (he didn’t).

A slight aside from the timeline, this occurred in the weeks of Eagle Crew: The Vale vault was mysteriously broken by IBGod, solo without anyone noticing. One of the pearls inside it was the third pearl of Celoxia - due to a bug with the alt ban system he was able to run around on a third account despite having two alts pearled. This was of course part of IBGod's plan to free Celoxia. Less known was that the Vale leaders had forgiven IBGod for stealing the beacons from him and in a mutual moment of 'Fuck the world police' had opened up their vault and released the pearls for IBGod.

Clone's Vault Break
Planning was not a strength of IBGod. The decision to break Clone’s vault was made around six hours before the break occurred. Sure enough – six hours and some sleep later the HCF began logging in. They packed an inventory of potion/bunker materials and set off on the 20k journey. Their movements were of course well documented:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/2jlhxh/lysika_lantariel_randerson2011_dest_g1g2g3g4g5/

The vault break lasted all day. It went well initially. Clone’s vault had innovative new bastion rings. Two in fact – one of which was a lava ring. The outer ring had webs. The HCF constructed a really really small bunker perhaps 10 blocks from the outer ring wall and got to work. A small path to the centre of the vault was made instantly due to a bastion bug (they broke instantly) and the break began. However, not long after it began the world police arrived to stop them.

Fights in the ring broke out and many HCF, including IBGod (on the account g1g2g3g4), were pearled – bastioned web rings were deadly even back then. However, it was not as one sided as it should have been – of the WP attackers only Riptide had bastion access, which meant that the rings were just as deadly to most of the WP. Rallying behind Dest_ the tides turned and several WP were pearled in the rings. IBGod came back on an alt and the vault break continued. In fact the arrival of the world police and subsequent fight was recorded by world police member Supposed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAsrgnnw4G4

There was a more complete and far more dramatic recording of the entire fight by Riptide but he’s taken his channel down.

The HCF were successful in breaking the vault, some of the key highlights were as follows:

- Cheshirelolcat fell asleep breaking the vault and had to be pearled by Lysika until he woke up

- The vault break path was the slowest possible - directly in from the cardinal south side.

- The HCF bunker was less than 8 square metres excluding the walls. - The were five skirmishes on the surface around the vault after the initial ring fight. They were on the surface as no one could add defenders to the bastions (because Clone didn’t trust anyone with mod rank – back then a mod on a group could do almost anything). - At the start of the first skirmish MCFTW (WP) pearled into the vault rings and was instantly pearled by almost the entire attacking force who pearled after him. - After the third skirmish the HCF ran out of pot materials. A tunnel was dug and they were secretly resupplied by Mt Flushmore (Justiara). - DukeStonezy had a driving lesson mid-way through the break but returned to save the day when the big fights started. - The HCF left with a few losses but a great many important WP pearls. - Amusingly Clone, the vault owner logged in next to the HCF pot bunker on a naked alt, getting pearled instantly. - Rekon, one of the big pvp’ers at the time, was cleaned up after the vault fight whilst trying to pvp drunk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JyIMvgmPoQ

There used to be many recordings of the much larger surface fights, but these are the last remaining:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKdAa5QXefQ&t=0s&list=PLOcJuSE-pWKAV4ShJiVfDkv793tflsAsA&index=31

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2ZEILPsW-Q&index=64&list=PLOcJuSE-pWKAV4ShJiVfDkv793tflsAsA&t=0s

https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/2jn3ee/well_rip_clones_vault/

The Orion Vault Break
A week passed and then the HCF attacked the Orion vault where IBGod and (remember!) Jarl was being held. The HCF side included three members of the lads this time – NJPalms, Shadowjay and Turboshock(Cactus?). This is noted as these particular members of the LADS were unusually shitty – and ended up causing a split in the group. A history of the LADS should be written at some point - but essentially they were a world police like group but some of their members went off track - namely Shadowjay. The other members of the LADS covered for him and stopped others pursuing him. The majority of the LADS quit due to the Recharge war and the way the admins handled the Recharge cheating.

Amusingly the entire attack on Orion's vault was leaked in mumble when Seldomshock, who used the name Shock was mistaken for Turboshock and pulled into the private channel - where he promptly overheard the HCF plans. He was eventually questioned and then kicked. Despite knowing the attack was coming little extra was done by Orion to prepare for the attack.

The Orion vault break was very slow. Orion’s vault was on a vanilla chunk – meaning the bedrock was not flat and had to be navigated to locate the pearl chest. IBGod, just like at Clone’s vault, picked an incredibly poor path into the vault – this pure incompetence is a decent argument against accusations of world downloading. The path went forwards, up over the bedrock and then back down again – in a straight line. This will mean nothing to most of you but elite 3-d vault breakers may be giggling. It should also be mentioned that almost two hours were spent trying to organise the HCF into breaking the bastions but they simply did not have the patience to place the blocks - or perhaps the bastions were broken.

Fortunately for the HCF the Orion vault fight was much easier than Clone’s vault fight. The fights took place entirely on the surface where there were no deadly rings. (An amusing fact of vault fights at the time was that defence always took place away from the actual vault, removing the defender advantage. On the day of the fights the attackers would arrive early and build a bunker on site - meaning the defenders were in fact attacking their own vault for all intents and purposes). In fact the Orion vault had no rings – it was a water vault with a roof, a misguided gimmick that vaults had for a period of time where they were filled up with water… The idea being that the attackers would have to break bastions in order to drain the vault. The only traps were small webbed holes on the surface, easily disabled or avoided. The initial tussle was laggy but a few early pearls snowballed the HCF to victory. Notably the first person to be pearled was Eldoorn (WP) during a large lag spike – allegedly due to Mt Flushmore (Justiara) turning on the Vale Sugar Cane farm (which could drop server tps to 4).

This video is from Badash’s perspective (WP):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwxsm_a_5xY&t=0s&list=PLOcJuSE-pWKAV4ShJiVfDkv793tflsAsA&index=32

This is another WP perspective:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik-lrBG50bg

There was a video from the HCF perspective made by Oculism but it looks like he’s deleted his channel.

After two skirmishes the WP stopped trying to defend the vault. Many of them had been pearled, notably Malen and Eldoorn. The HCF spilled out of the vault area and marched on Orion, around 1k to the north. The entire city was raided and notoriously flooded by Duke Stonzey, leading to the following apology. It should be noted that Sintralin was writing all of America’s PR posts on the Eagle Girl reddit account.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/2kbvl0/an_official_apology_by_the_state_of_america_for/ This video is from GTAIV’s perspective and catches the HCF entering Orion’s main square. The HCF account at the end, MadeonFinale is Duke Stonzey (in this instance anyway). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir_azfdY4n4

Break Up
After several hours of looting in Orion the attack spilled even further out. The Lads who had helped break the vault, along with newly freed Jarl Heisenberg went on to raid The Commonwealth in the south. The world police were essentially non-existent for this brief period in time – they were either pearled or hiding, logged out.

Unfortunately it was to come to an end. The Lads had expressed their main goal was to break the server – to ruin it or get banned in the process. In brief, IBGod agreed with their aims whilst others in America did not – namely Lysika, EnragedAlmond and the other civcrafters within the HCF group. They wanted to build a town - a goal that was incompatible with a destroyed server. Backed by Strattmat and Celoxia, Lysika and Almond removed the America vault overnight and trapped all the minecart teleporters so that when IBGod returned he could be pearled easily. When IBGod returned the next day there was a single floating chest surrounded by cobble, containing all the WP pearls. He did die taking a trapped minecart teleporter but in the end no attempt was made to pearl him. There was a brief reconciliatory period where IBGod admitted the Lads were in the wrong and that they were setting up a new vault near 0,0 – at an old vanilla chunk location.

The pearls were moved there later that day by Lysika, Duke and Cheshire. Unfortunately the world police had snitched the secret rail dug weeks ago by Mt. Flushmore and were aware of the movements - it should be be said that this was known. People had been attacked by the world police when taking this line in the past. The World Police tracked the players holding the pearls which led to a disastrous hunt culminating in the pearls being dropped so that the HCF could safely logout and avoid interception. It seemed like the HCF invasion was over and IBGod was left penniless – although his freedom was intact. [Editor’s note: This was done deliberately to end the invasion]

Crush the Collaborators: Pericorp and Vale
Collaborators are native civcrafters who support HCF invasions. In 2.0 collaborators were considered scum. This was particularly notable in the Recharge invasion where the entire town of Vale, one of the largest xp producing towns, sold and in many cases freely gave xp and prot to Recharge. Indeed, one of the Vale leaders had moderator access on the Recharge vault. Years afterwards Vale members would talk fondly of Zerorussia and other Recharge members. In Zerorussia's famous last stand video he uses a sword given to him by MKCoates, The People's Champion, (a leader of Vale). Now on to the America invasion, there were of course collaborators. Jakemeister, Strattmatt, Snorriandgotrekt - all members of Vale, helped the invasion out with some actually joining. Another random account also joined America - an account that consisted only of numbers and was 'vouched' for by the Vale members. This account belong to Pericorp.

Pericorp worked on the vault and made himself useful. People were ok with his presence despite the fact he spoke little and no one knew who he was - because the Vale members trusted him. Then, at the end of the America invasion he made a subreddit post. It turned out his entire time in America was spent gathering evidence against his own friends who he'd played with for almost a year - to turn them in as collaborators:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/2l0xi4/my_experiences_leading_up_to_recent_events/

The ensuing shit storm was massive. Despite the post getting a lot of things wrong it was enough to spur the world police into action. They raided Vale, looting houses and bunkers of random citizens long since inactive all under the guise of revenge on Vale collaborators. Tealnerd expressed his dismay at the raiding:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/2l38tr/a_message_to_those_raiding_vale/

However, shadedjon, a key world police member who unknown to anyone at the time was raiding on an alt called Sroerick, thought that the raiding wasn't enough and Vale should end up like River's End - completely flooded:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/2l3t20/contrary_to_all_the_posts_right_now_i_dont_think/

Forsaken
So begins the time period that I’ve called the Titan period - although it encompasses for Forsaken period just prior, the Titan War in the middle and then the Libertas period just after. The Forsaken period was a period of a few months where IBGod went into hiding, raiding and building up wealth - later to be used in the construction of Titan. He was mostly solo during this period - most of his allies having left him. However, a few notable people accompanied him. Oculism - a very well known Kohi player and slightly before this snorriandgotrekt - the leader of Nexus. Duke Stonezy later helped him fortfity Titan.

The main story concerning IBGod at this time involves a raid gone wrong in the South West of the map - near Jaeerk's claim (Jaeerk was a loosely aligned world police member who had a private xp setup shared with Zoltan (Croc on Civclassics) and Overdragon). IBGod was raiding the area on the account Vorpal with Oculism. They suspected Jaeerk of having massive amounts of wealth and so they targeted him. Whilst there they were attacked by Overdragon who they chased round a corner and into a fall trap. Overdragon pearled both IBGod and Oculism instantly. He rushed the pearls to The Commonwealth where Malen had offered to buy the pearls for a significant sum of diamonds (several thousand+). However, upon arriving Overdragon decided he did not trust Malen. He insisted on handing over Oculism first, and then receiving the diamonds. After handing over Oculism it became clear that Malen did not have the diamonds (he had provided "proof" via a screenshot earlier). Enraged Overdragon released IBGod's pearl and fled the scene. IBGod was one lucky chap. Meanwhile the rest of the America leadership – Lysika, sintralin, Celoxia and member of the civcrafters who were part of the America invasion travelled west of Aeon to start a new nation – called the Forsaken. They planned to build a heavily defended fortress city in isolation – the worry being that not everyone had forgiven them for their hand in the America Invasion, despite their part in ending it. Not a lot happened during this time. Much of the Forsaken Ice castle was built (although the majority was much later). The Ice Castle was attacked – by Jarl Heisenberg and Tealnerd. They stole a beacon and a few hundred diamonds. They left in an embarrassed state after being called out on the subreddit as raiders but in the end no reps were paid. Teal said Jarl had them and Jarl being Jarl disappeared until the next HCF invasion.

The Forsaken group dynamic was odd. There were several very chilled out players – Strattmat, Cheshirelulcat, Lysika and Almond and then the rest. Sintralin was constantly lambasted for spending too much time with shadedjon in Furnace land. Jakemeister and Celoxia constantly bounced between an extreme love hate relationship. Sintralin briefly proposed the idea of becoming a group that had bunkers in every city and enforced justice across the server – there is not much detail because the proposal was shot down instantly as Forsaken didn’t have the numbers and Lysika was generally opposed to world policing on that scale. It did however, foreshadow sintralin’s next group.

Construction of a vault was discussed occasionally – but no one really trusted each other with ownership over diamonds. A theoretical solution was to have individually owned layers with a shared spike but nothing ever came to pass as the Forsaken were poor – maybe a few thousand diamonds to their name at best. [Editor’s Note: Lysika felt it necessary to build small obsidian safe rooms around the ice castle in the event of Celoxia going rogue].

There was also a brief reconciliation between Lysika and IBGod when Lysika drop chested a significant amount of wealth – to make up for taking his vault (the drop chest had more in it than the vault).

Then this happened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1BX0wEA_AE&t=0s&list=PLOcJuSE-pWKAV4ShJiVfDkv793tflsAsA&index=9

(Yes, Gordan is always in a club) Around 20 HCF, as if out of nowhere appeared in Mt. Augusta. World Police scrambled to chase them off – pearling MrTazz. The HCF retreated to their new home. It was a city. It was a city surrounded by a bastioned bedrock moat and at its centre was the first prototype of a modern vault. It had around 10 bastioned rings filled with cobweb. The Titan War had begun.

The Titan War
In fact the war began a short time later when the HCF pearled a naked Gordon who was afk on a rail. It just so happened he was carrying snitches. As the HCF knew, pearl Gordon and the entire World Police would come calling – and they did. Around 35 World police showed up the same day and began attacking the city – fortunately for the HCF bastions were bugged and unable to be broken. Notably Maximumfame was pearled. Bastions remained in a broken state for a couple of weeks or so. Daily attacks were made on the city but no real progress was made. Gordon was released after a few days and the fact that he held snitches was used to justify the pearling.

The next video is from Rekon’s perspective of a fight attempting to save Trackball (the voice at the start).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeZgKKE38XU One of the many skirmishes on the surface of the city within the outer bedrock moat. You can see the Titan Vault tower in the distance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMnXbwh8RoE&t=0s&index=50&list=PLOcJuSE-pWKAV4ShJiVfDkv793tflsAsA The world police did manage to pull off a few wins. They turned the outer Titan moat into a trap of their own and pearled a fair amount of HCF who blindly followed them into it, video from Slothopuss’ perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfENZo0_y1w&list=PLOcJuSE-pWKAV4ShJiVfDkv793tflsAsA&t=0s&index=11

The war dragged on for about two months. The HCF leadership were pearled fairly early on, locked away in Carson’s vault The Playpen, but their sub commanders continued the fight. (Editor’s Note: IBGod was actually pearled due to really stupid circumstances. When someone calls the landline of his house his internet disconnects. This happened twice, both times causing him to be pearled.) This was also when shitty things began to happen during these wars. Superbuilder was ddos'd leading to his pearling. DukeStonezy (and likely IBGoD) began VPN'ing after being banned or alt banned.

Many world police were pearled in the rings. There were no techniques for dealing with vaults like this. Gordon Freemanq and Mattamattress improvised and built their own bastioned obsidian tunnel from the edge of the city into the vault. Similar in fact to modern methods, except it was on the ground and therefore had none of the benefit. It did, however, provide a fairly safe path to reach the main vault hole. It did nothing for the rings though – at the time it was thought almost impossible to attack the ring bastions from a safe position. It was made worse by the defenders having significant numbers in all time periods.

This video was a fight in vault rings – Rekon is pearled by Kaboose (Editor’s Note: Kaboose pearled a disproportionate amount of us, later said by IBGod to be hacking). In the background you can hear Yoshi Sama, Celoxia and Tealnerd talking (all world police at the time). You can see our attempts to breach the rings – the thin bridge above where Rekon is fighting. This was the vault breaking method for the next 3 or so years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvI9lxYHk9I

Frontal assaults on the fortress stopped and sky bridging attacks began – led by unarmoured newfriends - they had very little success. However, Badash - ex raider and current member of the world police had more luck. He took a solo approach gradually whittling away bastions and sneaking around avoiding snitch hits or moving in the brief moments when people weren't online. He was able to snatch Hantzu's pearl out of the Titan vault tower (the pearl was in a chest so Hantzu could play with Mandy in the end). He also managed to pearl Ethyx very soon after.

Strangely they had some success, obtaining Hantzu’s pearl – one of the leaders of Titan.

Hantzu was later alt banned in perhaps the greatest premeditated pearling ever by Mathew1034 (Tangentialthreat) https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/2ygw5x/matthew1034_you_shouldve_seen_it_coming/ The Titan War went on for so long that Celoxia managed to completely switch sides during it. When he was pearled on one account near the start of the war the Forsaken travelled to the Western world border and began attacking Cliffnerd’s vault (the then largest vault on the server at exactly 48 layers) in order to free Celoxia’s second pearl. Carson, Cliffnerd’s town or group were having internal conflict over access to built up stocks of xp – so they did not defend the vault. In the end Cliffnerd logged in to free Celoxia mid-way through the vault break to avoid “causing a mess in the vault room”. Once this second account was freed, after arguing with Jakemeister, Celoxia went and suicided at Titan. Whilst altbanned he began ingratiating himself with the Titan leadership, eventually becoming fairly significant amongst the successor group to Titan (when it eventually fell). He never returned to the world police side after this.

Gradually things began to look up for the world police. The core titan leadership was pearled, supplies were running low and the number of defenders willing to login at any hour gradually decreased. Then Sintralin returned to the stage. In secret she began working on a vault – in fact at the very site the intended for the new America vault months ago. Her intention was to form a new ultra-world police group called Libertas with ex carson WP member Jakebob. She invited Lysika (currently alt banned in Titan) to join it and confided in him the location of the new vault. Lysika told the world police what was about to happen and they intervened, raiding the vault site, pearling several HCF who happened to there at the time and setting Libertas back months. In doing this he really fucked up relations with Sintralin and Jakebob.

Libertas
Sintralin announced the group known as Libertas and inherited the wealth and pearls from Titan (including Lysika’s pearls which were carried by Celoxia over to Libertas). Ultimately Libertas enforced reparation paying on all crimes committed by the pearls from Titan which wasn’t so bad in theory, although many groups even then were not happy with the idea of being able to buy yourself out of almost any crime. Importantly Libertas absorbed the Titan fighting force and applied a fairly loose double standard – the ex Titan fighters had to pay reps if they played – the trick being that they didn’t play, they only logged in to fight – which Libertas was fine with as it bolstered their forces. The Titan fighters were also able to dispute reparation claims made against them - a luxury that the people Libertas held in their vault were denied.

A little bit of pure opinion here. These times weren’t that bad. Libertas was not nearly as obnoxious as Nox would become and they were law abiding – just to an uncomfortable extreme. They also had a sizable counter weight - the world police were still very strong and hadn’t lost their core, older base of non retarded players. Mt Augusta was becoming fairly strong at this point but wasn’t out and out an HCF ally (this later turned out to be false) and they still weren’t quite at their strength during the Nox period. The mass duping by Nox and Mt. Augusta hadn't occurred at this point either so they didn't have unlimited wealth (and therefore unlimited fighters).

One silly conflict between the world police and Libertas was over a sky bridge across an ocean (used for transportation, similar to a rail...) It happened to go very close to Worlds End, the site of Itaqi/Orion's new vault (he began moving it after the Orion vault break). War very nearly broke out over it - the world police wanted it taken down whilst Libertas insisted it was there prior and so had a right to stay. Seldomshock, a member of the world police began taking it down one night. The eventual conclusion was that the road be removed and rerouted by the world police. The world police subsequently banned Libertas from all of their cities.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/347cuq/libertas_is_now_banned_from_the_following_cities/

A brief period of posturing occurred until Libertas decided that the correct thing to do was to ensure everyone was brought to Justice. Naturally the first and most obvious person being denied justice was IBGod – held in the Carson vault without trial. So, in the only time in the last three years, a world police vault was attacked. The Libertas force was backed by HCF from Titan (including the ones who had yet to pay reps) and more controversially – the majority of Mt. Augusta’s pvp force helped them on alts. Strangely many of the main attackers players used alts to hide their identities – Jakebob played on Admiraladderall (a joke on NJPalms who alledgedly took Adderall to continue playing civcraft), Celoxia played on AgentExtortion and Thoth’s played on the then secret alt Declor (as did much of the rest of MTA’s pvp force).

The attack was led by Celoxia. The following video is defending the vault:

Tutterise’s Perpective: https://gaming.youtube.com/watch?v=-nb137GMny0

Jumpysnake’s Perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRyPAw2zLq0&feature=youtu.be Badash’s Perspective – this is the dank one (for some reason the first few seconds are the Clone Vault fight): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA4hByCs2ao The attackers managed to get five rings in before a significant defence force was mustered – at which point all progress stopped. The vault attack was a failure. It soon came out that members of MTA helped in the attack and some of them ended up paying reparations. Notably the world police were insided by Duke Stonezy on an alt (Im_Sal), freeing one of the captured HCF pearls. A full summary of the fight was written by Shadedjon who was fast becoming the leader of the world police (an odd concept). https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/2yieog/full_summary_of_the_assault_on_playpen/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/2ydywp/failed_siege_of_playpen/

In the end this entire attack was pointless – Shadedjon went on holiday and nobody in Carson bothered to put coal in IBGod’s chest – he was freed on restart. This is probably the single biggest fuck up since ttk trusted hamster with the map files. Ribagi shitposted about it, claiming IBGod had mailed him a GTX970 in exchange for release - which caused a massive post from TTK2 (the server owner) banning the trade of real world assets.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/2u09jd/i_would_like_to_thank_papa_pound_for_whom_i_have/

Return of IBGod
When IBGod was freed from Carson he joined Libertas and soon Nox was announced. Nox gave up on the world police ideals of Libertas and was essentially just a powerful state.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/38v1bc/the_kingdom_of_nox/

A short while later Jakebob, the main proponent behind the Libertas principles, announced he was quitting Nox, spilling a fairly large number of beans in the process.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/38wuc8/on_my_departure_from_nox_and_the_history_of/ When IBGod joined Libertas there were demands for him to pay reparations. He made a few posts but ignored considerations such as time spent pearled or anything particular large. This was in contrast to Libertas previously forcing people to pay reparations for time spent pearled. The general consensus among the non-Libertas aligned groups was that IBGod had not served enough time or paid enough reparations for his roles in Titan, and to a lesser extent America (this was largely forgotten by now). Groups on the Libertas side began to question whether IBGod had actually done anything wrong. Arguments relating to sovereignty and the defence of Titan land were made - Gordon's alleged illegal snitching was brought up. The issue of IBGod's criminality became a question of allegiance rather than right or wrong.

It should also be noted that around this time the story ends for Celoxia. Sometime between the Libertas vault break and the Nox war he was banned for threatening to dox clone. He remained banned until the final weeks to 2.0

Formation of Eden
In response to Nox and the constant bombardment the world police received on the subreddit they attempted to make themselves more accountable. Previously Libertas had attempted to play the World Police game, now the World Police were trying to play the statehood game. The world police soon announced the formation of Eden (essentially World Police, but dumber). https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/3b8xsq/announcing_the_eden_group/

Before an explanation of Eden, an amusing story. Eden were originally going to be called Vanguard. However, Lysika who at the time was on good terms with IBGod and the world police heard of this planned name and joked about it with IBGod - who subsequently announced a group called Vanguard on the subreddit forcing Eden to rethink.

Now, to explain Eden – they were essentially the world police trying to play a game by Nox’s rules – that is sovereignty, statehood and subreddit pvp. Up until this point a common meme was that the world police were not accountable as there was no such thing as the world police (they did not exist as an official group or state). This was in fact a major strength of the world police but for some reason they decided to throw it away and shackle themselves to a game they were incapable of winning - because at their core they were not a state, they were poorly organised individuals. It also so happened that no one in the world police was particularly good or bad at subreddit pvp - certainly they could form logical arguments but that's perhaps 20% of it. Unfortunately for them Nox had Sintralin (who was very capable) and an increasingly popular following – strengthened by alliances with Chanada, MTA and Fellowship.

Nox: A Legitimate Nation
For a time Nox was a very capable and legitimate nation. Eden – Nox interactions were similar to an older sibling (Nox) manipulating the younger (Eden) into doing stupid things in front of the increasingly distressed parent (the subreddit). The event that really brought this to light is depicted in the following truly terrible pvp video where Eden attempt to pearl IBGod in MTA (he’s JasonSavage in the video). In this new era of sovereignty and statehood, where MTA was perhaps second only to Nox in raw power, attempting to illegally extradite someone from MTA was truly stupid. Maximumfame, for a long time considered the best pvp’er on the server, actually quit Eden and the server over this debacle. Eden was crushed on the subreddit under the combined might of Nox, MTA, Chanada and Cheshirelolcat’s downvote bot. Shadedjon, the leader of Eden, broke all records with over 100 downvotes on a single comment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M08Mc5GvZCE&t=0s&list=PLOcJuSE-pWKAV4ShJiVfDkv793tflsAsA&index=38

Sintralin writes a summary of events:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/3d8j4u/a_summary_of_the_events_in_mt_augusta/

Nox was fairly unstoppable at this point in time. They had the largest fighting force, two dedicated leaders and a strong alliance with two other strong nations in close proximity, and – as far as the server were concerned, thanks to their excellent PR, the moral high ground. It was fairly easy to support Nox too. What they said on paper seemed reasonable. Most arguments against Nox were based on the history of their leaders and the fact that no reparations had been paid by IBGod - things the general public could see past but the world police got hung upon.

The Goten Crisis
This will only be a brief summary - the writer was there at the time but not involved with the inner MTA circles so some of this could be wrong. Goten, a part of Gensokyo - MTA's western neighbour wanted to secede. These nations were tightly packed. In fact there was no undeveloped land between either of the three nations - with Goten in the middle. Mt Augusta supported Goten's independence and Gensokyo was fiercely against it. Massive numbers of pvp'ers packed into Goten - Prof Tanstaafl was providing free prot to anyone who would show up and support the Mt Augusta stance.

In the end no significant conflict broke out - perhaps a small skirmish but nothing more. Importantly Eden finally realised they were out of their depth and did nothing:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/3gabe2/eden_group_stance_on_the_goten_annexation_crisis/

The crisis concluded with Goten leaving Gensokyo. Then Gensokyo left the area, with the help of Bryn - who bought the land from them. https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/3h1dlt/the_west_gensokyo_treaty/

Notably this was probably the largest collection of people in prot in a single spot ever. The 40 men in prot meme came true.

Mir Moves to the +,+
It’s time to look somewhere West. Whilst the formation of Libertas was occurring Mir was being founded. Only two members of the Forsaken remained to continue into Mir – Lysika and Jakemeister. However, ex Nexus members had also settled in the area in secret and reached out to them. An alliance was formed and then after a few days the Nexus players joined Mir. Notably they were snorriandgotrekt (IBGods raiding partner a few months ago) and MKCoates, the People’s Champion. Both of these players have massive histories from before this story begins but a summary is that Nexus was hated by the world police as they were collaborators – a dirty dirty word in 2.0. That is, people who sold or gave gear to HCF invaders. In this case those raiders were Recharge. It was always strongly suspected they were guilty of this but no one had ever managed to pin it on them – however, sometime during the America invasion the World Police skipped evidence and raided Nexus, looting and pillaging it in retaliation. Snorri and MKCoates became wanted “criminals” and had to go into hiding – winding up near Aeon where Dsclouse, the leader of Aeon, took them in.

During the Libertas nonsense Mir kept a very low profile – acquiring massive amounts of wealth, recruiting pvp’ers like Jpegz and old Eagle Crew members and finishing the Forsaken Ice Tower. They also, in complete secret, constructed the largest vault on the server 100 blocks north of the second largest vault on the server. It was called Sanctaphrax, a 51 layer, 10 ringed vault. Incredibly dated by today's standards it did have some innovations - namely multiple y-level archer rings and flower rings. Carson (Diet Cola/Teal) and Mir independently concluded that vault rings should outline the bastion fields. The pattern Mir came up with was significantly more curved - utilising more of the bastion field's radius to save money on bastions. Due to the curvey nature they were called flower rings. One particularly dated part of the Mir vault was the skybunker - vaults built around this time had water drop columns (assuming they even had a skybunker) - essentially water drops surrounded by obsidian. The ability for minecarts to teleport downwards was not widely known at the time.

Sanctaphrax:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-GB8JyWi7Y

The completed Ice Castle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by5zzjsyOEs

However, once these two large projects were complete the Mirian playerbase grew bored and more importantly dissatisfied with their territory. Nether factories had recently been added – they had a massive exclusion zone preventing another from being built nearby. Unfortunately Aeon had the nearest – forever putting a shadow over Mir’s land claim. All traffic to the area would always come through Aeon. A city could only be relevant if it had a nether factory. So Mir began to look elsewhere for a place to build – and they found the last spot, in the deep +,+. The land was unclaimed (unless you read 8chan, in which case the Channers had recently claimed it) and more importantly untouched. Mir moved some 20k blocks and built a new town on the Nether factory site. They lived there for over a month building a fairly impressive castle like Viking manor with walls, towers and animal pits that doubled as bastion traps. Importantly the entire stretch of land was full bastioned with multiple water drops to bedrock. It was meant to be defendable.

An creative preview of the town Mir built (the vast majority of it was built on the server):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIa3RZmi8_U

Strangely at this time Nox also acquired a nether factory in the +,+, very close to Mir’s new spot. This part is largely unknown but an alliance was formed between Nox and Mir – driven by Lysika and IBGods previous friendship. Mir in fact moved to help defend the Nox netherfactory when world police learnt of its existence and IBGods presence (he was still wanted after being freed from Carson). It was also agreed that Lysika would build a castle for Nox. (Editors Note: IBGod shared a screenshot of the area where he had a common xray client GUI. Instead of reporting it Lysika told him to delete the screenshot. It could all have stopped right there folks). Fortunately/Unfortunataly this alliance soon fell apart thanks to Sintralin who probably felt herself being displaced. It goes without saying that Mir’s nether factory was known to Nox – indeed even before it was actually built the intention was known.

Mir-Chanada War
(Editors Note: A brief disclaimer, whilst the order of events, the numbers involved and the outcome are not disputed by anyone the tone of this next section is from the Mirian perspective)

Around a month after Mir had settled and built their factory a group of Chanadian explorers stumbled across the unknown town. They entered the buildings, stole some diamond armour and griefed a little bit, breaking some blocks whilst shouting ‘pack it up’. Lysika woke up to the bad news – there were six Chanadians on the surface causing trouble. Armed with the snitch logs of them griefing the combat alt Kelesta was deployed. All six Chanadians were pearled or killed. It should be noted that only three of the Chanadians were in prot – and only two attempted to fight. Regardless they griefed, stole and trespassed.

Negotiations started and the pearled Chanadians were released as a show of good faith – on the condition that they did not return. Mir was in a fairly awkward position. They had no vault in the area so war would be difficult and it seemed increasingly likely. The Chanadians were outraged that someone had built on the land – and more importantly build a nether factory, taking the last spot. Meanwhile the Mirians didn’t consider the Chanadian land claim legitimate – it hadn’t been publicly announced on the subreddit (only on 8chan) whereas other Chanadian claims had been, and perhaps most importantly for the server at the time – it was completely undeveloped land and therefore ‘free real estate’.

Compromises were suggested but didn’t satisfy either side. The Chanadians wanted unrestricted access and (I think) moderator/ownership of the nether factory whilst Mir wanted them to take a hike, but would grudgingly allow them access but no ownership. No agreement could be reached and so war was declared. Soon after Nox declared war on Mir, siding with Chanada. This is important as Mir believed that Chanada only had one pvp’er at this point in time, Reiko, who was not that good for the time - this later turned out to be incorrect. With Nox joining the war it meant Chanada had a capable fighting force.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/3gkpfq/noxs_perspective_and_official_declaration_of_war/

Chanada also declared war of course: https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/3gk384/chanadian_declaration_of_war_against_mir/ctyuuxg/

Internally Mir was prepared for a humiliating defeat, a massive loss of face – they actually tried to surrender (I think twice) but with conditions that weren’t accepted by Chanada – who thought they were in very strong negotiating position (Mir thought they were too) but foolishly they refused to compromise at all so the actual strength of everyone’s hand was shown, perhaps ruining the advantage that their subreddit dominance provided. Just to add to the bad subreddit situation Mir found itself in – an irl friend of one of Mir’s members had been invited to the skype group. He leaked about a months’ worth of skype chat to members of Nox and then Hanztu - who posted it on the subreddit. The leaks largely showed the memey nature of the Mir chat (still unchanged to this day) - perhaps the most damaging part was a screenshot a newfriend called Ozzy had posted which had cave mode turned on. In the skype chat he was told to turn it off - the admins banned him for three months directly prior to the start of the war.

One of the rejected surrender posts: https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/3hbait/official_mir_response/

Public opinion of Mir at the time: https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/3gnbkg/is_there_anyone_on_mirs_side/

Militarily useless nations like SPQR found reason to declare war on Mir. It should be pointed out that not once did a member of SPQR ever move to attack a Mirian citizen or settlement. The nation was a vassal of Nox and entirely irrelevant to the war effort.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/3go017/spqr_declares_war_on_mir/

GreenKitten is curious about why Chanada would accept any of Mir’s terms:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/3h3s17/eli5_mirs_proposal_to_chanada/

Discussion about Mir’s PR :

https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/3h3fgs/serious_chanada_and_mir_conflict_pr_and_wartime/

It was at this point that Mir’s PR engine went full retard or ascended to a higher level – depending on one's perspective. Internally Mir considered the subreddit a lost battle and a pointless one. Nox and Chanada were both largely immune to any kind of subreddit pressure and Mir considered themselves to be *mostly* in the right. Therefore the subsequent Mirian subreddit posts were designed to bolster internal morale. Shitposting became the default position upsetting a great many subredditors who wanted a serious discussion. With nothing left to lose the Mir town became a death zone. PvP tourists were instantly pearled, producing Star Wars meme videos. Subreddit posts designed to antagonise and fluster were made to great effect.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/3gkug6/first_blood_to_mir/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/3ii5dy/shocking_image_leaked_from_private_mir_sub_will/

The attacks on the Mir town were completely brutal on paper – but in reality completely ineffective. The first attack consisted of around 20 attackers from Nox, Chanada, randoms who wanted to pvp and possibly MTA. There were just five Mirian defenders: Lysika_Lantariel, Jpegz, Jakemeister, Assassinmatt and Talydaria. Here is the list of attackers: Jorgito55, Baladae, Reanial (MCFtw), Scenttreedown, Anair117 (sintralin), Apachablitz (Reiko), Oldfriend, Textrus (IBGod), Zikoolas (Thoths), Logibear2, Sil3ntCreep3rxD, Camokool, EIIipse, Tormented, daddo69 (Altraider on civclassics), Greasy_Shekels, Jackcryder, ColonelCat, Shrekpoop, Grieferking_ (Greenkitten)

The server tps was about 10. The defenders minecarted up to the surface, charged the attackers forcing them to pot up in a panic and then returned to bedrock, wasting the attackers pots. They wait for the pots to run out and then went back up for the actual fight. Essentially the defenders ran around hitting people, knocking them into bastion pits, exchanging hits etc but due to the terrible tps there was never any risk for the defenders. The attackers ran out of pots and left.

The shitposting continued: https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/3h2yp5/mir_vs_allied_forces_skirmish_from_last_night/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/3hqjme/official_mir_response/ (video linked was a dubstep remix of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLo-NZBLkr8 – Mir doesn’t negotiate with terrorists)

The attackers came back when there was better tps. A much more intense fight broke out. Several attackers managed to die falling down water drops but ultimately no one was pearled on either side. It was pretty close for the defenders though – Jpegz ran out of health pots and had to pearl over the east wall into the ocean – the attackers could not follow him due to the complete bastion coverage. There was a strange exchange of power. During the EU timezones Mir dominated, very few of the attackers played in the EU timezone so the defenders were able to mine away the DRO spike the Chanadian attackers left each night (in the nether factory vault). They were also able to disable any traps or bunkers the attackers had setup. However, during the US timezone the Channers had their way with the place. The factory room was raided (factories didn't provide any of their creation materials in those days and the location remembered the factory even if all the blocks were broken/removed - for up to two weeks) and DRO was placed where the factories had been. The vast majority of Mirian wealth was logged out or drop chested quite far away. However, some items considered too bulky to move were drop chested in the area - namely a single chest of mossy cobble (which could only be acquired from dungeons at this time) and a chest containing some slime balls. (Editor's note: These drop chests were clearly x-rayed and this was reported at the time to no effect - Camo, a channer who was there at the time confirms that people were xraying here: https://www.reddit.com/r/civclassics/comments/9ga68b/a_brief_account_of_midlate_20_events_that_helped/e64197k/ ).

One thing raiders and HCF groups have never displayed a convincing understanding of is logistics. A reasonable tactic against such groups is to ignore their pvp skills and exploit their typically terrible supply chain. This occurred on two such occasions, the first was a bunker built 100 blocks south of the Mir town – containing pot materials (an attempt to counter previous incidents of 'potladding'). It was destroyed almost as soon as it was made (the bastions failed to mature). The second was worse. The Chanadian attackers built a pot bunker right next to a Mirian pot bunker at the end of a rail to a Mirian farm. Naturally it was snitched and so the exact location of all the attackers supplies was known. The bunker was raided in the EU day time, all the xp and potion materials were stolen and that was it – the large attacks stopped.

Around this time Malen joined Mir. He had just been freed from the Nox vault for crimes committed a very long time ago when he a raider in the Silly Snakes group. He had been freed on condition he would not join Mir. He immediately came down to Mir to help out. The Mir town was fortified even further – tens of fall traps and “zingers” were built, bastions refreshed, extra safe waterdrops dug and finally construction of the new Mir vault began. Notably made from diamonds found on site it was used to house the occasional Chanadian pearl the group picked up during the war. A sign on the front of it said 3 layers would be added for every extra pearl obtained. The most notable pearl during the war was Reiko who attacked the town, ran off into the ocean and then crashed whilst fighting.

Mir-Chanada War Cooldown
The war was actually looking quite good for Mir at this point. The attacks had stopped, the nether factory vault mining had ended and the subreddit focus on Mir was largely over. However, It was decided that keeping the factory and the land was not a viable option in the long run and Mir handed the factory over to Lythius, an ally from Aeon who would decommission the factory (let it die, in 2.0 factories died if not repaired for two weeks). Mir left the area down a nether factory but significantly wealthier and with an image of invincibility. They returned to their bastion on the Western world border unharmed. This video is one of the many Mirian alts transporting inventories of wealth out of Chanada:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-WOH5FWtrY

It should be noted that emerald ore was exceedingly rare – only obtainable from extreme hills vanilla chunks and fetched insane prices from collectors – especially in these later stages of the map.

The Chanadian leadership considered the war a mistake.

http://i.imgur.com/LsFQYIo.png

Chanada soon fell apart due to infighting. At the time and immediately afterwards it was said to be due to fears of retaliation from Mir. However, a more detailed explanation given later indicates that Chanada had massive internal issues for some time leading up to the Mir war. The outcome of the war may have been the nail in the coffin so to speak but was not the cause. Emerging from the war with so much against them Mir began to acquire its reputation for being pretty good at mineman war – not a single member of Mir had been pearled. The nether factory was lost but raiding in the area had acquired significantly more wealth (Editor's Note: the vast majority of the wealth acquired was from dead towns in the area, not active Chanadians). However, perhaps most importantly, the spirit of Mir had been found. The group felt completely unstoppable – they had spurned popular support on the subreddit, pulled the finger to most of the server and fought for what they believed was right and they had come out on top.

Build Up and Mises
Chanada was done – they split into the Lux Federation and some other groups. For Mir things had only just begun. They were still at war with Nox and were keen to retaliate. Technically Mir was also still at war with SPQR despite neither side ever attacking each other. Mir left the UMM - a quadrant alliance shared with SPQR not so subtly hinting that SPQR was next on the list.

https://www.reddit.com/r/UnitedMinusMinus/comments/34g0x5/the_lands_of_mir_are_withdrawing_from_the_umm/

They began working in the island of Vanuatu, gifted to them by Strattmat (a member of Mir at the time). They heavily fortified it, covering the ground in obsidian and the skies with skybunkers. The entire island and surrounding land mass were fully bastioned - some twelves stacks of bastions went into this. Notably they also built a large fortress to the south of the island surrounded by a bedrock moat. A significant part of a bedrock moat around the entire island was also dug by Ben bots. Much of this was preparation for the war they knew was coming. It seemed unlikely that anyone would attempt to attack them given their position so far from anything but they felt they ought to be ready.

The fortress in the south:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgOQ6GoObPc

In the meantime Nox were slowly descending to their 'full Nox' state. MCFTW had claimed 0,0 in the Nether, named it Mises and banned most people from entering it.The actual intent was to turn it into a shopping centre. Unfortunately for him 0,0 had already been claimed. Unfortunately for the original owner, a member of the world police, this did not matter. He was pearled and made the following post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/3gxub7/250d_bounty_each_on_mc_vitacoco_and_sintralin/

IBGod (Textrus) and MCFTW (Reanial) breaking the NAP:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dBBH5Rv34g

During this period Tiger Crew (Eldoorn, TB, a few HCF types) were raiding MTA and attacking Nox in the nether. TB, a former member of Nox had previously given some members of Nox access to his skype account. Later, after he left, Nox leadership logged into TB’s social media profile. Supposedly they were given permission by the admins when they said they had permission from the owner. The admins rescinded the permission when this turned out to be false and banned sintralin and other members of Nox for the deception.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/3mzolr/a_reminder_to_nox/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/3md3rd/an_open_letter_to_the_admins_save_this_server/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/3m8871/after_3_years_im_done_playing_on_here/

Notably people began to be pearled without trial by Nox. Players like The Trackball were moved from Chanada's vault to Nox and held without charge until the end of the map. Chanada's confirmation the Trackball should not be held:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/3pt5sy/official_statement_of_chanada_trackball/

The Nox War Begins
Diet Cola and Tealnerd approached Lysika with plans to attack the Nox nether factory. [Editor’s note: I cannot recall the subreddit reason for attack, it didn’t matter to the Mir contingent as they were at war with Nox, although I think it was probably a bullshit reason. The internal reason given by Diet was that much of Nox were banned at this point in time]. The attack on the Nox nether factory began. It was done on the nether side and therefore was never going to accomplish much – other than start a world war which was Mir’s intent. The only pearling was Live4Minecraft who was bowed off a skybunker by Lysika_Lantariel.

It was at this point Nox went ‘Full Nox’:

https://old.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/3o0c25/a_final_statement_from_nox/

Disagreeing with Nox on the subreddit was now a crime:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/3o0c25/a_final_statement_from_nox/cvsujc0/?context=3

A curious person asks:

https://old.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/3o24jy/so_did_nox_just_declare_war_on_basically_everyone/

The war in the Nether dragged on. It’s largely impossible to do anything to the enemy from within the Nether, other than place obsidian around the entrance to their factory – which is only useful if their isolated in the main world which Nox was not. Time passed and the Nox membership were unbanned. They essentially mirrored the world police actions, attacking the Orion and Carson nether factories on the Nether side. Methods consisted of running into the stations, killing anyone there and then obsidian griefing it. Later they would return and pearl anyone trying to clear up the grief. GTAIV calls out Nox for what they really are:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/3of5oa/combat_alt_pearled_while_trying_to_protect_xavter/

Naturally this led to fights in the Nether – and attempts to trap Nox. One such fight in the Carson nether station:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWe7ZXWAXWs&list=PLOcJuSE-pWKAV4ShJiVfDkv793tflsAsA&index=19&t=0s

Diet Cola wrote the following guide to surviving Nox:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/3ld74b/your_guide_to_surviving_nox/

Mir then attacked overland Nox in the early morning for a couple of weeks and eventually took control of the Nox nether factory and disabled it – although they lost one of Talydaria’s pearls in the process. The attack involved digging a very large tunnel at bedrock from several hundred blocks away to the Nox Nether Factory. The factory was surrounded by obisidian, webs and a great many bastions. After pearling the defenders Mir broke the bastions and then the factory. The following video is of them breaking the bastions (the music was played over voice comms to make the experience less of a drag):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_kx2WL-Dr8

After capturing the Nether factory they began to attack the vault with the help of Dill Weasel and some parts of Tiger Crew but after getting five rings in progress stopped. They lost a few more pearls and were unwilling to risk being altbanned – with very few people able to help at the timezone just one defender was able to stop them progressing. The following video is one such defender’s perspective. Note the second time he goes in Dill Weasel on the account Biffle blocks his escape, almost pearling him:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWOv_uHxZgU&t=0s&list=PLOcJuSE-pWKAV4ShJiVfDkv793tflsAsA&index=21

This video is from the attackers perspective and is essentially all that could be done when they had defenders online (or it was thought at the time) – bearing in mind this was early in the morning so neither side had many people:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vI8FxhXr44

Eventually the Mirian forces withdrew until a larger assault could be conducted. Their progress on the vault was undone and the nether factory did not have sufficient time to deteriorate making the attack largely unsuccessful (although they did pick up some key defender pearls it didn’t make that big a difference as one defender was enough in those days). Nox members were then unbanned.

The war in the Nether restarted. Nox forces bed bombed the Orion Nether station – placing beds and sleeping in them caused an explosion which bypassed citadel reinforcements. Most of the Nox force were banned again for three months opening the way for an overland assault on Nox. This ban was also more serious as it directly followed a previous ban.

Mt Augusta joins the War
The war simmered down, similar to the quiet period of the Somber War. There was something of a stalemate. Vaults seemed unbreakable but Nox had little power beyond the immediate area. Then Nox decided to start obby bombing Aurora – similar to their tactics with the Commonwealth on civclassics. Their ally Mt. Augusta who had been carefully minding their business up to this point finally decided that Nox had to be stopped. They pearled a member of Nox and, suspecting that IBGod would turn on them made the following post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/3rqmi2/our_collaboration_with_titan/

https://www.reddit.com/r/MtAugusta/comments/3ndhxr/dissolution_of_defense_pact_between_nox_and_mt/

Nox then threatened to level Mt. Augusta and the world police offered to help defend the city. At the time this was quite weird given how pro Nox MTA had been until recently. Several massive fights occurred within the city with Nox ultimately being sent packing back to their vault.

These videos are taken from Dystrafy’s PoV:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m32eAeeOZ78&t=0s&index=56&list=PLOcJuSE-pWKAV4ShJiVfDkv793tflsAsA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW296qCPH8s&t=0s&index=22&list=PLOcJuSE-pWKAV4ShJiVfDkv793tflsAsA

After these fights the world police and Mir, bolstered by MTA forces began a new attack on Nox, this time from the south side of the vault. These fights were successful – the current leader of Nox at the time, Varkonos, was pearled in the following fight.

Attacker perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G9rf8pTk60&t=0s&index=39&list=PLOcJuSE-pWKAV4ShJiVfDkv793tflsAsA

Defender perspective (different fight same place): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQQ_xwjmTfw&t=0s&index=2&list=PLOcJuSE-pWKAV4ShJiVfDkv793tflsAsA

However, progress into the vault was still non-existent until one day Silentcreeper, a member of Nox, betrayed them and built a bridge across the vault rings.

Silentcreeper was on friendly terms with some of the Thule/Tazmily crowd (which later formed into Libra on 3.0) - notably Xavter, one of the main attack organisers, was a part of this group. Moral concerns regarding their actions and their impact on the server were brought up repeatedly. Silent had already leaked bits and pieces before, but he didn't want to fully betray Nox, because they had been nice to him and he didn't want to be seen as a betrayer. Xavter eventually managed to guilt trip him into building the attackers a bridge. The world police rang up Diet, slack pings (program used before discord) were sent and a bit later the attackers had 10+ people running circles around the tower and placing blocks (to break bastions).The next day Silent felt guilty and gave his pearl to Nox. The attackers were forced to return to bedrock level and break through the rings the old way.

Despite the slow progress Nox were really on their last legs at this point – they could only muster a few defenders, mainly Dysxtrafy and whoever he could pull from Kohi at the time. One night whilst they were attacking the vault, working away on the rings, Badash, a member of the attacking force, was knocked into the webs. The defenders began attacking him and at this point the attackers realised they outnumbered the defenders almost 5 to 1 and went to Badash’s aid. In a moment of insanity/heroism Viccy called for them to attack. They jumped into the bastioned rings once more and charged Dysxtrafy and Frenchfries who stood in front of Badash hitting him. The two defenders were knocked into the webs and for some reason were unable to pearl out. They were soon pearled leaving the Nox vault without any defenders. The Nox vault fell that day, months after the leadership had been banned for duping. This was captured in full:

Dystrafy perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEQGew4xTbA&t=0s&index=59&list=PLOcJuSE-pWKAV4ShJiVfDkv793tflsAsA

Badash’s Perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lizecaeOU4g&t=0s&index=57&list=PLOcJuSE-pWKAV4ShJiVfDkv793tflsAsA

Vitacoco released the following video, destroying wealth in one of the many Nox sky bunkers to prevent it falling into WP hands. Notably sintralin is on the account Scentreedown (a different player), despite being banned. Mid way through the video Xavter is accidently released (he played a large role in the defeat of Nox):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR0iiWjmJZ4&feature=youtu.be

The Aftermath
Tangentialthreat, Gordon and Diet Cola began the long process of acid blocking the Nox vault so as to stop the reinforcement wealth falling into the wrong hands – typically the next HCF type group.

Victory post: https://old.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/3sm9eg/we_did_it/

With Nox destroyed everything quietened down. There was a brief period of tense arguing between the World Police and MTA about who should own the Nox nether factory. It happened to be owned by Mir at the time but they said they would pass it on to whoever wanted stewardship. A few months passed and then 3.0 was announced – the server descended into a period of purely for fun pvp between MTA and co. and the world police. It was completely meaningless and in good faith – anyone pearled was released after the fight.

Cheating during the War
This section was added due to the massive amounts of cheating done during the war. Whenever people talk about the success of these groups it should be noted that they broke almost every rule to get there.

- Hacked clients. A Nox client was made by Scentreedown and used extensively by its members. Malen, a member of the world police also used one (and was banned for it - technically for inventory tweaks)

- Nox duping wealth. Hundreds of thousands of diamonds were duped by the Nox leadership.

- Mass ban evasion by Nox leadership.

- Ddos'ing of various world police by members of Titan/Nox.

- Doxxing.

- Accessing people's social media profiles without permission.

- Mt. Augusta duping wealth. Professor Tanstaafl duped double chests of diamonds blocks and was banned for several months whilst the admins attempted to clean up his mess.

Post Nox War Period and 3.0 Announcement
With the Nox vault broken the coalition of World Police, Mir and MTA experienced something of a parting of ways. The Nox Nether factory initially owned by Mir was freely handed over – various other parties including MTA wanted control of it and Mir had no interest in it.

Nox’s neighbouring town (really a collection of creative server houses and traps) were raided, the statue of Sintralin riding Papa Pound griefed and various bunkers looted.

Soon after the admins administered a ‘puzzle event’ involving another dimension that culminated in the reveal of 3.0. With the end of 2.0 in sight the server devolved into pvp for fun. World Police and MTA groups met in the nether (and sometimes the overworld, although this involved an inconvenient walk) and fought each other for fun. Pearled players were taken home and released at the end of the fight.

Civcraft 3.0
Civcraft 3.0 made a lot changes to the genre and whilst the ideas were usually good the implementation was typically somewhere between flawed and quite bad. It seems like a waste of time to write an essay on why it sucked so I’ll skip that and talk about the parts that affected Classics.

Firstly most of the world police grouped under the nation of Falstadt. This is significant as a large part of this group exists today on Civclassics as the nation Hjaltland. There’s not much more to say – they were very successful on 3.0 and later on classics, with no presence on Devoted.

Mir as it was known in 2.0 broke up, one part quit, another played with Aeon and lastly I formed a meme nation called Province (with a few friends from other games) with little hope for much more. The key thing here is that Province was neighbouring Volterra and later, for diplomatic convenience/trolling, absorbed into it. The Volterrans and I had played Minecraft together since prior to Civcraft existed – talks of merging in 2.0 occurred but fell short due to geography and creative differences. This 3.0 move with Province was the first of a few steps towards the Mir seen in Civclassics.

Finally Aegis, probably the strongest nation on 3.0, is noted for uniting 2.0 Mount Augusta with various HCF/Kohi types. Whilst the leadership moved on (for the most part) many of these players would go on to Devoted 3.0 (mostly Veritas) and later civclassics (HJE, Mir, Rhodesia etc).

Finally, an apology to everyone, as a joke I told iSanta about how certain players were tier zero pvp’ers (hackers) and the best were tier one. It seems people love rankings and measurement… The concept of a pvp tier list later exploded on Devoted as a result of this thanks to Santa discussing tiers with other Volterrans and Dollaz, then a Volterran, who took it to heart and made the first excel file of all the nations pvp’ers… This would prove very popular on Devoted and later servers.

Devoted
I’m going to call this Devoted – there were previous iterations of Devoted but they were always in the shadow of civcraft. So a disclaimer – I’m not too clear on Devoted’s early history – I joined towards the end of the 1st world war so prominent nations that died by then such as Uguu (Malen and friends) will go unmentioned from here on out. None of the nations that existed prior to this did anything meaningful, assuming they even persisted. They will of course be important to individuals on a personal level and if someone has the time they should add that history.

The only nation from Civcraft to make its way to Devoted unchanged was Volterra. There was also a watered down version of Aegis merged with some members of Crocodile Island (HCF group in 3.0) led by Coni_S2 called Veritas – but importantly the old leadership was absent. The traditional Civcraft World Police were almost completely absent and a new generation arose towards the end of the first World War, led by Dollaz from the town and Vault called Ruin. Importantly almost all the hard learnt lessons from Civcraft 2.0 on how to attack vaults had been forgotten - or rather never learnt due to most of the old players quitting during Civcraft 3.0, if not before.

Devoted World War 1
To set the scene there were two main opposing powers. The World Police, a group made up of mostly players from Irithyl (Volterra), Uguu remnants (a now defunct nation that was created by Malen) and some odds & ends, against Veritas. In addition to these older players there was a surprisingly large number of newer players getting their first taste of ‘civ minecraft’.

The war was relatively short and someone else will have to explain the motives (I vaguely recall it being a pre-emptive move to stamp out the shitter/HCF types but I may be wrong) and it seemed like the World Police were going to win having dealt a not quite decisive blow to Veritas. Unfortunately the curse of Vault Ground attacks struck. Thinking victory was assured the World Police attacked the Veritas vault and bunker complex at ground level and somehow got inside the tunnels. These tunnels used ladders to get to different floors and it is here the World Police lost the war. In this version of minecraft players could get stuck on ladders, unable to go down if someone was below them. Somehow through a mix of getting stuck on ladders and being inside the enemy bunker complex the majority of World Police fighters were pearled, ending the war. Veritas had won.

Devoted World War 2
A short time after the end of the first war, the leader of Veritas, Coni_S2 realised she was playing with ‘bad’ people. Someone closer to the events will have to provide a full breakdown of why (but these players were and are established shitters). Working with Dollaz, one of the World Police who hadn’t been pearled in the previous debacle, she coordinated the release of most of the World Police fighters and at the same time a new World Police vault was constructed. This is what would later become the Ruin vault (the name came from me, I don’t recall how exactly – possibly due to me owning the alt ‘Ruin’). Notably a great deal of Irithyl wealth was used in its construction.

The other members of Veritas were furious at Coni’s betrayal and decided to attack the Ruin vault. I was asked to help lead the defence of the vault by Dollaz. Vaults were very weak in Devoted – at this stage there were no bastions and obsidian only reinforcements that were expensive enough to limit their use to the vault proper – meaning very weak ‘glass’ block type rings or walls. In the case of the Ruin Vault there was a singular lantern wall with wooden doors in an undug vault room. The Veritas forces attacked through most of the day, 1 or two at a time early in the morning and then in full force later in the day. This video records the defence in full, starting with Jarl Heisenbergs solo attempts in the morning (Jimmy Pavilion) and then the larger attackers later in the evening.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tY1zS7mryQo

At the end of the day some of the attackers were pearled and the vault still stood. The conflict was essentially over – no further attacks on the vault occurred and the next day the Veritas vault was attacked by the World Police and this time it was broken properly, by the book, without any ladder accidents.

I went inactive at this point but essentially two separate world police nations emerged from this. The first was Volterra – in the same location as Irithyl (Western world border) and with mostly the same people. Second was Ruin, centred on the vault with a town built nearby soon after (close to the centre of the map).

The Build Up to War
Two incidents occurred spurring on the next world war. JKH, a senator of Volterra, had a sister who lived in a separate town called Wyvernhurst. Under JKH’s guidance it was believed to be inactive and free for the Volterrans to loot – which they did, acquiring significant wealth in the process. However, they were caught on a snitch by the one active member of the town, Happyninja. Needless to say this caused a big fuss which was made worse by Volterra refusing to give back any of the stolen goods.

The second incident was a betrayal. The pearls of Saren and a few other newer friends of Santa (a senator of Volterra) were held in the Ruin vault – with a perma pearl sentence – i.e. to never be released. It should be noted that at this point Saren’s storyline and character were not fully revealed – the idea of him not being deserving of perma pearl was not so strange at this time. Secondly, and this was perhaps a retroactive justification, much of the Ruin vault was constructed with old Irithyl wealth which the Volterrans wanted returned to them. So,one night Santa, who was still trusted by Dollaz and had mod access on the Ruin vault spike, entered the Ruin vault and freed the pearls of Saren, Bewsie and several others. Thus the next world war began.

Initial Forays - Attacking the Ruin Vault
The Volterrans proposed to attack the Ruin vault. I’m not sure why – I was not involved and heard about it after that fact (obviously because they’re at war, but at this point there was nothing to gain by attacking the Ruin Vault, other than to disable it – but this would have been an exceedingly ambitious goal so early in the war given neither side had lost anyone and were relatively closely matched). In retrospect the reasoning is more obvious - a main proponent of the attack was Saren who was secretly working for Dollaz (Ruin), however, how he pursuaded the rest of Volterra to attack is still a mystery.

Anyway the Volterrans did attack, twice in fact. The first attack is not particularly notable other than the fact that even Mickale, the non-fighting leader of Volterra attended and little was accomplished. The second attack was more interesting, and almost ended the war there and then. It began with minimal preparation – a theme of Vault attacks at this point in time. All the experienced vault breakers had long since left the genre and wheels needed reinventing.

The Volterrans set up an attack bunker at bedrock just outside the Ruin vault. Not surprisingly they were quickly repelled from the rings and forced back inside their bunker where they were trapped. Their only reasonable escape route was a minecart teleporter. I say reasonable because some lucky bastard, in the ensuing chaos to come, did manage to escape via tunnel. Now, things get interesting. If you recall the war began because Santa didn’t want Saren or Bewsie to be perma pearled. These two and several others were fighting on Volterra’s side that day. In fact Saren was leading the attack and was perhaps the largest proponent of the attack. However, unknown to the Volterrans, Saren and co. were in fact secretly working for Dollaz/Ruin. To complicate things further a second group or perhaps single actor, Generalthomas (Aegis in 3.0, MTA in 2.0) also allied with the Volterrans was also planning to betray them. All of these people were inside the Volterran attack bunker – and immediately outside the bunker doors were the waiting Ruin forces.

In perfect timing as the Volterran bunker door was broken the saboteurs simultaneously broke the escape minecart teleporter and began attacking the Volterrans – although this betrayal was not immediately realised in the chaos. This entire event is recorded from a few perspectives but here is one from Jumpysnake – a Ruin defender.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=382R_vyVi9E

Amazingly every single Volterran managed to escape – replacing the broken minecart and teleporting to the surface. Later when analysing recordings of the fight Santa realised that he’d been combat tagged by one of the traitors just prior to the ‘real’ fight beginning.

Interim Period, Negotiation and Volterra's Refusal to Surrender
It was at this point that I returned to the server, happily on good terms with both sides. I collected my wealth from some drop chests in the mountain next to the Ruin vault where I had been digging a city (long since given up) and travelled to the Volterra vault where I logged out in their skybunker. Occasionally I would login and afk xp (on Devoted xp was obtained by afk’ing next to an xp spawner) but otherwise I did nothing having chosen to remain neutral for the time being. I was surprised and flattered that the Volterrans didn’t force me to pick a side whilst keeping me on groups in the bunker. Anyway, small ego trip aside – continuing the story.

The exact details of the aftermath of that second attack on the Ruin vault aren’t fully known to me as I was still sitting on the sidelines at this point. However, as a member of the Volterran discord it was clear to me that they were discussing handing in their pearls and agreeing to peace. I stepped in and volunteered my view of Civcraft and the genre – how handing your pearl in was tantamount to losing the game and calling it quits – placing yourself in the complete trust of your opponents. Negotiation is fine but handing your pearl in is never the correct move and should be reserved for ‘losers’. The post, formatted in something of a parody of a meme text (genre fitting) seemed to hit home as in the following Senate vote it was decided the Volterra would fight – until the end. It was at this point that I joined the Volterra properly, much to the disappointment of Dollaz and Coni. I believe I said something along the lines of ‘I know they’re in the wrong but I like them more’ (how to burn bridges and win friends btw).

Order 66
The first problem we faced was removing all the insiders from Volterra. Saren, Kempje, Bewsie, Lazersmoke and Generalthomas. Together they made a formidable force and probably provided more direct pvp capability than the actual Volterrans so a simple brawl would never work – even assuming we couldn’t stop them from running. I proposed a simple plan which took advantage of their mistrust of me – as the newest member of the group who had watched from sidelines (and had a history of big world policing). I would wait until one of them was isolated in the Volterran sky bunker, pearl them, and ideally the others would be baited into the skybunker to try to pearl me at which point they’d be removed from the groups and loyal Volterrans would login to pearl them. The alternative outcome was that after the isolated player was pearled the rest would run. The first outcome was preferable but both removed the insiders. We got lucky and everything went exactly as required.

I say we got lucky, it took a fair amount of waiting for the right moment but eventually Generalthomas was alone in the skybunker with me whilst Saren, Kempje and Bewsie were outside the vault but nearby. I was in a discord call talking to all of them including Generalthomas whilst simultaneously sitting in a skype called with Mickale, Santa, Gregy, THEjkh, and Britishwanderer.

The moment had come – I asked out loud to the skype call ‘Should I just pearl him?’. Now for context I use push to talk on discord and skype has no such function. As one sometimes is I wasn’t sure if I’d accidently pressed my push to talk out of habit whilst saying this – thus warning Generalthomas. Looking back I don’t think I had – there was no record or reaction to it and the other sides voice chat was recorded but this uncertainty essentially forced our hand so I potted up on the floor above, went down the ladder and critted him out – he didn’t pot or fight back. With Generalthomas pearled without incident the rest came to get me. I placed the pearl in a secure chest and climbed to the highest part of the skybunker. Saren and Bewsie were able to get to the upper reaches of the skybunker – Kempje was locked out due to insufficient group access. As Saren and Bewsie reached the top they were also removed from groups. Meanwhile the loyal Volterrans logged in. In the ensuring fight Saren, BewsieJ and Lazersmoke (who stumbled into the vault trying to help) were pearled. Kempje escaped. It was a massive victory and morale within Volterra was at an all-time high (soon to get progressively higher and higher).

This is all recorded in the following excellent video, from Saren’s perspective.

Sarens video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jC6kX7peOuc

Santa’s perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyYcPqvbtGY

Defending the Volterran Vault
However, the World Police were untouched. Certainly they had lost some useful allies and perhaps the chance at an easy victory but their army was intact and still quite literally many times larger than Volterra’s at this time. They were still very keen to remove Volterra from the map. To this end they organised a large attacking force of about twenty people and attacked the Volterran vault. It should be noted once more that on Devoted vaults were incredibly weak with no obsidian rings (sea lantern only) and very weak bastions, if any. Fortunately the vault attack meta was also stunted – attackers would arrive, build a bunker just outside the vault rings and go from there. Under Dollaz’s supervision this is exactly what the world police did.

The attackers had just managed to get their attack bunker setup when the first skirmishes began. There were five defenders, myself, Santa, Gregy, Pride – and an old friend, Malen who always seems to show up when in our hour of need. To be fair to the attackers – some elements were supposedly not entirely aligned with Dollaz’s view point and were, at least in theory, considering working against him, however, in practice every one of the attackers attacked and fought earnestly as shown in the videos.

A series of fights took place at bedrock around the vault perimeter. The defenders would leverage their logistical advantage, potting up, running into the enemy and generally being dangerous enough to force the attackers to also pot up – wasting their pots which were not easily replaced at this point. This is of course an ancient tactic known as ‘Pot ladding’ and will be effective as long as attackers are poorly prepared, which is often – especially with less experienced players.

After several skirmishes the attackers somehow found themselves trapped inside their bunker with Volterrans working to break in, similar to the Volterran attack on the Ruin vault. After a few failed individual breakout moments by the likes of Reiko (yes on the World Police side at the time) the attackers decided to retreat. Unfortunately they hadn’t planned for this part and the only escape route was the way they came in (due to the design of Volterra a minecart teleport wouldn’t work – the vault had a much larger city perimeter wall that couldn’t be pearled over). So all at once the World Police spewed out of their bunker towards the stairs they’d dug when arriving – these weren’t even proper stairs, but one block high jumps. Whilst they were running and, presumably panicking, the Volterran defenders chased – ultimately pearling several of them. It was another victory for Volterra and a humiliating defeat for the World Police – the first actually since Titan or perhaps America. The fight was well recorded, here are some videos: This short excerpt by Jumpysnake (World Police) shows the attackers retreating up the staircase whilst being harassed by defenders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay4fcilhvZo This video is from Gregy’s perspective, ending with the pearling of the attackers at the end of their escape tunnel https://youtu.be/X6gKatlB57M?t=961

After this defeat an awkward peace was agreed between Volterra and the World Police. During this period a redesign of the Volterran vault was commissioned, leading to the creation of Vault Terror which whilst bad by today’s standards was pretty swish for Devoted, seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gQ-nfgbAFc

Lead up to War - The MTA Pearlings
However, in true keeping with Devoted, the peace was very brief. Three Volterrans travelled to MTA to sell some obsidian – Gregy, Parasitic and Britishwanderer. The whole incident seemed a little sketchy from the start and rightly so. It turned out to be a trap organised by World Police forces and the non-pvpers Parasitic and Britishwanderer were pearled. This marked the beginning of either the next world war – or perhaps the previous world war recommencing.

World Police Late Night Attacks on Volterra
The World Police once again moved to attack the Volterran vault. Whilst they had not learnt to setup up correct attack infrastructure they did decide to attack in the timezone Volterra was most weak. Due to this Volterra was only able to muster a single defender against perhaps 10 attackers. That single defender was Santa. In the following video from Santa’s perspective probably the single most lopsided/humiliating fight in civ history occurs. It starts with the World Police leader, Dollaz, dropping his sword: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76h3MZbkZo4

Santa was able to solo defend the vault, but it took a toll – one person staying up to defend a vault cannot be continued indefinitely and the attackers, as always (of course) had the timezone advantage. Later JKH was also able to help defend at this awkward hour but it was only a matter of time before they were either pearled or simply overrun by the much larger attacking force.

Operation Hypertard 2
At this point I proposed the second ‘Operation Hypertard’, an old Mirian classification of Operation given to only the most ambitious and probably stupid plans. The first was breaking Cliffnerd’s vault in Civcraft 2.0 (the largest vault on the server) in order to free Celoxia (a success by the way). Operation Hypertard 2 was to end the war by taking the fight to Ruin (thus seizing the timezone advantage – although really this meant roughly equal numbers) and breaking their vault.

The Ruin vault was not like the Volterra vault – it had multiple completed rings with web traps, sky defences at all y-levels which doubled as a rudimentary snitch grid and it was on the whole far more polished and complete. Previous Volterran attempts had failed as documented previously. However, there were several clear weaknesses that could be exploited thanks to vault design at the time (no snitch curtain – sky rings were snitched instead) and weaker bastions that could be pearled into.

The attack plan was detailed with several roles assigned to people. The general idea was to exploit the fact that the skybunker was built slightly above ground level (of course the vault was dug to bedrock) by stealth breaking the rings via skybridge and then when in range pearling onto the skybunker and aoe breaking the bastions. At the same time a group would mirror the skybridge vector but slightly above the rings – thus providing a safe escape route from the skybunker roof should it be needed (pearl down towards the lower bridge and then pearl or run across the lower bridge/rings into the escape tunnel – built with a large opening for easy aiming).Importantly suitable logistics were setup beforehand. A stealth tunnel at y40 (to avoid snitch hits) was dug from the Volterran vault all the way to the Ruin vault the night before and two bunkers were made along the route to guarantee quick and safe repairs/exits.

This all went reasonably to plan with a couple of hitches. The first was Swiftfizz, who was on the Volterran side, said he could get us inside the skybunker (he had group access). We agreed to let him help us which in retrospect, and immediately at the time, proved to be a bad idea. Upon reaching the stage of the vault attack where we pearled onto the skybunker roof we chased a defender (DJMeffy) down into the heart of the bunker, using Swiftfizz’s door access. Whilst we easily took control of the bunker Swiftfizz was removed from the groups, trapping us inside. In retrospect there was probably very little danger of being overwhelmed inside the bunker but being cautious we immediately broke the door to the minecart teleporter down and tp’d to bedrock on top of the vault spike – and walked out of the vault using the aforementioned lower bridge.

Before leaving I made sure we broke a single glass block separting the two floors of the skybunker – this made a vertical gap of greater than four blocks allowing us to minecart teleport into the bunker from above or below (with a little additional prep work), should we wish to. Unfortunately as the vault attack progressed and just as we’d setup a downwards teleporter the plan was discovered by the defenders when Icer (a Volterran build friend) went afk next to the teleporter – revealing it when the defenders came to pearl him.

Despite this small setback the attacks continued – the attackers were continually able to pearl on top of the skybunker and out pvp the defenders whilst being able to leave at any point via the lower bridge. During the battle several defenders were pearled and the Volterrans suffered no pvp casualties. After a day of fighting victory was declared. Volterra became VaultTerror, the World Police and Dollaz were humbled, the Ruin vault was broken – the bad guys had won.

The Attack on the Ruin vault is shown here from Santa’s perspective, https://youtu.be/SHz6SplDUJE?t=326

Gregy165’s (attacker) perspective: https://youtu.be/AkpmxdW3QiM?t=346

Jumpsnake’s perspective (Defender), fighting on the skybridge – he was pearled very near the beginning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jfjpy4iPnwc

Aftermath of the Fourth War, Beginning of Civclassics
Anyway that pretty much ends the story of Devoted. With decent vaults prohibitively expensive the Volterran vault was always vulnerable to a solo skybridge at 3am – which was attempted several times. Ultimately the Volterrans chose to leave the server to die, which it did – and to start afresh on a new server – Civclassics. They would end up playing under an old name for some but new for most – Mir. Meanwhile the leftovers of Ruin would form the town of Anguish on Civclassics – and find themselves 200 blocks north of a nation called Charon – which later turned out to be Volterra/Mir playing on brand new accounts. Whilst Anguish and Mir coexisted peacefully for a long time, albeit with perhaps the most militarised border in civ history, ultimately Anguish sided with Lexington in the Somber war making themselves a target and a victim. They were conquered by Mir and World Police forces early in the war. A lot has happened since then but that is Civclassics history – so read other articles on that.