History of Acadia

Acadia, officially the (Federal) Republic of Acadia (Simplified Tahar: Dorei'Nothlir o Akkadye), was a nation on CivUniverse and CivClassic. It was a parliamentary constitutional republic, emphasizing freedom and democracy, mostly catering to a casual playstyle. Acadia held ancestry from Adina, Moloka, Javaya, and Norlund, but was largely a newfriend nation, with a diverse and welcoming community. Acadia was founded prior to the launch of CivUniverse, roughly in October/September 2020, switched from CivUniverse to Civclassic in March 2021, where it existed until the end of the server in December 2021. On CivUniverse, Acadia was a vassal state of Javaya. It had one of the largest populations of the server and was a notable exporter of hand-farmed potatoes. On Civclassic, Acadia was an associate member of the UDF and a key player in the +,- quadrant, mostly through having the largest population in the quadrant and through its alliances, especially its close alliances with Columbia, Fish, and the PMC alliance.

CivUniverse
Founded around October/September 2020, prior to the server launch, Acadia was one of the older nations of CivUniverse. Undeterred by the risk of shitters and toxicity, Cortwade, the first Prime Minister of Acadia, sought to make a new group on the newly-born server. Quickly after launch Acadians found the continent of Hyperborea and settled their capital city Turing, with help from a few Javayans. Before the day was out Turing featured a factory building and the beginnings of its first large potato farm. In the following month houses were built and the town of Serena was founded as an outpost, and work began on the Acadia Grand Central Station, connecting Turing to Javaya. While activity began to slow down, this was quickly offset by a very successful recruitment initiative, bringing new life and energy into Acadia. The potato farm was expanded, the central station completed, and both Turing and Serena kept growing, most notably with the construction of the Supreme Tribunal in Turing.

Shortly after the influx Acadia held its first elections, reelecting Cortwade for a second term. In this election Acadia's divise party politics would first emerge. The development of an intra-Acadian rail was a paramount issue during the election, with Progressive-Snow candidates campaigning for the construction of an underground rail, and Solidarity Party candidates campaigning for an overground rail and claiming that the Progressive-Snow candidates were dragging their feet on the issue. While the Acadian Parliament kept discussing and delaying the issue, Interim Minister of Homeland Affairs Bloof, member of the Progressive Snow Party and Javaya's 'fixer' in Acadia, eventually decided to finish the rail on her own.

With the excitement of a new server sipping away and newfriend activity going down Acadia's population began to shrink in size despite new recruitment initiatives. Nevertheless, Acadia remained on of the most active nations on the server and kept developing. The Lionsgate Stadium was built, as well as a new, larger factory building, and Turing kept expanding with more residential and commercial buildings.

Activity eventually reached new lows due to the rise in toxicity in groups such as New Vegas and Cincinnati. As a vassal state of Javaya, which joined the Coalition War on the side of the coalition, Acadia did not escape the war against New Vegas and supplied fighters and entered a war economy through a War Bond exchange system to support the war efforts. Unfortunately, industrial output was impaired by the decline in activity and Acadia could not properly supply its fighters, leading to heavy casualties on the battlefield. The end of the war on March 10 2021 was celebrated with a national holiday, as Acadian pearls were freed and Acadia could now look toward its own future again. However, while Acadia, as one of few, carried on for a bit after the war, squashing the Tempestian uprising during which a group of players overclaimed Acadian territory, activity in both Acadia and the rest of the server was drastically reduced due to the war. Numbering around 30-strong at its peak, Acadia had only 10-15 active citizens when the decision to move to CivClassic was made.

Launch and Early History
Cortwade established claims for Acadia on Civclassic on March 10th, 2021 and the Acadian parliament officially voted in favor of the migration on April 4th. The migration finally took place on April 24th. A key player during this transition was Juniortide, a player from Javaya who had left CivUniverse earlier already and established himself in Icenia. A large number of other Javayans joined Acadia as well, though from the Javayans only Juniortide, LightningBerk, and Egi would remain active in Acadia. The area chosen as the new homeland for Acadia, in the largely empty +,- quadrant, had previously been part of the Chanseatic State, before it was annexed and eventually unclaimed by Mir. To the west of the original claims of Acadia lay the old, heavily griefed ruins of Holy Tree, and the Chanseatic town of Vanhoover, and many remnants of the past, including swastikas, wehrmacht flag banners, and Chanseatic State banners, were found here. Located in the deep northeast, a mostly undeveloped region of the map, Acadia originally had no close neighbours other than the aesthetic city of Gondolin to its south and a Mir exclave to its north, and Acadians began to lean into 'frontierism' as a key aspect of their identity.

With a sizable lake island in the middle of Acadia the choice of location for the new capital, New Turing, was easily made, and in a first wave of development a factory building, and a few residential and commercial buildings were quickly build, as well as the prominent Square of Perseverance, which would become the heart of Acadian life. However, unlike on CivUniverse, this time Acadia decided to be a federation with internal states and territories, and after the Capitol District with New Turing, the Territory of Babbage was quickly founded by OwainX with state capital Lovelace, as well as the Territory of Kanava with the eponymous capital city of Kanava, and many more would follow. While much progress was made at the very beginning, further development stalled as people increasingly began to work on their own projects, with one Acadian building a private ore smelter before a communal ore smelter had been established, another working on private xp production, and others working on personal build projects away from New Turing. To a degree the fragmentation was encouraged with the Acadian Constitution granting a voting representative in the Senate, the executive body of the Acadian government, for every group of three or more people with their own State, which was later overturned during Kannon's term as Prime Minister. Unfortunately, few settlements outside of New Turing ever became more than personal build projects and those that did never managed to keep activity up for long, which resulted in there being a large number of ghost towns sprawled throughout the previously mostly untouched landscape.

Nevertheless, progress would continue, albeit slowly. Through ancient pre-existing rail Acadia was now connected to the rest of the server, and most importantly Icenia, as the nearest economic center with 20 minutes on rail. Acadia's utter isolation came to an end in June 2021 as the Kingdom of Fish, a spin-off nation from Wyvern, a friendly close nation on CivUniverse, decided to settle east of Acadia. Acadia and Fish immediately signed a Friendship treaty, binding the two nations in an alliance, and giving citizens from either nation unrestricted access to full citizenship in the other. Acadia began to grow a notable population of Fish duals, including Druid and JayTeeR.

The Era of Instability
While Acadia continued it's slow development, the transition from CivUniverse began showing some of the rough edges it had left on the still quite new nation. Layman, who in CivUniverse had been a divise e-lawyer discord politician with debt difficulties murdered another Acadian after a disagreement and had to be pearled and exiled from Acadia. Mat/Pandastical, another controversial figure due to tensions back in CivUniverse, decided to join Acadia as well, merging his personal Lewis Islands claim with Acadia proper as a territory, but ended up seceding after numerous political disagreements. This however did not end his quarrels with Acadians as there was a disagreement on the exact borders between Acadia and his OMN where Mat mistakenly thought he had included a certain area as a claim in his secession bill which the Acadian Parliament had approved. Furthermore, Mat decided to name his OMN (one man nation) 'the Kingdom of the Acadian Lewis Islands' despite Acadian protests, and eventually declared all Acadians PNG (Persona Non Gratae) because of Acadia's refusal to recognize this name. Acadia responded by declaring Mat PNG to which Mat then responded by declaring 'war' on Acadia. The situation calmed down soon after but flared up again when Mat introduced his nation's flag, featuring an Acadian flag despite Acadian requests not to do so. Growing impatient, Acadia decided to annex Mat's OMN on June 10th 2021 to put an end to the issue. Mat was shortly pearled and was banished from Acadia for a few months. More divisiveness followed when it was found out that the Prime Minister, Cortwade, had been voting in the Senate, despite the Prime Minister not being granted this discretion by the Constitution, and a nearly successful attempt to impeach Cortwade was made.

More trouble followed soon as Acadia had become interesting enough for raiders, but not developed enough to form a successful defense and deterrence against raiders, and a wave of raidings quickly followed. The raiders were aided by a lack of security-awareness in the general Acadian public. A notable example was the case of Peterdama17, a self-admitted alt-account, who managed to steal around 100 diamonds from an Acadian citizen who had left them in a stone reinforced chest with the doors leading to the chest left open. By far the most infamous alt-raids came from Acadian and Fish citizens Druid and JayTeeR however, who went on an alt-raidings spree on alt-accounts indonesianbeans and GalacticBroom65 after Druid's barely failed candidacy for Acadian Minister of Defense, heated discussions about their design of Fish Vault, and general boredom. As they were members of the Acadian military, they had access to Acadian snitches and intel and managed to evade capture for many days, until they were finally pearled by Kayla and Asu. During this time, the infamous SCHIZ0TIER spawned in Acadia, where he commited his very first (petty) raids before his later famous HJI raid. As he hid in the deep northeast for a while after his HJI raid, somewhere around Acadia, a large amount of WP-enforcers and bounty hunters crossed through Acadia in their search, bringing more visitors to New Turing than ever throughout Acadia's history.

Unfortunately, the fall-out of Druid and JayTeeR's alt-raids ended up doing considerable damage to Acadia as several Acadians eventually ended up leaving and activity went down. Bloof, who had recently become Acadia's second Prime Minister after Cortwade's retirement after hitting his three term limit and a burnout, had initially set out to improve Acadia's international relations, but, with voice-chat game-afternoons and group projects, saw herself now forced to deal with the increasingly growing problem of inactivity as well. In matters of foreign affairs however, Acadia began to make progress, with Acadia growing closer to Columbia, which had helped out Acadia during Druid and JayTeeR's alt-raid spree and set up a kickback trap featuring as embassy in New Turing. as well as Icenia, due to JuniorTide's efforts.

The First TNSC Crisis
In late July 2021, the controversial player 'Rainie' RainOfPain125 from CivRealms and CivUniverse started playing on CivClassic, choosing to settle close to the north of Acadia with a quickly gathered group of young newfriends. They established 'The No State Commune', modeled after Rainie's previous failed endeavors with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and the Paris Commune in Norlund on CivRealms. This immediately resulted in an uncomfortable situation as, due to his actions on CivRealms and CivUniverse, Rainie held bad blood with some prominent Acadians and other civ players, including Cortwade and Juniortide, whom Rainie considered to be 'violent anti-communists'.

While Acadia initially meant to settle for an uncomfortable peace, a number of issues quickly sprang up that made it hard for Acadia to ignore its new northern neighbours. As raidings kept being an issue in Acadia, one of them involved a TNSC member, Hawkeye, who was caught in the act but immediately released after an apology and returning the stolen items. However, not much later, another TNSC member was sentenced for raiding in Icenia, who during his trial declared that Rainie had encouraged him and other TNSC members to raid nearby places to help develop TNSC. Additionally, Rainie was accused of vandalism in the form of communist propaganda on JuniorTide's house, and was seen mining newfriends' unfinished diamond veins under New Turing, even though Rainie had already been declared PNG in Acadia. More serious concerns about Rainie and TNSC arised with Rainie's suspicious excursions through Acadia, especially the area where Acadia's skybunker was being constructed, and when Acadia learned that TNSC possessed many hundreds of diamonds and many high-value tools just mere days after they started playing on CivClassic, leading to concerns of a possible hostile sponsor.

With Acadia soon after accidentally finding an almost finished large bunker-complex under construction in TNSC, the Acadian military elected for a pre-emptive strike on the bunker. On July 28, Egi and Juniortide attacked the TNSC bunker, confiscating some of its contents, and disabling it by placing reinforced obsidian inside the bunker. This quickly attracted a lot of international attention as Rainie and other TNSC members made intensive use of global chat to accuse Acadia of harassing them and attacking newfriends as well as posting accusations and requests for help against Acadia on the server reddit page. This attention quickly brought a number of non-Acadian players, TTastic, Okx, MrJeremyFisher, and Polgondwana, who were presumably out for a more than 500 diamonds bounty on Rainie's pearl by MCSPenguin due to CivRealms drama. They did not manage to pearl him, and Rainie was only briefly logboxed.

Soon after, news broke out in Acadia that Rainie had been colluding with members of the Workers of Acadia Party (WAP) in a scheme where they funded Rainie with diamonds and in return Rainie sent people from his political anarcho-communism discord to Acadia to sway the Acadian elections in favour of the WAP. One of the key Acadians and WAP members in this scheme, Zombie_Striker, who was elected Minister of Interior earlier, was a friend of Rainie back on CivRealms, and had been arguing in favor of Rainie the whole time. With all their plans coming crashing down she decided to have her 'revenge' by leaking Senate chats, breaking Acadia's diamond tool factories, and wanting to obbybomb New Turing which most likely only failed because she could not get enough obsidian in time. While Zombie_Striker ended up quitting civ, Rainie wasn't quite done yet as he opted to dox an Acadian citizen, after which he was temporarily banned from CivClassic.

The Era of Recovery
The raidings began to subside, and Acadia's strength began to grow with a succesful campaign to get prot for everyone and with the skybunker becoming operational. Activity stabilized for a while, stimulated by a wave of new people joining the server and Acadia. Additionally, Bloofs efforts in international diplomacy began to pay off as Acadia was admitted into the UDF as an associate member, in good part thanks to the lobbying of Juniortide, who had become Icenia's Secretary of the Interior, and as Acadia signed an agreement with Fish, Mythril, the City of England, and the Ch1pR Empire (later renamed to Sussex) founding the Plus-Minus Concordat alliance.

Acadia's new alliances were soon after put to use when a large group of faction players threathened to coup and attack Acadia. In August 2021, a seemingly normal new person to the server, Bolle Josh, spawned in Acadia. He was seen as a potentially promising newfriend as he was very interested in Acadia's political system, and asked many questions about how nations functioned on the server and what conflict between nations roughly looked like. However, when it came to light that he was merely the first of a group of 15-20 factions players, planning on using their numbers to effectively take over the nation through its democracy, he and his friends were banished from Acadia. They left and settled in an ancient abandoned palace in unclaimed territory near the City of England and Columbia, where they created their short-lived nation of Vusitania. They were quickly insided by both military officer Kannon, and Tomattan, who were able to monitor their actions and movements in-game and through their own live-streams; revealing their locations, recording a large number of racist comments, their threats of grief and hostile actions against several nations (including Acadia, City of England, and Gabon), and reporting them for x-raying which eventually resulted in a few bans. Meanwhile the newly created PMC was kept updated live, and a coalition of PMC members intervened at their place and managed to pearl their entire core group, effectively eliminating all of 'Vusitania'.

As the Javayan Acadians had severely declined in activity the traditional Ashahari People's Party, which had dominated Acadian politics since the very beginnings of CivClassic, began to decline in strenght. Meanwhile, a new party began to rise as the so far marginal National Defense Party and the Visionary Party of Acadia merged into one; the National Visionary Defense Party, seeking broad reforms to Acadia's governmental system. The party immediately gained some political power through a scheme where three members crafted the artifical State of Thompson, earning them a State Senator, a voting representative in the Acadian Senate, as per the Acadian Constitution. Soon after, the October elections were held with Bloof stepping down as Prime Minister after reaching the maximum amount of three terms, and the NVDP ballooned in power, winning all government positions, with now Prime Minister Kannon.

The first reform was abolishing State Senators, so that demographic fragmentation and political power plots would no longer be institutionally encouraged. With the second reform Kannon restructured Acadia's military, making it more independent and hierarchical. The third reform was the Eight Amendment to the constitution, which passed both the National Assembly and the Senate almost unanimously, drastically changing Acadia's governmental system as the National Assembly was completely dissolved and the Senate, comprised of elected ministers, turned into a National Council with full legislative powers. However, popular resistance against the Eight Amendment began to appear as people began to consider the system opressive, likening it to a military junta. Meanwhile, the constitutional reform turned into a constitutional crisis as some of the powers and responsibilities of the National Assembly weren't properly redelegated and the general public heavily resisted the simple solution of a constitutional hotfix delegating those powers and responsibilities to the National Council. As the Eight Amendment became increasingly unpopular and divisive, it was eventually repealed by the National Council by the end of October.

Additionally, Acadia expanded twice in size by claiming the land inbetween Acadia and its close ally Columbia to the west which, with East Columbia touching Acadia on its eastern borders, created a full Columbia / Acadia northwest-northeast world border corridor, linking the Columbian main holdings with Asu's vault Rhea in East Columbia with the last to-be completed part of the full ice road connection under construction. This was essentially part of the final answer to the question of how to establish further integration with Columbia, as the political landscape in Acadia would not allow for full integration into a Columbian Federation, with many Acadians disliking the idea of losing the sovereignty they had proudly gained on CivClassic, no longer having liege as they had with Javaya on CivUniverse. The expansion included the former Chanseatic town of Vanhoover, and grass-roots movement emerged under Acadian newfriends to repopulate and restore the town, which had the approval of the Acadian government as it would legitimize Acadia's claim on the larger area.

The Second TNSC Crisis
Around the end of September, Acadia was shocked by the sudden, short reappearance of Rainie, whose temporary ban had apparently been finished after one month. As Acadians never knew the lenght of the ban, they were surprised to see Rainie back again so quickly. After Rainie's temporary dissapearance the other members of TNSC had decided to rebrand their nation as Consortium with Hawkeye as their new leader, and relations between Acadia and Consortium were generally friendly, though there was not much contact with them as activity in Consortium had long been very low. According to Hawkeye, the TNSC members considered Rainie to be a dictator and they had effectively overthrown him after the events of the TNSC crisis. Hawkeye claimed that, after escaping from his bounty hunters, Rainie was then hunted by his fellow TNSC members, that they eventually had Rainie logboxed, and that they had not been in contact with him afterwards. Choosing to believe him, Acadia asked Consortium for the location of the logbox, so that they would be able to pearl him if Rainie logged in on his main account again.

However, Hawkeye was not very willing to do so, as he demanded payment in return. Negotiations proved fruitless and Acadia decided to go looking for a logbox in Consortium. As Consortium members tried to obstruct the Acadians they were briefly pearled so the Acadians could continue their search. The search was unsuccesful, and another round of negotiations followed where, eventually, Hawkeye led Acadia to Rainie's supposed logbox. The logbox was guarded almost 24 hours a day for several days but Rainie never logged in on his main account again, nor would the Consortium members who, by this time, had grown fully inactive. With the attention Rainie reappearance had amassed on the server a discussion starting to appear around whether the Rainie's ban was sufficiently long enough given the seriousness of doxing, with the admin team eventually making the very unorthodox decision to reach out publically for opinions.

Unfortunately, especially as far as public information goes, a lot of what exactly happened with Rainie after the first TNSC crisis is shrouded in mystery. It is unclear whether Rainie's ban was kept on one month only, or, as Rainie would later claim, that it was extended to three months, which would mean that he was banned again not long after his reappearance. If his ban was not extended, it is also unclear to what extend he had been active on an alt-account during September/October, which he, contradictingly enough, would later claim he was. Neither was it ever publicly established whether Consortium had actually broken ties with Rainie as Hawkeye claimed, or whether the logbox was real or a fabrication.

The Final Era and the End of the World
The PMC alliance had grown with the admissions of Kallos, at the time close to Columbia, and Jomsviking. The alliance soon proved unstable however, when Jomsviking decided to suddenly unilaterally annex its neighbour and fellow PMC ally City of England during the Jomsviking-England Incident, dissatisfied with their low activity which delayed their admittance into the PMC as England took a few days to cast their vote, and desiring Englands plains biome for the agriculture of melons. As Acadia helped out with the removal of the banners, signs, and the hostile city bastion Jomsviking had placed in the City of England, the situation escalated dramatically as heated dicussions, especially between Acadia's newly elected Prime Minister Owain and Kallos' leader Kayla, supporting Jomsviking, turned relations sour. While Jomsviking had already decided to back down, the damage had already been done and virtually all PMC members planned to leave the alliance afterwards, with Acadia and Fish together moving to the re-established UNC alliance, announced by Varkonia and Gabon. The PMC alliance was disbanded mere days after the original incident.

The initial tensions were worsened when the leader of Jomsviking, who held citizenship in Acadia, was declared POS by Prime Minister Owain, asking her to renounce her citizenship in Acadia in order for the POS to be removed. The Acadian Senate disagreed with this action and Owain briefly resigned, as well as High Commissar Cortwade, as there was a heated discussion around whether the POS was an appropriate tool to use in this situation. Unfortunately, the Acadian Constitution did not allow the government or the National Assembly to remove an individual's citizenship. This was eventually fixed with an amendment, but together with a legal incident during the December elections where it took days for it to be established whether the Ministry of Foreign Affairs actually legally existed and whether an election for the position of Minister of Foreign Affairs was to be held, this highlighted a growing problem with Acadia's legal system. Acadia, no longer a simple newfriend nation, had outgrown its Constitution, and, at the same time, with all its amendments which at times conflicted with each other, the Acadian legal system had become increasingly complex, to the point where there was in practice only one Acadian, Aelfred, who fortunately happend to be the Chief Justice, could somewhat effectively navigate through it. This complexity exacerbated the already existing practice of e-lawyerism in Acadia.

In the meantime, New Turing, for the first time, began to thrive as Yoahtlan economic presence began to grow in the city and a large newfriend wave increased activity and the need for more residential units. Many residential units, as well as commercial units, and a new, larger factory and storage building were built by TheGreatUniter who had recently started playing on CivClassic and joined Acadia. Whereas New Turing never managed to find a convincing, cohesive general aesthetic before, and was limited by the small-scale Acadian architectural norms, Uniter introduced a new architectural style for the city, with taller and more detailed buildings. His style proved immensively succesful as many buildings in Uniter's style began to pop up and genuine excitement about the future of New Turing began to emerge. Rapid development in New Turing kept continuing until the very end of the server, with the government discussing far reaching plans to increase its control over the capital to organize its redevelopment and to find a way around the e-lawyerism and lack of executive tools that made derelicting unused, unaesthetic buildings in the capital near impossible. Center to the redevelopment plan was to remove the western half of the large boulevard reaching down to the quartz Parliament building construction site, as well the largely unfinished quartz Parliament building itself, which after many months of stalled construction had become a symbol of New Turing's previous stagnation.

However, these plans never came to be, as the Acadian government began receiving signals that the server was about to end, and with the incident of Pearled Harbor following. Acadia's history on CivClassic came to an end.