Caledonia

Caledonia
Flag of Caledonia
Demonym	Caledonian
Capital City	Aberdeen
Government	Diarchy
Consuls	Meat312, Wingzero54
Founded	July 2018
Population	15
Location	+,+ Quadrant; 8800, 600

Caledonia is a friendly nation in the +,+ quadrant, founded by Wingzero54 and meat312.

It is connected by rail to Iria, Pripyat, Entrana, and the Brotherhood of Steel. It is connected to the 0,0 - Mir rail through the Iria rail; to Vinland, New Yoahtl City, and Westminster through Entrana.

It is well known for being a welcoming nation full of nice people and for its Securemall, the whitelisted shopping building that requires pre-approval to access to purchase enchanted diamond tools, armor, and weapons.

Caledonia welcomes any new players looking to get started, the experienced playerbase is ideal for helping teach new players the server mechanics.

Although it is a fairly young nation compared to many of the other established civilizations, it has quickly grown prosperous and may be considered one of the wealthiest nations on the server.

Exports, Trade

Prot 4, enchanted tools, and weapons are all big exports for Caledonia. Meat312 is a renowned producer of enchanted goods, all of which are available to purchase from securemall in Caledonia once pre-approved for access. Bulk purchases are also available - have a big digging job ahead of you? Buy 10 pickaxes in bulk to receive an even greater discount!

Obsidian is available for purchase as well, produced by Wingzero, Caledonia will price match any better offers you can show proof of! Bulk purchases of obby are welcome.

More shops are soon being setup in the securemall area, with new offerings like logs, rotten flesh, wool, dandelions, stone, andesite, diorite, granite, and more getting added every day!

Players from all over the +,+ and the server in general travel to Caledonia to purchase these goods, and Caledonia is working to improve rail connections to make it easier than ever to access the shops.

XP Production

Wingzero54 created Yoahtl Eastern Hamlet XP (YEHXP) with Gdan, Nevermoregrimm, and gbrb. The four of them created the XP farms in eastern Yoahtl, and used the farms for personal XP production and to assist the Yoahtl government in their XP production.

When Wingzero54 and Meat312 left to create Caledonia, Wingzero54 farmed YEHXP for a while longer but the great distance between the XP farms and Caledonia led Wingzero54 to quit farming them for some time. The other founders grew inactive and quit playing Minecraft, leaving the farms unused. A griefer, believed to be Poortea, griefed the farms but it was quickly cleaned up by Wingzero54 and they were then bastioned to prevent future grief.

When Fredhun14 joined Caledonia he immediately desired to create XP, and together with Wingzero54 (but mostly Fredhun) they began farming the YEXHP farms once again and churning out XP.

Caledonia floated the idea of taking over the territory holding YEHXP from Yoahtl, but was quickly rejected despite Yoahtl's disuse of the land.

After that Caledonia built its' own XP farms to bring production to a local area and reduce reliance on long-distance foreign lands. With the creation of the new farms, Caledonia abandoned YEHXP which now stays under the ownership of GDAN and is available for use to Yoahtl.

History

Birth of a Nation

Caledonia had its' roots in Yoahtl, dreamt up by Yoatlan citizens who had grown disillusioned with the functions and operations of the Yoahtl government. Wingzero54 had served as Councillor for two terms and Deputy Alcuahtl throughout one of those terms. Meat312 served as Councillor for one term.

Both had different, but similar, reasons for wanting to leave Yoahtl. The endless government battles on policy and menial details alone was enough to drive anybody insane. Wingzero54 had spent his first council term attempting to push through governmental reforms, and after meeting an impenetrable wall in the form of Dr_Oracle, spent his second council term coming to grips with how he could function in the Yoahtl government. Eventually Wingzero54 found that he could not stand Yoahtl anymore, his own views on government and operations being so different from Yoahtl's. One aspect which drove a wedge was Yoahtl's deeply ingrained policy of isolation, and for a long time, unwillingness to actively bring in new players.

Wingzero54 and Meat312 had gotten to know each other first by working together in the Prot business. Meat312 has been a mainstay in the Prot trade since he started on the server, and Wingzero54 had the ambition of selling discounted prot 3 instead of prot 4. He worked with meat312 to learn the trade and while he ended up just selling Prot 4 (making Prot 3 is just untenable), he forged bonds of friendship with meat312.

Time spent together on the council brought Wingzero and Meat closer together, even though they clashed on many ideas. Meat312's dis-illusionment came from frustrations of being Yoahtl's general. There were constant squabbles about how much access Meat should have to government resources and funds, and a constant tug-of-war granting and taking away citadel group permissions. Yoahtl invading Laconia was the final straw for Meat312. He saw the conflict through to the end, but by then was fully resolved to abandon Yoahtl for a new nation with Wingzero54.

Caledonia Original Claims

The two players wanted to leave for greener pastures, aka less active region. They naturally gravitated to the +,+ quadrant which was quiet and until the fall of 2018, pretty empty. Wingzero54 had a requirement in mind - a convenient spread of biomes which could sustain large scale XP farming within the boundaries of the nation. They found that in their eventual claims, a large island with several biomes, all large enough to hold XP farms.

Wingzero54 and Meat312 spent July preparing the nation, building basic infrastructure before publicly declaring their nation. The announcement came in August 2018 on the subreddit. As previously mentioned, the fall of 2018 was a burgeoning time for the +,+ quadrant with many new nations cropping up.

After a couple months in Caledonia, and the founding of the capital, Aberdeen, Meat312 began advertising his wares again for players all across the server to come buy prot and tools in Caledonia. A couple alt raiders hit Aberdeen, craft_2_kids (to this day an unknown alt that has never logged in again) got away with multiple sets of prot and weapons and assumedly dropchested them outside of Caledonia where another account picked them up, or they are waiting to be grabbed perhaps still to this day. After this raid we overhauled the prot and tool sales, but several restricted inventory and access which hurt sales. Erutara attempted to raid, but was caught in the act by Wingzero54 who, expecting a naked random, instead found a fully geared and potted account which proceeded to wipe the floor with Wingzero54. N3ptune would later admit to being Erutara some months later.

Caledonia Current Claims

In response to the alt raids to Aberdeen, and with Mir expanding their own claims, Caledonia decided to expand its' claims to meet the borders of Mir and enable them to expand their snitch grids. It was announced November 2018 on the subreddit.

Throughout this entire time period Caledonia consisted mainly of just Wingzero54 and Meat312. Scouter9001 moved to Caledonia and played for some time before becoming inactive. Other assorted players joined and quit playing, all attempts at recruitment ending in failure.

An Era of Growth

A renaissance would come to Caledonia, however, with the concurrence of several events. A secure shopping mall was designed and constructed, the current home of the prot, tool and weapon sales of Meat312. It is whitelisted to control access to the shopchests. New players arrived in the form of HenryDrayton, of MtA, who decided to leave MtA after the fall of Godomasta and failure of that administration. Fredhun14, longtime friend of Wingzero54 from a previous server, became active in minecraft again and joined CivClassic.

Caledonia annexed the Brotherhood of Steel, announced June 2019 on the subreddit. The two nations had been working together since the Brotherhood of Steel moved into old Freedonia, and the consolidation of small +,+ nations is seen as being good for the overall health and activity of the quadrant.

With the annexation of the Brotherhood several new players were brought into the fold of Caledonia. Considering Freedonia's distance from Aberdeen would make it hard for this newly annexed exclave to collaborate, several polls were held by Brotherhood leader YourAverageRick in the Caledonia discord in which it was decided that the Brotherhood would relocate their efforts to Caledonia proper for the time being. They would build a new town in the Northern savanna, a town called Lost Hills. Hockey328, one of these integrated citizens, would go on to become a government official after a single month.

The beginning of August 2019 would bring forth a small newfriend population boom, and with newfriends came new opportunities. Among them was SwordMaster7777, who might be referred to as a "veteran" newfriend due to his time hermitting on Caledonian land for some months, learning much about the server's mechanics (although it wasn't Caledonian when he originally settled there). SwordMaster7777 quickly found his niche as a builder, first decorating the Iria rail tunnel, and then making the Caledonian Library. Another player, 8jaaroud, built the town smithy before proceeding to kick-start his tree-chopping bot initiative.

Wingzero54 had had eyes on the western plains biome for some time as an ideal spot for a new settlement. As opposed to Aberdeen's medieval build aesthetic, this new town would have a Greco-Roman aesthetic along with a matching name: Corinth. By the beginning of September 2019, SwordMaster7777 had made the Corinthian Mall, complete with a space for a factory inside, an important infrastructural advancement for future construction in the budding city. YourAverageRick had also completed the Lost Hills station at this time, forming a rail connection with Aberdeen. Although nobody lived in these towns yet, they had become promising projects.

While more players were joining, the city of Aberdeen began to expand as well, bringing forth many new builds and the borders of the city expanding quite a bit, to the point where builds were starting to get closer to Securemall. The old train station began to become crowded as it didn't have enough room for all the current and future lines, and so SwordMaster was called on again to build a vital piece of infrastructure.

F(Rick)tion (AKA the exile of YourAverageRick)

Despite YourAverageRick's seemingly strong desire to be successfully integrate into Caledonian culture and politics, his stay within Caledonia would be quite fitfull and would end with a disgraced Rick leaving to another country after a series of bitter events. It could be said that there are generally four major factors that led to his decision to leave. While a seemingly small interpersonal series of events may seem like a footnote, many of these events had long lasting developments on Caledonian society and policy.

The first of these is commonly referred to within Caledonia as "Beacongate" due to it's quite scandalous nature. Near the end of August, Rick had had a very bad stroke of bad luck: he fell down a beacon hole, and dropping what he claimed to be 80d worth of gear. Due to Fred being AFK nearby and keeping Rick's death chunks loaded, Rick could not get back in time, losing everything he dropped due to the beacon hole death. Rick was quite pissed and demanded Fred pay him back, to which Fred adamantly refused, maybe partly due to Rick's hostility in his demand for reparations. Rick therefore brought this dispute to the attention of the Consuls, who attempted to begin mediating the problem. Before any valid solution could be had, Rick decided to grief Fred, however, therefore costing any chance Rick could of had at getting fair reparations. Rick would then clean his grief up, but even then this would lead to a long feud with Fred that would last for the rest of Rick's stay at Caledonia. To avoid any such problem again, the Consuls enacted a law that any beacon hole must be covered to prevent any unnecessary falling deaths.

The second major factor had to do with Rick's overall position within the Caledonian governmental structure. This is where another important Caledonian player comes into play: SwordMaster. As Sword was constructing the massive behemoth that was the New Aberdeen Train Station, he would occasionally need rarer materials he could not easily get, such as sea lanterns, which he would have to wait for a government official to retrieve for him. Due to SwordMaster's dedication to Caledonia as well as his liberal use of his own materials when doing major builds, it was decided he could be trusted to access the government warehouse to get whatever he needed. While Sword was not named a government official, this was still a relatively big step up for any citizen and showed that they were considered very trustworthy and perhaps even influential to Calednian society. Rick was not happy with this, demanding to know why he had not yet been trusted with warehouse access, despite being a Caledonian for two months longer then SwordMaster as well as being the leader of the former Brotherhood of Steel (and could therefore be considered the leader of a major sect of Caledonians). An important sub-factor was the fact that Hockey was made a member of government only two weeks after the annexation, while Rick was left seemingly in the dust despite his former position. This then began a large discussion as to exactly why Rick didn't yet have warehouse access or government status. What happened in these discussions would snowball along with the other factors, generally making SwordMaster's warehouse access the breaking point of this whole ordeal.

Generally, the counter-argument to Rick's warehouse privilege claim boiled down to the belief that he would take much more more than he could and/or would give, which, with enough time, would deplete the warehouse to the point no other national projects could benefit from it. The prevailing sentiment was that if someone were given access to the warehouse, they would try to give materials back in order to ensure that Caledonia would always have a steady supply of building materials for whatever infrastructure it needed. The members of government (as well as SwordMaster) held the belief that Rick simply doesn't gather enough materials himself. A bit of evidence to back this belief up was the glacial progress of Rick's town: the previously mentioned Lost Hills.

Despite working on it for about two months up to that point, Lost Hills only consisted of two half-finished buildings and the underground rail station, which only had room for two lines. Rick claimed that he could not build Lost Hills due to a lack of materials, which he believed the government should provide him, only to be countered with the fact that he could've easily gathered a great deal of materials in the time that had elapsed since Lost Hill's founding. SwordMaster theorized that Rick had been spending so much time in other ventures that he had no time to gather materials, at which Rick took great offense and threatened SwordMaster in response. This was of course, not the first time Rick threatened people he disagreed with.

Rick, during this argument, dug up his old beef with Fred, as well as trying to rope in another player he had issue with, the botter 8jaaroud, the nature of which will be covered in the next section. Rick, trying yet again to prove his worth, argued that Fred had done nothing for the nation of Caledonia, and that he, Rick, had done more for the country than Fred. This would seemingly lead to the conclusion that if Rick is better than Fred and Fred is a government member, than Rick should also be a government member. An important thing to note here was that Fred joined long before Fred did, which means that Rick could not accurately gauge what Fred had actually done for the country. During the time that Rick has stayed in Caledonia, Fred had been building a gigantic castle to the North of Aberdeen as a personal project after accumulating many materials and a bit of wealth. While this seemed to be aimed as a personal project on Fred's part, it no doubt became a landmark of the city, and as it was not finished yet, it's cultural value could not be properly ascertained beyond that. Due to it's nature as a personal project, this part of Rick's argument could be conjectured as being that Fred was an ineffectual government member who only did things for himself (and possibly implications of pure nepotism). SwordMaster, weary of this bitter debate and wanting to end it, made a very long speech on the Caledonian discord about he thought it meant to be a proper government official of Caledonia, systematically talking about each of the four government officials at the time and going into detail about what they had done for the country to deserve their illustrious titles and privileges. This appeared to have ended the debate, with Rick being fairly quite in the Caledonia discord up until his departure. While the second factor was paramount in Rick's departure, there are two other events that helped to form this monstrosity.

The third factor consisted of another attempt by Rick to gain some kind of governmental power in which he proposed for Caledonia to become a democracy, with Rick forming his own "political party" to support his goal. It could generally be said that as nations in Civ change and develop over time, the political systems of these nations must change and develop as well. While a king might be fine by himself with a small kingdom, an emperor must surely have vassals that help him properly administrate. Rick, after witnessing the great progress and growth at the time, must have judged the best time to commit to some sort of political action so that he may reap long lasting benefits. However, this was seemingly a poor judgement; while there was a trickle of discussion over time as to best develop the government, the majority if not all of the Caledonians were fine with the Diarchy in some capacity. People didn't seem to want to give up stability just for the sake of "democracy". While that could be a noble goal to pursue, there are many nations throughout Civ history that have become destabilized due to such wanton pursual of goals without proper consideration. As the Diarchs allowed a great deal of freedom to the populace and generally stayed out of shit-stirring, they were very well-regarded. While Rick had mistimed his attempt to gain political power, he had also done it in a completely wrong way.

8jaaroud, seeing this as his opportunity to mess with Rick, formed a parody party that, generally speaking, was the opposite of what Rick wanted. Rick's feud with 8j was quite a strange one, as he seemed to be genuinely pissed at 8j's anarcho-capitalist roleplay. Whether Rick could get that this was a joke or not is debatable. 8jaaroud, on the other hand, at first didn't seem to realize the tendency for Rick to take everything extremely seriously. They traded a few insults now and then, though it never quite got to the level of bitter that Rick had for Fred. 8j's political stunt of course irritated Rick causing him to become even more royally pissed.

Of course the Diarchy would have none of Rick's shenanigans and stricken down his bid for democracy. In Rick's narrative of how Caledonia was formed, Wing and Meat left Yoahtl not out of weariness due to difficulty in passing policy, not out of avoidance of political squabble, not out of feeling voided by the system they tried their damnedest to support, but because it wasn't democratic enough and that Wing and Meat left to start Caledonia as they wanted democracy but could not find it in Yoahtl. [An important editor's note here is that Wingzero wrote the early history section of Caledonia and it's founding on this very wiki page, which outlined what in the Consul's opinion were there reasons for leaving Yoahtl. With further inspection, one may deduce that it mentions nothing about "democracy".] Due to the Diarch's refusal of democracy conflict with Rick's narrative, he tried to brand them as hypocrites. Despite being informed of the history recorded as being against his narrative, Rick would continue to believe that the Caledonian government was the pinnacle of hypocrisy. While RIck might've been able to gain political influence had he strategized better, with Rick's departure it can never be known what role he could've played in the Caledonian government.

The fourth factor is comparatively simple in the grand scheme of things though it is extremely important in itself; that is, the relinquishing of the Brotherhood of Steel claims (including Freedonia, Rick's former home for many months). While no official reason as to why this happened was mentioned, it could be guessed that the land, it it were to be used, would not be used for a long time, as well as having to maintain snitches and provide enough construction so that it may not be called a crayon claim would generally be a pain and would take resources from more important projects in Caledonia proper. The Consuls did not seem to consult Rick on this decision either, making Rick even more furious. While everyone was generally satisfied with the land Caledonia had, Rick stood alone yet again in his anger at the claim drop.

Due to a all the above factors, Rick simply decided that there was too much friction between him and the other Caledonians. So, due to irreconcilable issues and differences of opinion, Rick departed Caledonia, never to return. Despite his seemingly calm departure, Rick would still hold a grudge against Caledonia, and would begin shit talking the nation shortly after he left. Due to this, Meat temp banned Rick from the Caledonia Discord as punishment. Rick would then beocme extremely hostile upon the end of this temp ban, prompting for the full banning of Rick from the Caledonian Discord as well as a ban from entering Caledonian land claims, fully cementing Rick as permanently exiled.

Rick still shit talks Caledonia in other discords to this day.

The majority of Caledonians seemed to be relieved that this feud was over, as this was the primary (and practically only) drama that had plagued Caledonia. Except for maybe the former Brotherhood of Steel citizen YodelingDwarf, who, being the closest to Rick, seemed to be disappointed that Rick was gone. As the new settlement of Lost Hills was Rick's project, it has fallen into disuse; a ghost town of a few half-finished buildings.

Tl;dr: Hoes mad.

Continued Prosperity

After the conclusion of the feud with Rick, Caledonia continues to benefit from another influx of newfriends and a great deal of new projects happening round Aberdeen. The New Aberdeen Train Station was finally finished with room for 12 separate lines, a vast upgrade from the old station, and one of these newfriends, LordGonner, built a new hotel for newfriends to stay in as the old tavern could no longer hold all the incoming newfriends.

Another scandal would occur when three Caledonian citizens (Wateroo, Ibis, and Helpmeplease) raided the inactive nation of Pripyat. They would be demoted back to residents and pearld for two weeks for their crimes. As this seemed to be a small one time occurrence of uncondoned raiding, Caledonia would still continue to have a positive reputation, and for the most part free of the growing animosity against the nations of big international alliances that was occurring at this time.

Geography

Caledonia has a nice variety of biomes, consisting of Savanna, red desert, sunflower plains, roofed forest and mesa. The amount of plains and forest area are small compared to the much more drier biomes, making Caledonia an arid and hot nation. The plains and forests it does have are vital biomes in Calednonian xp production.

Caledonia borders Carpathia, New Sovia, Brennau, Mir, and the U3P.

Settlements:

Aberdeen

Abderdeen is the capital of Caledonia and destination of all rail lines. The famed Securemall can be found on the western outskirts of Aberdeen.

Freedonia (Formerly)

Freedonia is the former home of the Brotherhood of Steel before joining Caledonia, who had resided in the dilapidated town built by the long dead nation of Freedonia. With the relinquishing of the Brotherhood of Steel territory, Freedonia is now up for grabs once again.

Corinth

Corinth is a small proto-settlement in the western plains of the main island. Many vanity builds are planned for it, although it does not have the proper infrastructure to be populated as of now.

Lost Hills (Abandoned)

Lost Hills was the Brotherhood of Steel's attempt at trying to integrate with Caledonia easier while trying to keep their own identity. Due to the lass of effort Rick put into it, as well as his eventual departure, it is now out of use.