Vintage Civ

Vintage Civ
Basic Info
Start Date	May 27th, 2022 (2.0)
Owner	SouthernBloc
Admins	Pkeod, SimpleBastard, Novocain
Subreddit	/r/VintageCiv
Discord	https://discord.gg/wkfyFe8tHn
Minecraft Version	1.16.5 (Vintage Story)
Server address	play.vintageciv.com
Website	https://www.vintageciv.com/

Vintage Civ is a Civ server on Vintage Story that had its first beta released on the 2nd of January 2022.

Along with the intense hyper-realism of vanilla Vintage Story, Vintage Civ uses a variety of new plugins, most notably the Shackle Gear . Previously used on AbjectPovertyCraft, the Shackle Gear works similarly to Prison Pearl as a means for players to self-police themselves, a notable "rule" of the Civ genre, being the idea of an “anarchistic gaming experiment” . Other features include Citadel built into the VS base game as plumb-and-square Reinforcement, to make up for absence of vanilla Vintage Story land claiming which prevents players from interacting, placing, or destroying blocks inside the land claim (at no cost whatsoever, unlike Reinforcement).

Another notable difference to vanilla VS is the lack of other player icons in the map, including your own. This makes the addition of the client-side mod VSHUD a necessity to many Vciv players for waypointing and navigation purposes. A certain feature coming from Vanilla VS allows players to be able to see other ingame player nametags within a certain distance, making underground or secluded living difficult. While people have been a bit resenting of the feature ever since VCiv launched, the devs have been thinking away at a rework of the ingame nametag system . Another VS counterpart to Minecraft Civ is the inclusion of the Snitches mod, which comes from, well, Snitches.

More info pertaining to the unique features in Vintage Story compared to Minecraft can be found at the official Vintage Story wiki For other miscellaneous details and the mods included can be found at the Vintage Civ website

Mechanics of Vintage Civ

Vintage Civ throughout its entire history has based many of its features and mechanics off past Civ-like servers, most notably CivCraft and CivClassics. These are some notable differences to vanilla VS and/or similarities/differences to MC Civ.

• The base game of Vintage Story includes reinforcement, its MC Civ counterpart being citadel. Similiar to Minecraft, different materials, different powers of protection. Steel is the highest and common rocks are the lowest in reinforcement power.
• Unlike vanilla Vintage Story you cannot see others on the world map, a side effect of this is not being able to see your own map icon as well. Despite this you can see other players nametag at a certain unspecified distance
• A far different way of terrain generation,
• Combat Tag, forcing a player to either wait 30 seconds to log out of the server after getting hit by another player, or exit before the time limit runs out and leave a "dummy player" that can be killed.
• Snitches
• Bastions
• Shackle Gear. Highest prison time per item being Anthracite. [Someone add more details and how to fuel a ShackleGear]
• Acid Blocks - Made from Brass Plates, Cloth, and Sulfuric Acid - Place on top of a reinforcement, and it will slowly eat away at the block over a longer span of time.
• 25k by 25k size, with a diameter of 50k blocks.
• CivLocks
• CivBooks
• Instruments Mod
• Galileo's Thermometer - Made from Glass, a metal plate, and Aqua-Vitae - While a decorative piece, hovering your mouse will show you the actual temperature of the area around you.
• [More to be added]

Nations and Civilizations

Main article: List of Nations on VintageCiv

Player groups include anything from small scale groups who have just established a settlement to larger kingdoms made up of dozens of players.

Talmberg as of June 23

Name	Leader	Government	Founding Date	Discord Link
Kindread Clan	Candles	Collectivism	21st March 2022	Kindread Clan
Talmberg	Polskizoldak	Collectivism	13th January 2022	Talmberg
Vikings of Vintage	Davis		27th May 2022	Vikings of Vintage
Crimson Cliffs	Forks & Makometer		27th May 2022
Krydor	Romec
Irtsu	Arsakes	Barbarism	27th June 2022	Irtsu
Irethorn
The Tarriyans	Zelascelar	Monarchy	24th July 2022

History

1.0 History

Main article: Vintage Civ 1.0 History

Vintage Civ 1.0 was released on January 13, 2022 after about a week of testing. During launch, very little occurred as players were still settling the map. The major conflict of the server involved Channers and Bastion, a popular town on the server, involving one of Bastion's residents Xorborax. After about 3 months, the server fell into decline as popular hype for CivMC's release, admins working on VintageCiv 2.0, and general disinterest to maintain nations on the server lost motivation for many players.

2.0 Test Servers

The day before launch on May the 26th of 2022 SouthernBloc posted on the #announcements of the VCiv Discord channel featuring a large message featuring and listing most of the main server details aswell as new changes for 2.0. The message states:

To @everyone As we get closer to release, roughly 24 hours out, we are doing the final scrubs and polishing on some mods and concepts. The next phase is to roll the dice, and see what kind of world the new generation is going to give us. So far, the snippets I have taken look promising. I've been asked to provide a server info sheet, which I am happy to give. This really only contains the information you should know at the start, as we have always encouraged the players to reach out and discover the new world and its changes. Its been a bumpy road, but everyone's positive energy has kept a lot of this project alive. Thanks guys.

Server Info

Version:1.16.5 IP: play.vintageciv.com

World Info: The world will be 25K by 25k, with climates being realistic, dirt gravity enabled. Fire Spread is also on.

Spawning: Spawning will be random spawn anywhere on the map, if a bed is not set. This has been tested pretty thoroughly. Make sure you lay in the bed for a good amount of time, rather than just right clicking and praying.

Class Changes:

Tailor: Class Exclusive Linen, as well as other tailor required products.

Malefactor: Can make the Raft Hunter: Class Exclusive with Survival mod traps and the such

Clockmaker: Class exclusive to mechanical stuff with the exception of basic windmills. Also required to make Bastions.

Auction House: Disabled

PVP: PVP is enabled. There is also a combat tag of approx. 30 secs, and if you log before it is up you run the risk of your player entity being left in game.

Death Changes: Upon death, you will drop everything with the exception of clothes. Dropped armor will take durability damage, which can be repaired.

There is a lot of game mechanics that were changed for the sake of the genre, that I wont go into full detail about now. As a town, city, community, as you learn things, I encourage you to share what you find. -Vintage Civ Team

It was announced on April 9, 2022 by SouthernBloc that an early version of the 2.0 server has been launched publicly, to last for 24 hours, later said to be on for about 2 weeks. The servers listed below were publicy released with the intention of finding bugs and balancing issues that can be found in the early release of new content being added. These test servers contains highly anticipated features not seen before in the Vintage Civ server such as bastions, combat tag, pack animals, more enemies, new land generation, and a variety of new building blocks and other smaller mechanics. On April 17 2022, SouthernBloc held a Discord call discussing the details surrounding 2.0 of Vintage Civ and the future of the server. In the same call he showcased the trailer for 2.0, planning for release on May 27 2022.

The center of the unnamed 2.0 alpha town as of April 23

Beta

It was announced on April 9, 2022 by SouthernBloc that an early version of the 2.0 server has been launched publicly, to last for 24 hours, later said to be on for about 2 weeks (Which did not last 2 weeks). There has been a few small camps set up by players that have crossed the oceans and landmasses far from spawn, though none come close to the size of the 1.0 towns.

Alpha

After existing for 9 days, the 2.0 beta world was wiped for a new one that was supposed to last til launch day of the actual 2.0 world . The server ran on version 1.16.5 and the size dimensions for the world were -2500 to 2500 east to west and -2500 to 2500 north to south making the world 5000 x 5000 blocks.

After stumbling on SouthernBlocs homestead Miloski and other two players being McBain and Fey all allied to form a town on the island SouthernBloc was originally situated in. As of April 21 this settlement had a total of 4 players currently in the mid-late bronze age with a number of other higher tier items and gear. Not much is too say about this 2.0 test iteration.

Test

A group photo taken by SouthernBloc on April 24 with Fey (with the hunter's hood) Cratin (in the bed) Nessie (white haired) and Miloski (blue skinned) just before they left the island

With the terrain generation being done for the most part and the world map much bigger than the previous two 2.0 iterations, Southern states this server will last til the 2.0 launch day . It was noticed the day after the server launched that naturally grown wild crops are unusually rare , along with the fact that the equator is also unusually large, makes finding and growing crops much harder.

Starting off with a small dirt hut player Nessie built, it quickly gained a handful total of residents mostly because it was one of the only public settlements at the time. The settlement's roster comprised of Fey, Miloski, SouthernBloc, Cratin, and Nessie. The island settled on was distinctly shaped like an elephants head, making it known as Elephant Island or of similar titles based off the islands appearance on a map.

The 5 player group set sail in hopes of finding an appropriate area for farming and forestry after discovering Elephant Island is inadequate to grow most crops. It took a while for all the group members to eventually meet up and start building due to various mishaps along the journey.

2.0 History

The server officially launched on Friday of May 27 2022. With randomspawn on in a certain radius around 0,0 to prevent server overload, the many who already joined has started small towns and groups with other players. With the vanilla classes possessing new and improved specialization/balancing features, towns are encouraged to look for at least one of every class to be able to craft everything they may need, e.g the clothier trait is exclusive to the tailor class, meaning tailored gambeson can only be crafted by tailors. On May 30 an attempt at establishing a international union of peace and trade between the nations of Vintage Civ has been made in the form of a Discord server made by Polskizoldak .

Crimson Coasts Conflicts

Through May 30th and May 31th there has been several instances of player conflict with the members of the Crimson Cliffs towards other players on the server. Claims of unlawful attacks on multiple players or groups have been made by players such as Luke (Syndicaliste) , Dythanos , and Ratchet_Sly . Two of those mentioned players, Luke and Dythanos being apart of the Djanimehri group, a peaceful group focused on agricultural who were the target of the initial raid conducted by the Crimson Cliffs. This first attack lasted roughly 30 minutes, combatants included Forks, Makometer, Apotheosis, and Captain Oats (Crimson Cliffs) and Syndicaliste and Dythanos (Djanimehri). There were multiple casualties on both sides, including Makometer and Captain Oats as well as both Djanimehri members.

One of three images posted by Dythanos on June 1st showing what he did to Crimson Cliffs after their attack on Djanimehri beforehand

Approximately 5 hours after this raid occurred, Dythanos located the Crimson Cliffs' settlement and quickly began counter raids of his own. Combatants included Forks, Apotheosis, Captain Oats, and PlagueDoctor (Crimson Cliffs) and only Dythanos (Djanimehri). All present Crimson Cliffs members suffered multiple casualties as Dythanos engaged equipped with iron armor and weapons, severely out gearing them. Two more of these raids were conducted throughout the night as Dythanos settled on a scorched earth policy, destroying what structures he could and despawning any resources he could not carry, this being contrary to the Crimson Cliffs' choice to leave what could not be carried within undisturbed containers and refrain from razing structures. As said by Luke, Dythanos just about got their (Djanimehri) revenge with the killing of CaptainOats, Forks, and PlagueDoctor557 on May 31

On June the 1st Djanimehri member Luke posted a document about the entire situation, why it occurred and the aftermath of it. It states due to Dythanos' past hostility towards his neighbors in 1.0, Crimson went themselves to Djanimehri in an attempt to weaken the town as a whole due to Dythanos being affiliated with Djan as a member, something Crimson did not see good for them. It is clear using text evidence from Dythanos himself on Discord and the document "...Dythanos is not yet satisfied that justice has been served" that while now exiled, Dythanos is still not satisfied with what was done to Crimson, that he may want more. The full document can be found and read here

June 13-16

On June 14th the raider Meunster was found being harbored by a small group of players beneath the town Hyperborea mainly built by player DonaldTrump, keeping the criminal out of anyone else's sights. Previously thought to be peaceful, the small group of players who were then living within the Vikings of Vintages' lands whilst harboring a notorious criminal were later caught through a joint raiding venture from members of the Vikings of Vintage. As a statement to the world, the Vikings torched and looted the village and from then on imposed a new law which states any trespassing on Viking lands are to be KoS'ed and those considered friends or merchants to the Vikings are exempt from this law.

During an investigation of the now-ghost town of Hyperborea finds that an unknown individual drew a dozen or so phallic images around the town . Another detail not fully understood is the presence of the "group Dythanos", a group created by an unknown player and at an unknown time which was the group used for a large amount of the reinforcements found at the raided Hyperborea . This is a somewhat unknown technique that can be used in Vintage Story to "impersonate" a player's reinforcements or locks on certain placed blocks by tricking players who view the block into thinking its reinforced by a certain player not a group as anyone can create a group under any name to do that. An example of this tactic being to possibly frame a player as being allied with a certain group or to show them off as a bad person, both examples which has specifically happened during either 1.0 or 2.0.

A bar graph of the unique players joining by day since the start of 2.0 based on #serber-chat connect-disconnect notifications. Average unique players per day is 65.6 for the range shown. Made by user McBain on Discord