By Espark on Sun 11 Apr, 2021.

Ai-Mo Times

April 11th, 2021

“The only literate tribe deserves the best in information and entertainment”

Polytopia news

Xin-Xi Tribe moon

This month's tribe moon is for Xin-Xi. As usual, we got a picture with a short blurb, discounts of Xin-Xi merch and an art contest. This time, the task is to “design a Xin-xi building or buildings and explain the significance of it in a short blurb.” Only one submission is allowed per person, but the submission can include multiple buildings. Low-effort submissions are not allowed either.

For the first time, the winner of the contest will get 1 month of Discord Nitro. This is in addition to the normal limited polytopia stickers and steam key. Submissions will be closed on the 17th.

PolyCraft Battle for the Square

On Saturday the 10th of April, four teams (38 players total) competed in a PvP PolyCraft battle.

A new world was created on March 27 and players had two weeks to build and prepare. Every team got one corner of the world for their territory and a beacon they had to protect.

One day after the building phase started, one of the PolyCraft mods, Rychu, was removed from the event because he had been playing at Yadakk for Team 4. As one PolyCraft mod explained, “He [was] supposed to be a mediator in it al. He knew of the event beforehand and had access to the world, and to even edit the world ... What bothers [the mod team] the most is that we asked him not to [play in the event] so he could help us moderate it and he didn't. It can also be viewed as a mod being on the team seems like an unfair advantage … Other teams felt that it was unfair and we don't want it to be so we asked him to not, and although he said he would stop he didn't.”

Led by the Battle Royal Champion, Declarebear, Team 3 went on a ramage. Team 1 was the first team to lose their beacon and most of their players after about fifteen minutes after the battle started. After about fifty minutes of play, ZerosTulipfrom Team 3 climbed into Team 4’s stronghold and broke their beacon. Team 2’s beacon fell shortly after. The last survivor from Team 4, Cauldron_man, was slain by Declarebear after approximately one hour and five minutes of play. At the end of the event, after having slain all the other players, Team 3 had nine surviving members. To see the battle unfold, watch a recording of the event from Jusnip’s point of view.

Regarding Team 3’s win, ZerosTulip said, “I myself, someone who was presumed to be all bark and no bite, almost solo'd team 4's beacon, taking Malji and Piquelle with me after Declarebear played distraction. This is proof that absolutely anyone and everyone can do remarkable things with the right preparation and mindset. Today I did what the entirety of team 3 urged me not to do, for believing it was impossible.”

PolyPixel agreed with Zero’s assessment, “I agree with this. Tbh, Declare soloing Team 1 was amazing, but Team 1 wasn’t strong - we had no defense and a third of the players of Team 3, many of which hadn’t been able to contribute much to the team because of irl stuff - this was out of our hands. Getting in the right mindset is hard to do if you don’t have much.”

Declarebear said, “More or less, I just wanted to flex.”

Team 3 will be awarded netherite ingots and allowed to bring back all the loot they had collected as well as a regeneration effect while they are near their own tribe warps for the next 3 weeks.

Lost and Found Emojis

When the server lost it’s nitro boosted level status at the end of January, several emojis had to be removed. Then with the arrival of Cymanti, and the six new emojis related to that tribe, even more emojis were cut. Currently, the main server has 100 emoji slots, 99 of which are full. When the mind bender emoji was cut, several members protested.

Alpha said “Yeah I'm sad that the mindbender emjoi left.”

“We keep this but lose mind bender, very unfair.”

After more complaints in #server-feedback, the mind bender emoji was restored on April 8.

The server needs 4 more boosts to get back to level 2 and receive 50 more emoji slots.

Ai-Mo News

This week in Ai-Mo there have been a few new happenings, from unbans to a show of the force of our community.

As covered above you will know that the Mind Bender Emoji was removed from main for a short time but through a show of the might of Ai-Mo and our disdain we were able to have it returned.

Also, we have had some new unbans on both the main server and Ai-Moya. We have recently unbanned Eisthefithletter in Ai-Moya and shortly after he was unbanned from Main.

Coincidence?

He probably just appealed but nonetheless it could have a connection.

Ai-Moya had just 5k messages in the last week but that is still nothing to scoff at seeing as how channels like the Vengir tribe chat get less than a hundred in a month. Even other servers like The Grand Palace of the Luxidoor has barely 3k messages. The TTRPG channels in particular have seen some more activity in the last week as well.

Interview with Sophiacastle

The following is an excerpt from the Polytopian Interviewer, a weekly podcast with occasional bonus content. You can read the full transcript or listen to the podcast through the RSS feed.

Tntmasta: Welcome to The Polytopian Interviewer, where I interview people on their experiences and views on the Polytopia discord community. I have Sofiacastle with me today. First question, how did you first get into the polytopia Discord?

Sophiacastle: I joined in, I think it was June, maybe July 2019. They had the summer skirmish, and I just found out about the game and been playing it for maybe a week or two. So I joined the discord and got involved in the summer skirmish. Did terribly. But then I started looking around the discord setting to talk on all things and discover the different groups, and I ended up joining Aquarion because that was the first tribe I think I bought. That was what I was interested in.

Tntmasta: I was in the summer skirmish as well. I just had no idea how to do any of my games. So at least you played games.

Sophiacastle: Yeah. I had played not like multiplayer at that point. I think it was just against bots, and then I started doing the summer skirmish and had no idea how different it was. It was fun to watch other people or hear about other people trying to.

Tntmasta: You've been a tribe leader on Polytopia main before, what were some of your tasks and responsibilities with that?

Sophiacastle: I was only tribe leader during the last round before they got rid of it. It was kind of cut off for me. I only had a month and a half I think. But the Aquarion tribe were interested in contests. We had a joint contest with Ai-Mo. Wasn't much other than the tribe leaders would might announce something. I had some people in Aquarion and also in just random, different chats. Because I had the tribe leader role, they would ask me questions about the challenges in the challenges section or games. It's kind of like a leadership role. They expected me to know things, and I guess I did. I'd been around for a while at that point. About maybe six months. I did have answers to their questions, but the only reason that they thought that was because I was a tribe leader, which was interesting. And then it got cut off because they switch the system recently. No more that.

Tntmasta: What do you all do in the Crab Cult besides research for the Aquazine?

Sophiacastle: So in the general chat, when I first started, it was kind of in a lull I think ‘cause sometimes people would talk in general, and sometimes people would do roleplay. There's roleplay sections in the tribe server and they have different roles. You had to sign up for the character. They had a bunch of different channels meant for different roleplay, but recently, that became way more active because a couple people were interested in doing it. One of them was tribe leader with me in the last election period, Jkenney. Few others are really integral playing on the server. Now they've made a new section for it and it's a lot more active. I don't look at the roleplay because I'm not personally interested in that, but they've had many interesting conversations and events happening in the roleplay server. I think it's a reason a lot of people joined that server as well. Is just to either watch the roleplay, or be a part of it, which is very interesting. But other than role play, the active people just kind of come and say hi and be silent for a couple days, except for one long conversation between two people. And then it'll go back to being silent for days. A couple of the other mods started a tournament of some sort. I'm not in that either. But this polytopia tournament is kind of like summer skirmish, but on a mini scale. Having competitions, or battles, you see who's going to be the winner of that whole competition. That's also something that's been going on. So even without tribe leaders, there's different people are stepping up to do activities. It’s actually kind of nice.

Tntmasta: For the Aquazine, do you usually focus on research? Or what do you do?

Sophiacastle: At the beginning, it was more of just writing and making sure that it was all smooth. It was me and the owner of the Aquarian server, Tamarissz. Mostly he did the research, and most of the writing before and then I took on more of that actually going out and interviewing people. So that was back in up until maybe December, but because both of us who were the main ones working on the Aquazine have University, it's kind of gone dead recently, and I apologize to everyone for that. That's how it’s been doing so far. It might be nice if someone else will be interested in taking it up, but it's part motivation and part availability. Tntmasta: I heard from some sources that the Aquazine changed to every few months. Is that still true? Sophiacastle: Yeah. We were thinking of making it an online thing where people would send articles in wherever they want. That's actually what we said in our most recent article that we were going to switch to an online thing much like the Ai-Mo Times. But because there wasn't as much individual interest in writing a full article and uploading it. Everyone there isn't really interested in writing articles. We don't have very much planned right now, but we hope to maybe come back at some point, if there's enough interest. I can't make any promises and Tamarissz said the same thing. Make any promises about when the Aquazine will be coming back, unfortunately.

Tntmasta: Do you have a least favorite tribe?

Sophiacastle: Not off the top of my head I don't have a hatred for any of them like Hoodrick and Bardur, whatever is happening there. If I had to choose one I don't really like it would be Luxidoor just based on the gameplay of the tribe and the way it's just basically pay to win. It has a lot of advantages just by being really rich at the start of the game, and it can basically adapt to any environment which is super good for it, but it feels sometimes unfair to other tribes. Which is probably just because I've gotten beaten by Luxidoor very often, because I spawn next to it in team games or multiplayer games. So this is a personal problem with the tribe. Tntmasta: But you're fine with Bardur coming in with knights because they chopped a bunch of forests?

Sophiacastle: Yeah, ‘cause barter is one of the starter tribes. Yes it is a bit OP as well, but you do have to be good at the game to be able to use it well. Some people don't use Bardur to its fullest extent, and if you're a good player at the game, then yes, you know how to use Bardur. I don't feel as bad about it because it's free. You don't have to pay for it. It's like $5.50 for Luxidoor and Bardur was free. So there's a little bit of a difference there.

Tntmasta: Do you have a favorite unit?

Sophiacastle: The tridention. That's how I pronounce the knight of the Aquarion tribe. Some people might have spelled it differently. I think it's very fun unit to use when you get to it. If you get to it when you’re Aquarion before dying. Also, I just like that range ability because it can shoot from range and then also escape. Very fun to use when you get use it. And I loved turmelons. They're the best animal. I might be biased.

Tntmasta: Just a bit. Do you have a favorite strategy? Tridention spam?

Sophiacastle: If I play Aquarion, yes. But honestly, I don't actually play Aquarion that often against real players. I did have a really epic game recently. It was an elo multiplayer game, but it was Aquarion against Bardur. And that's really hit or miss for Aquarion. But like, the terrain was very split evenly halfway down between the two sides, so you had just one straight line down the middle of defense. But because I was able to get tridentions early enough, I kept killing their battleships before they can get to me. The way to do that very efficiently is you have to have some of the regular amphibians, the regular riders, as cannon fodder, because the battleships; Yeah, they can move really far, but not if you have a bunch of units in the way. So it's kind of a mix of tridention and amphibian spam. You have to put those of them all at the front. And that stops the battleships from moving. So they have to start hitting your weak units in order to move, but that kind of wastes the potential of a battleship because they're really strong, but if they can only hit one unit, they're not going to get through all of the units that you can throw at them. So it was a very interesting game. That's kind of a good strategy for Aquarion. For other tribes did not really one way to play it. Even if you're using one tribe, with Aquarion tridention spam might work when you have a lot of water. But in other cases, you can't really rely on tridentions in lakes or something with a lot of land.

Tntmasta: Last question. What's your favorite part of the Polytopia fandom as a whole? It can be about the community or discord or something in the game.

Sophiacastle: I'd say I like the community. I like the fact that you can be as casual or serious as you want to be in the game. And there's still a lot of people who are also doing that type of game play as well. There's some people in the discord who are proud of the fact that they've either never played the game or just never play it anymore. They just on to talk on Discord. And then you have others who are in Polychamps or those other leagues and they'll be very intense during the games and stuff. I've seen people on both sides of that spectrum, and they're both interesting people who have a lot of things to talk about regardless of how much they play the game. So I think it's great that this game has kind of that option. If you don't want to play, you can still do something and be part of the group. Oh, and all of the artists. I think a lot of artists don't play that much. They just do art because they like the lore part of Polytopia. And that's another valid and awesome way to be part of the community.

Tntmasta: That's all the questions I have.

Sophiacastle: All right. That was very interesting. It kind of was going into the past for me because I haven't been doing very much recently.

Tntmasta: Alright. Well, thanks very much for your time.

Sophiacastle: Yeah, thank you for having me.

Tntmasta: Bye

Sophiacastle: Bye.

Read or listen to the rest of the interview with Sophiacastle in the Friendly Polytopia server.

Fan Video

By Pomthom

Mute ban column

Disclaimer: Many mute and ban commands are executed on admin only channels. Some fields below will show ‘unavailable’ because the commands were not performed in public channels. In some cases, the data can be inferred from context and will be placed in parenthesis.

Date Staff Perpetrator Punishment Duration Reason
Apr 4 Bush Pingu But Scottish Viking tempmute 12 hours being a negative/toxic person again
Apr 7 Bush Hspark tempmute 12 hours f word

Opinion

Written by HelloIAmBush on April 9th, 2021

Alright, so pretty much what happened with "Alting prank" on PolyChamps was:

Luna (retired mod) wanted to retire. Since we had no April fools prank planned at that moment we (staff team) decided that we could use her resignation in an April fools joke. This was with her approval, of course.; she even helped us plan the thing.

After we spent two days planning, we decided that Luna would be "banned" (she actually just left the server) and I would be her "alt.” We posted the announcement when it was April 1st in Australia so people couldn't say we posted it too early. (FYI Australia is the place the most ahead in time, so the rest of the world was still in March 31st). A few hours before the announcement was posted, I was removed from staff roles so people would question what's up. However, I could still see staff channels. I and the rest of the staff decided to reply to those people with "no comment".

When the announcement was posted, some people started laughing and some people believed it. I've also seen some people who believed that it was a fake then question whether it was true on other servers, where there are less people from PolyChampions. It was a fun thing to watch. Haha. Of course, we didn't expect a lot of people to believe it. The fun part was watching people argue whenever it was real or not.

if you still haven't figured it out, no, Luna and I are not the same person. On April 2nd CET 1pm I made an announcement stating that Luna and I are indeed not the same person. I included all the ther stuff we did for April fools in it, as well as a message that Luna asked us to post about her resignation. I've also gotten my staff position back after it was over.

Credits

Thanks to all our contributors - Druid, Espark, Dust, Tintin, HelloIAmBush, and Tntmasta. A big thanks to Artemis for setting up a new website for the newspaper. Also, thanks to our faithful readers for encouraging the paper to continue. If you want to submit a piece to the newspaper -- art, news article, opinion piece, puzzle, etc -- let us know in #article-suggestions.

Keep up Ai-Mo!