By Espark on Sun 27 Mar, 2022.

Ai-Mo Times

Mar 27^th, 2022

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

Polytopia News

Beta update

On March 24^th, an update was released for the Beta version of the game. Several changes were made to cloaks, daggers, and peacemaking. Also, the balance changes affecting windmills and forges were dropped.

The community manager said, “So, something worth noting is that yes, the Windmills and Mints were reverted, but we're not done with them yet. The changes may come back, but Midjiwan wanted to focus more on the Diplo stuff without these balance things getting in the way … They'll probably come back in some way, but have been removed so we can focus on other things.”

Fan response

Ember, a mod on Polymain, said, “The new beta update is cool, I love the new way daggers work. Hoping they build on windmills and mints again. New peace breaking method is nice as well”

Nums_112134, a Cymanti member, said, “20 hp kitons [were too strong]. Their tankiness, defense and poison made it almost useless to attack with melee units. Unless you had a few catapults on hand, kitons were basically invincible when defending. Now with only 15hp, it can be bashed through much easier than 20hp”

Inspector Caracal, XinXi member, said, “So far,I like [the changes] the "prioritizing defensive squares" bit of the new dagger generation is especially interesting, it completely changes the knight counter.”

Sytonal, a member of the Plague PolyChamps teams, said, “I tried out [the tutorial] It's really, really bad and really, really basic. I’ve tried to teach a friend how to play before and the hard part isn't the fundamentals like "click animal to upgrade city" but learning what techs do and how to use resources and what you can do each turn and the tutorial doesn't touch on that at all.”

Adhesive agreed. “[The tutorial] teaches fundamental mechanics but poor strategic practices. Also, it doesn't follow the game rules really at the start. It spawns three animals, but not forests for them.”

The community manager responded with, “Not the point. [The tutorial] was rigged for teaching purposes, like many tutorials. Midjiwan wants you to figure that out for yourself.”

Skrealder, one of the highest ranked Elo players in the game, said, “The tutorial is essential. Also, I think windmills not being 2 pop are far better for balance. I like the dagger changes as the unit was a bit lackluster before in terms of viability, and I like the increased nuance rather than a plain stat buff. With kitons, I think the nerf is necessary, 20 hp + 3 defense is a big hit pool, and while other units do have those stats or better, they were powerful units that demanded an expensive late-game response from everyone but other Cymanti. The ability to mass-produce such tanks was absurd and made [playing] vs Cym very grindy.”

Of course, all these changes are preliminary and are subject to change before final release. One of the most commonly asked questions is when will Diplomacy leave beta and come to the game. With over 150 reported bugs yet to be fixed, it is likely it will be at least another month before these beta changes make it into the regular game.

PolyCraft Polympics

On March 26^th, over twenty players competed in the PolyCraft Polympics. The event was a series of 10 events, each themed around a different tribe. Oumaji Jousting. Imperius Triathlon, and Kickoo Fishing were favorites. Some of the events did not function properly, especially The Yadakk “Market Masters”, Bardur “Lumber Rush.”

Most of the events had lore written by the organizers to flesh out the Polytopia theme of the contest. Here is the Imperius Triathlon lore:

The Ancient Imperians wished to appease the gods of the square with their athleticism. Although they have since realised that the gods didn't care much about little polytopians running around, they still competed to see who the fastest and the fittest were. The running events of the Imperians were the first Polympic events. Swimming and hurdles were later added, and a new type of race was introduced, the Triathlon.

The event was initially supposed to start the week before, with 5 events on March 20^th and 5 on March 26^th. However, the minigame events on March 20^th did not work. To make matters worse, one of the admins, Monster, tried to teleport all the players into an area of the game. But instead of typing all the players, he teleported all entities, including mobs (monsters). Most people died and lost all their gear. It took a few days to return the lost gear and items to their rightful owners.

The top winners across all events on March 26^th were: * 1^st place Destroy with 20 points * 2^nd place McGoon914 with 14 points * 3^rd place Pixel with 11 points

McGoon, third place winner, said, "I really enjoyed it. It was a nice change to have a set of events that weren't focused completely on pvp or building. I think everyone there had a good laugh, which at the end of the day is the real goal. It was an amazing first big event for the new admin crew, makes me really look forward to what's in store for the future."

Moronism, aka Trouble Brewing, said, "Might be one of the better events of the server. Very well rounded and allowed peoples of different skills to be represented."

Big thanks to Tanya the Evil (ZeroTulip), HyperDrives, and Monster for organizing the event.

4 Mods and 1 Admin Gone

As of March 21^st, Matt, Dan, Katane, and Froskia are no longer mods. Also, Tama is taking a break from mod/admin. It is a combination of inactive mods being asked to step down and real life events impacting others. The mod team is working through some changes to become more consistent.

Many server members didn’t notice the difference. Squelchy, Tribe Leader of Bardur, said, “I didn't know any of them had stepped down.” A tribe leader of Quetzalli, Quissbery, asked, “Mods are stepping down?”

Asking mods to step down due to inactivity is nothing new and has been done before Squelchy, also said, “Zoy's [ask mods to step down because of inactivity] quite a few times in the past from my memory.”

Foreverblue, an admin agreed, “Lots of TLs were asked to step down due to inactivity.” She continued, “Y’know it’s a rough life bein’ a moderator nowadays alotta people are steppin’ down. We’ve gotta put in a lot more work. I think the only thing that’s makin’ it bearable is some of the work of our TLs like squelchyman who hasn’t even taken a day off from bein’ a tl which, unlike other tls, doesn’t need a day off with how hard workin’ he is. But y’know, if things keep gettin’ bade we might needa promote someone like squegee to a moderator position but that might be too OP.”

FanArt

Imperius model by Introvert

By Tzakones

By Praetorian

By Jolt 177 on twitter @117Jolt

Opinion

By PrancingPony

Over the past nine months I have come to love the polymain community, through both the people I’ve met and the experiences I’ve been fortunate to take part in there. Unfortunately, I have noticed the quality of the polymain server has deteriorated significantly during my time here. When I left the server in November-ish of 2021, I cited IRL issues as the reason for my departure. In truth, I disliked the direction the server was headed. The inactivity of the mods back then and the complete disregard of the suggestions that server members had been making made me feel that polymain was no longer the community I had come to know and love.

Upon hearing that new mods had been promoted following the start of 2022, I rejoined the polymain server. I returned with the hope that things would turn around for the better.

And things did indeed get better for a bit. The reorganization of channels behind roles was a change that many members had been pushing for a while and showed that the new mod team was . However, for a span of three months, this was the extent of the positive changes that the server experienced under the new mod team.

Fast-forward to March 16^th, the day I decided to finally depart from the polymain server. I had considered leaving polymain again due to my concerns about the behind-the-scenes management but I kept putting it off with the hope that things would eventually get better. Following the events that transpired in #server-feedback, I was alarmed to see the pure disorganization of the mod team and realized the server was on a worse trajectory than I thought. I hold nothing against Mokia, but had similar actions unfolded in front of other members of the moderation team their reactions would have been very, very different.

Contrary to some of the misinformation that members of the mod team/users have been spreading, the fluctuating enforcement of rules/restrictions was the most substantial cause that contributed to my exit. Following my departure and the departure of others, I was glad to hear that the moderation team had begun to finally fix some of the issues that had been most directly contributing to the downwards slide of the server, such as implementing consistent moderation.

I already know that things will get worse before they get better… but when writing this on March 22^nd I truly think that the quality of the polymain server is headed in a positive direction.

Credits

Thanks to all our contributors, Espark, tan11pan, and Hoodwick, and also to our readers. A big thanks to Artemis for setting up the website for the newspaper.

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!