Lodish: What username were you most known by on CivClassics?
Bgbba, the one and only. I think hiding behind alts and changing your name to avoid your past is the mark of somebody who doesn’t want to take responsibility for their history.

Did you have other alts that were public?
No and I’ve never had any alts or associated accounts.

What was your first civ server?
Civcraft 2.0

What other civ iterations have you played?
I’ve played Civ 2.0, CivTemp, Civ 3.0, CivClassics seriously. I also played Devoted 3.0 and CivEx First Light semi-seriously but only for a few weeks on each. I don’t like investing myself into servers unless I know it’s going to have long-lasting impacts.

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What got you into Civ?

I used to play on factions servers with the Chanadians, but we rejected Civ because GordonFreemanQ led a LADS invasion (and kicked our asses I might add) on our servers in very very early 2.0. However, after those servers shut down I was looking around and a friend invited me to Dave and Yearn’s wedding. I was intrigued with the sheer complexity and history, it was like everything I’d tried doing or seen attempted on factions servers, but done right, with less of a PvP focus. I was never a PvPer, I was always more a nation builder.

What was your first nation that you joined?
I joined Polynesia, a member state of Chanada, although while passing by to get there ChrisChrispie tried to recruit me to Intis unsuccessfully. Sorry Chris.

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What citizenships have you had, which do you currently have?
I’ve only ever been a citizen and member of Polynesia (Chanada didn’t have a collective citizenship) and Yoahtl.

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What would you consider your greatest achievement on a civ server?
The GOR, without question. I would put the general success of Yoahtl as runner up, but Yoahtl has been a project of dozens of major contributors whereas the GOR was primarily done by me.

What do you think most people know you for?
Bgposting, the GOR, or being the most well-known Yoahtlan for better or worse.

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Were you politically active on Civ? If so, what positions of power have you held?
I’ve been extremely politically active throughout all iterations. On 2.0 I was the Polynesian Minister of Infrastructure and later Burgermeister of Volkstadt in conjunction. In CivTemp and Civ 3.0 that carried over and I was the Minister of Infrastructure or Mayor of Chancer in both. Once joining Yoahtl I’ve served as a Councillor (member of Yoahtl’s parliamentary legislature), Deputy Alcuahtl, Alcuahtl, and most importantly the Chieftain of Yoahtl (the Head of State and chief spiritual and community head with no direct legal powers). I’ve only ever lived in Yoahtl’s capital city, which doesn’t have a mayor and is administered directly by the Imperial Yoahtlan Federal Government. In Yoahtl, we don’t have Ministers or Mayors, the Council assigns duties such as dereliction and financial auditing every new term. The Alcuahtl was previously unelected and succession was done by having the previous Alcuahtl assign the role to the next Alcuahtl with the Council’s approval as the crown council that manages the Throne of the Rising Dawn, however now the Alcuahtl is elected from among the citizenry by the Council. Historically the Alcuahtl was also the Macehuetlan (General) and the High Justice and while as Alcuahtl I served in those roles, but for the most part those were always delegated downwards.

Who was the most influential person in your nation and what did they do?
Yoahtl is far too big and old to have only one pick for ‘most influential’. Some of the most influential people are as follows:
-Eoahtl: Founder and first Chieftain-Alcuahtl. Semi-mythical, no proof of him exists
-Wichita: Founder of renewed Yoahtl and second Chieftain-Alcuahtl
-Quauhtli_mia: Longest serving Alcuahtl-Chieftain in Yoahtlan history, founder of Huehuetlism, and one of the most well-known
-St_Liebowitz: First person to be Alcuahtl without being Chieftain and creator of the 1st Charter of Yoahtl, our original constitution, in CivTemp and Civ 2.0
-WackyAki: Second eldest Yoahtlan citizen after Quauhtli_mia and current Alcuahtl

-Myself, obviously
-Spacevolcano: Currently High Justice and the creator of much of the Yoahtlan legal system
-Neotide_: General and one of the more influential Yoahtlans
-Many members of the general community who have had immense influence on our culture such as: Spiderstring, the Laconians (influential for mostly negative reasons), MightyOddish, XCstar, Charlieseeese, TheOrangeWizard and Dr_Oracle (although neither would probably consider themselves Yoahtlans now both had enormous impact on Yoahtl’s legal and political development), Meat312 and Wingzero54, Orinnari, Feathercrown (the longest serving Alcuahtl who saved us in a time of troubles and co-founder of the Civ Olympics), Klasikrok, Diamondbluenaga, Gdan12, Mister_Minesalot (technically Resimerean but critical to the Yoahtlan war effort in the Infinity War), Sventhar (to date the most successful Yoahtlan map art creator and pornographer), 5point0 [sic], and dozens more I can’t even count. If I left anybody out please forgive me this is unedited.

Where did you spend most of your time on CivClassics?
Either on the GOR, in the Yoahtlan iceroad network, or in NYC itself. Those three locations were probably 90% of my time. If the town wasn’t on the GOR I didn’t see it more than once.

Where did you live on CivClassics?
My house in NYC was the oldest plot in the city and the only plot to be owned continuously by the same person.

What was an event you were involved with that you remember well?
The Lexington Vault break, the failed attack on Laconia, the Pinkerton Incident, the 1st Yoahtlan Olympics, the construction and founding of NYC are all solid contenders.

Were you ever involved in conflict with other players or nations?
I’m a veteran of the Mir-Chanada War (minor part), I was one of the people leading a portion of the bastion breakers on the Lexington Vault attack bridge, I served extensively against the Ransackistanis during the obby bombing crisis, and was at least involved in some way in all three Laconians wars although I only fought in one. I’m not a PvPer, my primary participation in conflicts has been as an infrastructure operations coordinator and infrastructure builder. I also was present that Pinkerton protest during one of the major flashpoints in that conflict. I’ve been permapearled three times. Once by FRIENDs from the 3rd Laconia War, once by NATO during the Infinity War, and once when Rhodesia pearled me in CivRealms. I got out all three times, but I’ve been killed far more than the reverse in wars.

What are your contact details (reddit, discord, etc. if public) ?
Not public.

What is a decision you’ve made as Alcuahtl you now consider to be a mistake? What was your best decision?
The worst decision, unquestionably, was ordering the attack on Laconia that started the 3rd Laconia war. It nearly killed Yoahtl and resulted in me being permapearled.
The best decision was the decision to evacuate Axochitlan and found NYC rather than try to fight Laconia in the 1st Laconia War. The foundation of NYC saved Yoahtl and established one of the server’s most well known and influential cities.

In the past you’ve talked about toxic players you’ve wanted to be “flushed” and to leave the community, is there anyone you once considered toxic or a “shitter” who has since then redeemed themselves or at least grown up in your opinion?
I think that C4mmo qualifies. He’s the only person to have doxxed me or said racist things about my ex-gf to ever apologize for it and he seems to have followed through. I’ve forgiven him for that and to me it’s water under the bridge. I don’t enjoy holding grudges, I only think that perpetually unapologetic shitters should be removed for good. I think that a lot of people have grown up, but a lot of shitters have stayed terrible people. They morphed from shittapillers into shit moths, in the words of Jim Lahey, and there’s nothing worse than seeing somebody who is still pretty much the same immature asshole screaming on a minecraft server at 20 as they were at 13.

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If CivClassics had lasted longer what plans did you have for the Great Overland Railway? Will you attempt something similar on another Civ server?
Two part question, two part answer. The GOR was in the active planning stages of extending to Nexus, and I had a really nice hub station made up in the design phase. There were also Yoahtlans building GOR to complete a circle around the central ocean of CivClassics when the map ended. So yes, the GOR was going to expand.
In the next server, I don’t have the time to rebuild the GOR in the same way. However, the GOR was intended as a proof-of-concept that aboveground rails were superior to underground rails for ease of access, ease of expansion, ease of navigation, aesthetic quality, and other benefits. In this it was successful. So in the next server the GOR will be returning to Yoahtl and its allies.

Early on in CivClassics’s history you had a conflict with Vzis, why did this happen? how did Yoahtl win? and what is your relationship like now with ex-Vzis attackers such as S4NTA and Mickale?
What happened is that Vzis had a ‘secret claim’ over the island that became New Yoahtl City’s home island. We settled there and when they tried to say that there was a secret claim we offered them the right to access the island and mine under it and build farms there, basically everything except actually own our city, and they refused. They were about to take the deal, until Droidjoe entered the VC and shot it down and told us that the only option was for us to leave, despite his own friends protesting and saying we were offering them a really good deal. That ended negotiations.
So we posted on the sub about it and several people came to assist us. I went to bed thinking we were going to be wiped out, I woke up and Charlieseese had led a platoon of troops to bust up Vzis, who decided that it wasn’t worth the effort and left, although despite a handful of our attempts to buy the land they never left the region entirely. Today, Mickale, s4nta, and the ex-Vzis people are some of my favorite Civ players and we’re on excellent terms with all of them except for Droidjoe who still hates my guts. I haven’t talked to him in years and at this point if he still isn’t over it then that’s kinda his own problem not mine.

You’ve stated before you consider Asakuun to be the worst Alcuahtl that Yoahtl has ever had, what is it they did to achieve this?
In the leadup to the First Laconia War, St_Liebowitz left for a week on family vacation. Since I wasn’t able to dedicate the time, nor did I have a history in Yoahtl, he appointed Asakuun the ‘Acting Alcuahtl’ (which used to be the way we handled temporary absences before the Deputy Alcuahtl position took over those duties). Asakuun completely mishandled the war, several people got pearled via Laconian trickery, and Asakuun did nothing. Towards the end of the war, Asakuun and I got into a vc with the Laconians to negotiate. They demanded that we all join a Laconian Confederacy as subjugated provinces, recognize BuckyHD as the Alcuahtl, and accept pearl sentences for all people pearled in the fighting which consisted mostly of random citizens plus WackyAki.
Asakuun was giggling and laughing along at how ‘stupid’ the Yoahtlan ‘tulpas’ were and accepted the demands. I was the Deputy Alcuahtl at the time and I refused, working out a deal where Goodsprings (a minor build town) would remain independent of Laconia under Yoahtlan sovereignty and then issued the order to evacuate the region. Asakuun then renounced Yoahtlan citizenship and abandoned us. She still to this day despises Yoahtl and I, for a variety of reasons, despite attempts to heal the divide. In the aftermath of Asakuun’s betrayal and attempted dissolution of Yoahtl she was declared retroactively to have never been a Yoahtl or an Alcuahtl, stripped of all legacy, and unpersoned. We did lift this during the last reconciliation attempt which ended in her storming out and saying that we hadn’t changed. The unpersoning was reinstated. I think that Asakuun is by far the pettiest person I’ve ever met in my entire time on civ and is one of the very few civ traitors to be unrepentant in the slightest to this very day. She’s just not a fun person to be around.

What lengthy subreddit post (aka “bgpost”) do you think is your best work? Which do you wish you hadn’t posted?
The best bgpost was probably “Something Wicked This Way Comes: Last Night’s Circus in Konigsberg” in which a leaker revealed to us the intentions of the Konigsberg channers to destroy Yoahtl and assassinate TheOrangeWizard (our Alcuahtl at the time). It had lots of proof and timestamps, and was so good that it justified Hjaltland coming with us to remove the Konigsberg channers, who later formed the Jewish Quarter in MtA and left us alone.
The funniest bgpost was the post deconstructing the New Sovian ‘clown court’, calling people things like the court eunuch and such. That one wasn’t meant seriously, just as a joke. The joke was lost and many assblasted people called me delusional and deranged.
The one bgpost I truly wish I hadn’t posted was the post that got me permabanned, which I’m not allowed to speak on the details of because it was so over the line and so personal that it was permabannable. I take full responsibility for that post and regret the pain I caused the subject and their friends years later. Nobody deserves to have their personal issues dragged out in front of the entire server, especially by me. Period. It wasn’t even a funny bgpost, it was probably the most toxic thing I’ve ever written.

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During the infinity war you worked on logisitics and morale behind the scenes, what do you think won the Infinity war?
The Infinity War was won because in a war between a defensive power and an offensive power, after a certain point the defensive power is incapable of winning. NATO was finished the instant they failed to push Mir out of MtA and lost a lot of fighters in the process. For the next year it was just a war of inertia. However, I think that there are a couple critical things to note:
1. NATO was an offensive power, not a defensive power, and once their offensive PvP fights were unable to gain pearls they were doomed because they didn’t have the manpower, expertise, or resources to build the kind of defensive infrastructure necessary to withstand a long-term siege.
2. NATO repeatedly assisted or funded or allied with other groups that would go out and attack neutral powers and drag them in. I remember declaring neutrality for Yoahtl when I was unbanned, and Entente members were kind of upset about it. However, the Ransackistan obby bombing attacks on Yoahtl, Gensokyo, Icenia, and other neutral powers created the Coalition which ensured that when NATO pearled me the UDF had extensive ties to the Entente and was willing to join the war against NATO rather than try to negotiate for my freedom. Had NATO left well enough alone it’s likely the UDF and Yoahtl would have remained on the sidelines much longer or out of the war entirely.
3. The UDF and SATO were infrastructure powerhouses and were able to build the best iceroad network in civ history in a matter of days to weeks, complete with bunkers and forward operating bases. NATO was hopping down tiny iceroads, while Yoahtl was able to move tens of thousands of diamonds of materials north along an iceroad that took us a couple days to get operational and fully SRO-lined, and a couple weeks to get completely secured. The UDF’s infrastructure building capacity was unparalleled and no other alliance in civ history has ever coordinated the level of infrastructure that we did. Period.
4. NATO’s leadership was terrible and would regularly abandon their own allies, fighters, and political supporters to be pearled, put on trial in their host nations, or otherwise sacrificed in pursuit of their goals. By the end, the Coalition just kept gaining more and more people while NATO was actively sacrificing and alienating the few supporters they had left on the battlefield.
5. NATO’s PR was terrible and HanTzu, RoboKaiser, and other outspoken NATOids would regularly piss off, insult, attack, berate, or drive away potentially neutral parties. By the end, NATO had nobody on the map who was willing to even try to justify their actions. This is in distinct contrast to Lexington who had people actively arguing their case publicly (in particular future NATOids like ComradeNick, the Rhodesians, and others) until the day the Lexington Vault fell.
6. NATO wasted some of their best shock troops early in the war fighting Mir and some of their best potential allies fighting on totally unrelated fronts such as the Ransackistanis. Had NATO held these people in reserve and strategically attacked with overwhelming force (like Nox and Papa_Pound used to in 2.0) they might have been able to overcome their lack of proper infrastructure and knock out minor Coalition members early on. However, NATO failed to significantly damage any Coalition member except Columbia, and they failed to knock a single Coalition member out of war, while the Coalition fought NATO piecemeal and took out forward operating bases such as Corvus, Ransackistan, and others throughout the entire course of the war. By the time NATO’s vaults fell it was just a matter of gathering the players and resources to build the bridges. In contrast, the Coalition could have survived multiple members being completely annihilated and still continued the war due to the resiliency of the infrastructure base.

You’ve been banned in the past, what happened?
I’m not allowed to talk about it. But sufficed to say, I said something very cruel and toxic and I regret the pain I caused that person and their friends to this day. Most of them don’t forgive me and I don’t blame them.

Yoahtl has been involved in many wars, which was the most damaging to Yoahtl? Was there ever a point where it seemed a loss might have been the end of Yoahtl?
The First Laconia War might have killed ‘Yoahtl’, but we’d have just survived as part of Laconia.
The Third Laconia War nearly did kill Yoahtl, at the time I was at the height of my power as Chieftain-Alcuahtl (the fourth person to hold both positions and the only one to do so after they were split years ago). My pearling and the subsequent diplomatic ruination of Yoahtl nearly killed us. Some of our foremost people abandoned the nation never to return. To this day, I view it as an example of the danger that a cult following can have, the 3rd Laconia War could have been easily won or avoided had we not rushed into it under my leadership.

Who do you consider to be the greatest villain of CivClassics and why?
HanTzu, without question. There are plenty of shitters, but they are just problems individually. HanTzu actively ruined CivClassics for a very large number of people, for two reasons, to the point of nearly killing the server. I consider HanTzu a rare example of somebody who isn’t personally vile and toxic in most ways, but is so dangerous and damaging that he should never ever play again.
1. He would actively sacrifice people after converting them to his cause on the battlefield like some middle eastern Jihaddist. Anybody who listened to his rhetoric had their experience of civ ruined and most ended up in a pearl embittered and forever resentful at the rest of the server, creating a permanent supply of new problem players hostile to the general community.
2. HanTzu would actively facilitate vicious rumors, cruel actions, and organized attacks on or about neutral groups and players, causing a general atmosphere of mistrust and instability.
HanTzu took a relatively stable civ political meta and turned it into a brutal world war that absolutely nobody wanted. Even Lexington provoked the Somber War intentionally to shake things up in an already fluid unstable environment. HanTzu took a perfectly stable and peaceful server and turned it into a brutal war for survival, ruining the experiences of dozens or perhaps hundreds of players, new and old. That, to me, is utterly unforgivable and he should never be allowed to play again. Some people are just so damaging that their very existence in the community presents a threat to that community and HanTzu is near the top of that list.

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You were the Burgermeister of Volkstadt, a part of /pol/ynesia, what do you remember about Volkstadt? You were also a minister of chansylvania, how does your time with various Chan nations compare to your time with Yoahtl?
Chanadian nations were a lot edgier and memey. Yoahtl is also memey but isn’t particularly edgy and is definitely a lot more accepting of people’s differences. Yoahtl has everybody on the political spectrum, including people on the far-right and far-left, the difference is that the Yoahtlan identity takes precedence ingame. Yoahtl has a very high percentage of Trump supporters relative to most towns on civ, but in Yoahtl politics is something like a national sport. One of the biggest strengths of Yoahtl has always been a willingness to debate and engage with unusual ideas, no matter the source, a tradition that began with the forums and debates hosted by Wichita before Civ and continued to this day.
Chan nations were always a lot more chaotic, nobody respected the organization and authorities except for the Nazis and errant leftypol people who sometimes respected them a little too much. Volkstadt was more chaotic, houses would sometimes just appear without notice and there was an omnipresent threat of minor street violence, break ins, and terrorist attacks. By contrast NYC has a lot more respect for the norms and has very strong institutions that are separate from individual personalities. This is true of Chan nations vs Yoahtl at large. And most importantly, both Chanada and Yoahtl relied heavily on absorbing large numbers of recruits from the broader internet to survive.
The similarity is that both Yoahtl and Chanada have a very strong internal culture and external identity that are completely and totally unique from the server at large. Both have ideologically diverse populations and had a sense of ‘we’re all weirdos in this together’. I find most towns on civ stifling, intolerant of differences and very hostile towards new ideas. By contrast I think that both Yoahtl and Chanada reinvent themselves every generation or so and it results in an evolving culture that withstands different servers, maps, leaders, and even general populations.
A lot of Chanadian ideas filtered into Yoahtlan political structure. Yoahtl originally was an absolute theocracy/monarchy under the control of one cult-ish leader and no expandable political structure. Everybody lived in one town and most houses were built by the same person out of stone brick, so the whole place looked remarkably similar. Over the years, Yoahtl has taken many concepts from the Chanadian system, such as:
- A highly decentralized federal system with varying levels of autonomy including separate sub-national citizenships so that different towns can recruit different populations without impacting the others
- The idea of six voters being the ‘magic number’ to add more political power to a group of players. In Chanada, every town got up to two votes based on three criteria: Military strength (judged by the Chanadian leadership), economic power (based in liquid wealth of 2000 diamonds or equivalent in xp or significant farming/obsidian production), and 6 voters or citizens. In Yoahtl, the number of council seats is 3 minimum, with one extra for every six voters beyond 18.
- Dense, mercantile cities. 2.0 Yoahtl relied mostly on a barter system, while CivClassics Yoahtl like Chanada is a mercantile powerhouse
- XP exchanges where the government skims off the top to profit while buying crops for XP, to boost the economy
- Powerful infrastructure focus, in particular on railroads, iceroads, and farms
In truth, I think there’s an element of old Chanada in Yoahtl, it’s the country that feels the most like Chanada used to, back before it all went downhill. The Chanadian Federation was once one of the server’s most unique, powerful, culturally distinct entities. Today, that role on civ is filled by Yoahtl. There are other towns which have many of these elements, but I’ve always felt that Yoahtl did it first or did it best. And that’s why I’ve always stuck by Yoahtl, even now. We’ve been in this for 10 years and we’ll probably be in it for another 10. That’s not something you find in life very often and it should be cherished wherever one finds it.

--This interview was conducted over discord on the 7th of February, 2022.--