Lodish: What username were you most known by on CivClassics?
SinjoroJoCrafter, or MrJoCrafter.

Did you have any other alts that were public?
MirabeauLamar, as well as one secret one, which I've since lost access to, MariaTheBagel.

What was your first Civ server?
CivEx: First Light.

What other iterations have you played?
CivClassics, CivRealms (briefly), CivRev 1.16.

What got you into Civ?
I forget. It was probably a post about CivEx 3.0's map that i forgot about before doing some Reddit searches to find CivEx First Light.

What was your first nation?
Astoria! Lead by Cortwade on civex

What citizenships have you had...
CivEx First Light: Astoria, (Republic of) Arlington.

CivClassics: Adina (revoked), Sovia-Unitas, Astonia, Aurum (revoked), (Free City of) Arlington, New Thoria, Valencia, Mount September

CivRealms: Moloka only.

CivRev: Astonia (CivRev))

...and which do you currently have?
None. I'm a free agent now, and I don't plan on making a new small nation for the next iteration, whether that be CivMC or CivReign.

What would you consider your greatest achievement on a civ server?
Definitely Euless. For a short time it was a relatively bustling town with an active population around 9, before the Aurum invasion and its inactivity. It was destroyed by Icenian, Truidencian, Adinan, and Bloomean forces (down to the floors) after I quit, however.

There's also the flying machine network I constructed that stretched from Old Astonia island to Adina City in one direction, and Icenia City in another.

What do you think most people know you for?
Probably my... controversial discord pvp and strong anti-World Police activism. Also my inability to detect sarcasm.

Were you politically active on civ?
Well, I was emperor of Astonia for about 45% of its history, discounting the periods where Pirater and KingServal held the throne.

I was also the emperor of Jolington, and La Presidento of the Free City of Arlington (Which was functionally an Astonian government in exile to avoid the Astonian Treaty.)

I also ran the S4P in mount september, and rallied anti world police forces worldwide in several attempts to create an anti-weepee power bloc (see NWO, League of Resistance, etc.)

Where did you spend most of your time on CivClassics?
I spent most of it in the respective capitals of my nations, first New Astonia City (which was built as tunnels in a mountain biome) then Euless, already discussed, and then Jolington Citadel. I also spent a surprising amount of time in Icenia City, especially for a city where i was likely to be jumped at any given time.

What was an event you were involved with that you remember well?
Hoo boy. That would definitely be The Home Depot War. It was such a shitpost war from beginning to end but it was also by far the most fun I've had during a conflict in Civ.

Were you ever involved in conflict with other players or nations?
Definitely. When I seceded from Adina and got attacked for it, fought another war with Adina over some (in hindsight) stupid shit, got invaded by Aurum and IT for basically no reason... and of course The Home Depot War, and the whole thing with Magnasoria.

What are your contact details (reddit, discord, etc. if public) ?
/u/MrJoCrafter, MrJoCrafter#0001

How is CivPortals development going? How will being modded change your server compared to past Civ servers?
It's going slowly. My years old mod with tons of technical cruft needs a lot of changes before it's stable to play on (i mean it literally has nukes, that's gonna take some extra development), the civ plugins really don't like behaving well with modded items (i.e. Bastion refuses to work at all; Humbug has a stroke every time you hit a modded mob), and i don't have enough coders. As for the changes, it'll certainly be something. With a small map but 27 available dimensions (incl. the overworld), it'll be somewhat similar to the sharding mechanics of stuff like Civcraft: Worlds and Devoted 3.0 (that was the one with shards, right?) but it'll also be different in a few key ways. For example, only 7 of the 27 dimensions are permanently livable (i.e. you can set your spawn in them) some are entirely resource worlds, some only provide one or two resources, and there's one, Technofell, which will hellishly replace the End as the dimension where Prison Pearled players are sent. (I'm contemplating removing exile pearl and just keeping prison pearl for this reason.) It'll be different, and it'll be janky, but it will be interesting.

What inspired you to start the Septembrian Sexy Security and Safety Party?
Three things. First, the Mount September Iceroad Crisis. While I wasn't actually present for that one, there was a pervasive feeling among ideologically likeminded people as myself (e.g. minemaster933, ashnwill, pirater) that the UDF was using its strength and the Coalition's essential domination of the map to intimidate the last state with significant anti-world police politics into shutting the fuck up. So I decided that since Mount September was what the World Police wanted to destroy, I would strengthen it. Secondly, KingOfTheMochas significantly overstepped his bounds when he derelicted around a third of the registered plots in mount september at once, and with those minemaster933's properties, who was hiding from a stacked court ruling in South Augusta at the time. Third, at the time when minemaster933's bunker was broken to free sambonusg, a number of hjaltland players appeared to assist the septembrian and augustan federation players. I felt it necessary to protect the last free state on the map (in my mind) from interference from the more militaristic members of MAC.

What was the Aurum Invasion of Astonia? How did the invasion end?
In a word, stupid. The long and short of it was that SirFriendzone, the leader of the soon-to-be Varkonian province of Aurum, wanted an island near the river that seperated Astonia and Aurum. I claimed this island, and he flipped out. He summoned a hastily-drawn map that said he claimed the island (which i knew to obviously be a lie, since it was not shared to the aurum citizens, of which i was one at the time), and I told him I got there first, and to leave well enough alone. He kept getting mad about it, so I banned him from the nation of Astonia. Now, he seems to have taken that as a declaration of war, because he stormed into Euless, pearled me, and began griefing some houses and newfriend buildings in the city. Also, ObtainableSpatula of Imperial Truidence, apropos of absolutely nothing, decided to invade and steal the southeastern Astonian province of Decatur, renamed to Downer Astonia. It ended with the now infamous Astonian Treaty, which was convened by SirFriendzone (Aurum/Varkonia), ChrisChrispie (Icenia), ObtainableSpat (Imperial Truidence), and ImperatorMendes ("Adina"), which made me pay 32 diamonds (fine), let them look in my snitch groups (tolerable), and stripped me of the throne and gave it to KingServal (managable), and forbade me from holding any office in Astonia ever again (horrific). And after sirfriendzone reneged on the deal and didn't release me, the whole thing turned into a massive mess, which caused the later Adinan/Icenian/Bloomean/Truidencian scourging of the entire country of Astonia.

What has your time as leaders of Astonia and Jolington taught you about running a nation? What political decisions of the past would you no longer make in hindsight?
It's more complicated than it seems. As for regrettable decisions, definitely starting a war with Adina I clearly couldn't win (although having Gantoe_ of Nipplerock on my side was very fun), and also there was the whole incident where I POSed every citizen of SPQR), because they were calling on bounty hunters to pearl Pirater (at the time Crown Prince). They definitely deserved it, but in hindsight that was far from the best decision.

What was the Magnasoria Crisis?
A whole load of nonsense. Essentially IceBoy_Board (Äggland) did a little playfight war with a totally inactive nation (Islamic Caliphate), which consisted entirely of discord propaganda and IceBoy walking into the ruins of Magna Soria's city and taking screenshots. Then Asuramaru decided to get involved and hunted down and pearled IceBoy in Sankt Ägg, the capital of Äggland. Then he pinged everyone in the NWO discord. Now... this happened at 3 a.m. in my timezone, so I woke up to this nonsense and was incensed. I hit up Pirater, since I had heard Asuramaru had been loudly racist in the past, and said 'hey, can i have some screenshots of asu being racist?' he gave them to me, and i sent them to the NWO discord, along with a request to ban her from all NWO territories on the pain of pearling. most of the NWO was not moved by this, so i moved onto a larger audience; civclassics #general chat, where i posted the screenshots along with the words 'required reading'. of course this devolved into a fest of coping, seething, malding, etc. and then NOT FIFTEEN MINUTES later, Ferro (Acadia) was in Jolington Citadel pearling me. it's ironic that he got banned literally within the hour, too. anyway, there was a whole LOT of arguing in discord, and eventually shadedoom had to concede that asu had ordered me pearled for fat none reason, and released me from Rhea. it was a massive clusterfuck, and honestly i'd do exactly the same thing all over again.

Do you consider the East Jolington Peace Treaty to have been a success? Did East Jolington do much after the Home Depot War?
Yes; No. The treaty was kinda just the end of the shitpost conflict. I gave them 10d to replace a city bastion i stole from them, they gave me back my flags, and i removed my snitches. that was the end of it, and east jolington really was a sort of paper town, built only because shadedoom wanted to take the piss out of me again, just like he had with Upper Astonia.

--This interview was conducted over discord on the 12th of February, 2022.--