Benjamese Empire
| About | |
|---|---|
| Leadership | BenjaminBsuper
|
| Headquarters | BenjaminStad |
| Founded | 19th March, 2017 |
| Public? | No |
| Status | Unknown |
The Benjamese Empire (or BenEm for short)is the collective name for all the areas
BenjaminBsuper and his crew use to build their cities on, it is to prevent bad area planning, griefbuilds and inactive player houses.
What's in the Benjamese Empire?
In short: cool stuff. The Benjamese Empire is a thriving community with good city planning, innovative builds and very little grief. In 2018, the Empire grew to be one of the biggest communities in Freedonia, housing hundreds of players.
What do we call the cool stuff in the Empire?
The Empire has a naming system for settlements and territories ( (Almost) Full list at Category:BenEm Ranking System):
- BenEm Hamlet : Any settlement that is too small to count as one of the sections below.
Examples: LittoilLand, Boat
- BenEm Village : A settlement with few houses, simple infrastructure, with barely any shops.
Examples: Merchilles, Isfiskholt
- BenEm Town : A settlement that houses several players, with a centralized government facility, shops and advanced infrastructure.
Examples: Pallet Town, Numington Town
- BenEm City : A large settlement, big enough to have a self-sustaining population, with a centralized government facility, with historical importance, advanced infrastructure and some form of high rise.
Examples: Tussenstad, Snaketown
It is important to note that this naming system is not necessarily represented in the name of given town. Snaketown, for example, is definitely a city, although it's called SnakeTOWN. New Snak City is called a city, but it is clearly a town. Those names can be deceiving!
Areas
Areas, which are the part of the Benjamese Empire:
Batavia
Batavia is a name for BenEm mainland, it is a place, where the most of BenEm activity happens:
BenjaminStad (Capital City) - The historical and biggest centre of BenEm. Highly urbanised.
KSCity - Once, it was a competitor of BenjaminStad, but, after
KS_Life became inactive and sold the town to
BenjaminBsuper, the activity of town halted. Now, the town is being repurposed, since it has a lot of useful space.
Tussenstad - One of the most important parts of BenEm which has been independent of the Empire for a great part of the late summer of 2018. Since 30 september it's back.
TwanStad - A rare case - a claimed territory without any residential buildings is a town.
Merchilles - Despite it's size, this town lives with a status of Batavia's architecture centre. Located in the desert outback of Batavia.
Oldville - A town that declared itself independent of Tussenstad.
Isfiskholt - A small town that has rejoined after having been independent for a short while.
Winterstad - A small village that has been claimed to be part of Tussenstad
BearTown - A town with large houses and a rustic style, very close to Batavia
Exclaves
Those enclaves started to appear, when more and more people joined BenEm:
Grifftopia - This major architecture centre is having a unique system of "poor" and "rich" districts.
Greenhaven Village - Despite being a separate town, this town with sad history is a part of Grifftopia's area.
Berghpas - A town, which stayed on paper.
Nieuw Inverness - This town is having a strange case of
BenjaminBsuper getting town ownership from a banned player through another person.
Snaketown - Another BenEm centre on Forrrest, despite being very far from Batavia. Most active town of the Forrrest agglomeration.
Pallet Town - This town is having a very messy layout, but attracted an attention, thanks to being mostly residential.
Gelderburg - A plan, which is being done by
Appelsaus_
Numington Town - Earlier centre of Forrrest activity, which is inactive for now.
Silver Lake - This town is very unique, because it successfully attracted people during player invasions.
New Snak City -
snakyman's new city, which is situated on corrupted chunks.
Santa Luca - A town founded by
LucaTheHispanic.
Finni's Village - A town founded by
Finnimations, currently lacking a name.
LittoilLand - The area owned by
Littoil.
The UnderLands - A settlement founded by
tyhdefu that's almost entirely underground.
New Kanal Town - a Town with various canals in it, protected by a wall.
Boat - A town on a boat.
Urbanism
The Empire, as an extremely active community, houses a lot of impressive builds. A lot of these builds are very tall: 23 of them are taller than 50 meter, of which 7 are higher than 100 meter.
The Batavian area of BenEm is higly urbanised, with many high structures. BenjaminStad alone has 9 towers over 50 meter high of which 3 are taller than 100 meter. This amount of high rise builds is not matched in any other town with a population (we state 'with a population' because Xenotopia has more high rise; however, Xenotopia is more of an artwork, and has never housed a community, whereas builds in the Empire are built by many different members of the community). Batavia alone has 15 towers above 50 meter, of which 5 are taller than 100 meter:
Highest Batavian buildings
Over 100m high:
- Turn_Off Tower (BenjaminStad) -
Turn_Off - Brandarix Tower (Tussenstad) -
hprick - New Friends Housing Hotel Park (BenjaminStad) -
ADHD_Autism - Tokaido Tower (BenjaminStad) -
Avanlance - KSCity Government Building (KSCity) -
BenjaminBsuper,
mk59apr and
Edelstadt (WIP)
50-100m high:
- BenjaminStad Hotel (BenjaminStad) -
Turn_Off
BenjaminBsuper's pride (BenjaminStad) -
BenjaminBsuper- TwanStad Cobble Tower (TwanStad) -
TwanVanDijk - Kaasa de Hotel (BenjaminStad) -
ADHD_Autism - Kaasa Brown (BenjaminStad) - unknown builder
- Icky's Castle (BenjaminStad) -
ickyacky - B.U.T.T. Tower (Tussenstad) - several builders
- Fleetgate Tower (BenjaminStad) -
hprick - Balcony Building (KSCity) -
mk59apr - Edelweiss Corp HQ (KSCity) -
Edelstadt
Most exclaves are less urbanised, with less high, but still impressive structures:
Highest buildings in Exclaves
Over 100m high:
- Diamond Salami (Snaketown) -
ScarClaw72
TECHNOFIZZ1406's Deluxe Plot (Snaketown) -
TECHNOFIZZ1406
50-100m high:
- Snakyman Holding A Giant Salami (Snaketown) -
snakyman - "SNAKE SEA STOP" (Snaketown) -
Ultoris - Tower of
6stooges (Pallet Town) -
6stooges - Chest Tower (Silver Lake) -
Freeman77 - The Zirconium Observatory (Snaketown)-
MCTogs - BenEm Meeting Center (Snaketown) (from lowest point of complex to highest point)
Infrastructure
The Benjamese Empire is well known for its underground and aquatic infrastructure: the BenEm leaders, especially
IvanLeshev,
BenjaminBsuper and
hprick put a lot of work in to ease personal transport through the BenEm area.
Tunnels
A tunnel to cut time off the Boat Route from Enjoku Route to the BenEm junction: this tunnel, built by
IvanLeshev and
hprick, cuts right through a hill to prevent issues with the nearby private property. The tunnel is 5 meter wide. It's decorated with the colors of the BenjaminStad flag and lighted with redstone torches.
A tunnel that goes under Lake Vesitäysi to connect North and South Tussenstad
Another tunnel to cut time off the boat route. It's a lot shorter than Ginza Tunnel and unlike Ginza it's built on an askew line. It's directly followed by a canal inbetween two hills. Decorated with spruce wood and lighted by redstone torches. Also built by
hprick and
IvanLeshev.
- BenjaminStad Tunnel System
A pedestrian subway system to make different parts of BenjaminStad accessible. This tunnel system is still being expanded,
BenjaminBsuper being the main person working on it.
Another project by
hprick and
IvanLeshev, made to connect two large waters, finishing off the BenEm Boat Route.
A small tunnel that cuts through a hill at the most northern part of the BenEm boat route.
Canals
An important part of the boat route are ice canals, without these, boat travel to the BenEm junction would be impossible.
- Northern Canal
- This is the biggest canal of the BenEm boat route. It cuts right through a giant ice lake. Mainly built by
BenjaminBsuper. - Southern Canal
- Made by
hprick and
BenjaminBsuper, this is the second biggest canal, which also cuts through ice. This canal cuts through a giant ice lake to go straight to the BenjaminStad harbour, to connect to the next canal system: - BenjaminStad Harbour Canal
- This canal, built by
BenjaminBsuper, connects the harbour to the inner lake of North Tussenstad and the Sugarcane Shores park, directly to connect to the Fraffyard tunnel.
Bridges and boardwalks
Crossing water is important. When it's not done with a tunnel, like the Trans-Vesitäysi Tunnel, it's done with a bridge.
- Banshee Boardwalk
- An experimental build by
hprick: an elevated walkway parallel to the wall of an ancient castle. This walkway is a part of the road from Tussenstad to the nearby Nexus hub. Named after a Mario Kart track. - Snaketown - New Snak City Bridge
- This bridge connects Forrrest and Snaketown to New Snak City and the rest of mainland Freedonia.
History
Beginning
The history of Benjamese Empire starts with the founding of KSCity and giant growth of BenjaminStad in winter and early spring of 2017. These 2 cities created Benjamese Empire after they allied on the 19th of may, 2017. One of the earliest Benjamese Empire newcomers was
hprick, who founded Isfiskholt shortly after.
Ivan Joins
After quitting Clifftonville and time of simple existence, one of most important members of Benjamese Empire,
IvanLeshev with help of
BenjaminBsuper, decided to urbanise north wilderness of Benjamese Empire with founding of Tussenstad, the second most powerful city in the Empire. Despite being bored, Ivan invited
hprick and
Appelsaus_ into his town. Thanks to this new powerful friendship, they did many Benjamese Empire projects. In addition to that,
Appelsaus_ became part Benjamese Empire staff.
Many Connected Territories
At some point not long after,
KevinGriffioen and
Ladebbie got into Benjamese Empire's side. With this, Greenhaven Village and Grifftopia are part of Benjamese Empire. Benjamin's friendship with
NHC_THK also added some land, when NHC_THK sold Nieuw Inverness to Benjamin. This outwards expansions marks the start of BenEm's great foreign influence.
The Outer Expansion
The empty lands, near the desert and over the icy plains are good terrains to build, with
Mer28 and
Andrey_orex starting their towns there, the BenEm expanded again, this time forming Merchilles and Berghpas. To this day, after the Outer Expansion, Batavian BenEm has not expanded outwards any further, only expanding within the borders of the Empire.
BenEm as popular tourist attraction
With the Benjamese Empire thriving and becoming more and more popular, people started to visit the cities. The BenEm cities became a known thing on the server, not longer being viewed as some of many noob towns. With the new Nexus connection, North-West (Purple) 3, visitors could enter the BenEm much faster than before via BenjaminStad. Over time, many tourist attractions have came to be in BenEm. A few examples are:
- BenjaminStad: The many enormous builds like the Turn-Off Tower and the creation site of the future Government Seat.
- KSCity: Stone Hotel and the underground farms as well as a huge open area for ice skating.
- Isfiskholt: The idyllic houses on poles.
- Tussenstad: Zen Park, The Cave of a Thousand Spooks, Mobville and other fascinating sites, which are accessible by the Intracity Train Network, which connects to the Intercity Railways for rails to other towns.
- Grifftopia: A beautiful medieval village with an abundance of top notch architecture.
- TwanStad: A fast growing town with huge towers and detailed builds.
- Merchilles: Another prime example of stunning architecture.
- Greenhaven Village: Interesting transformation from former ghost-town to active city.
- Berghpas: This town isn't finished yet.
- Nieuw Inverness: A water pyramid.
- Snaketown: One of the biggest player statues ever, Snaketown Arena, BenEm HQ2, and Covenant.
- Pallet Town: Giant residential builds.
- Gelderburg: This town isn't finished yet.
- Numington Town: A very diverse town, with a futuristic and ambitious highway project.
- Lemonaid Town: A bootleg Snaketown that is now part of Snaketown by order of admins.
Stagnant Growth
After some less than a year of constant growth in the Empire, which concentrated in Tussenstad and new small towns in the Batavian area, the growth of the Empire stagnated in january 2018. This was mostly caused by
hprick moving out of Tussenstad to live at his new project at the time, Port Lochrainn. With
hprick and his EBB
IvanLeshev helping him a bit in his new project, the two most active builders of the Empire were gone for a while. Nonetheless, a lot of improvements where made in the Batavian area here and there, such as pixel art in South Tussenstad and the refurbishment of KSCity, but no real expansions where made and this situation continued in the following times of diplomatic distress and international conflicts. This situation left a lot of people of the Empire with the question: Has the Empire reached its limit?
Diplomatic Distress
KS_Life was last seen on the 14th of december, 2017. His town KSCity was the biggest internal competition for BenjaminStad after Tussenstad, but it used to be even bigger competition in comparison to BenjaminStad. However, with
KS_Life gone,
BenjaminBsuper bought the town from him. At the time of writing (april 2018), BenEm Leaders
BenjaminBsuper,
IvanLeshev,
hprick and
Appelsaus_ are still heavily discussing what to do with the blank territory.
BenjaminBsuper sees a future for high-end housing for important BenEm residents, while
hprick sees a future in it as a military practice ground. There might even be plans for a PvP stadium, as
hprick proposed.
On 15 april 2018,
hprick proposed to administratively divide Tussenstad, since the north and south part of the town, divided by Lake Vesitäysi, are very different in architecture, economy, infrastructure, purpose and so on (for example: South TS is less focused on hospitality). However, he quickly decided to stop the process because of the administrative hardship it would bring; the two parts of Tussenstad would have to be split between the three mayors
IvanLeshev,
hprick and
Appelsaus_. Also, the wiki would have to be split up, which would be a lot of work, since Tussenstad has one of the largest wiki pages of any city in Freedonia.
International conflicts
In february and may 2018, a small town named Lemonaid Town appeared next to Snaketown. Lemonaid actively blocked off Snaketown, acts aggressively to the Snaketown leaders and the Lemonaid leader wasn't prepared to talk to
snakyman, so Snaketown saw this as an act of aggression. Only when the conflict started involving grief raids, the BenEm leaders started to get involved, in diplomatic and forceful actions against the residents of Lemonaid Town, which resulted in a massive amount of bans of members of the New American Empire:
1posa1 founded the New American Empire on the 17th of may, 2018, as a countermeasure to BenEm. In the Lemonaid Town Incursion, members of the NAE griefed Snaketown multiple times. After a long time of
snakyman going back and forth from seeing grief and repair. This noted the downfall of Lemonaid Town (and practically that of the New American Empire) and Lemonaid Town is now a monument that belongs to Snaketown. Despite this, to this day, Snaketown is still one of the most frequently griefed settlements.
Marinian Era
On the 18th of may 2018, out of nowhere,
hprick joined
kittyfreak500 to help building Sandmore up from the sand. Sandmore was in its earliest stages, being founded only the day before, thus
hprick joining propelled Sandmore's growth into the sky (and started BenEm involvement in the area). Therefore, the 18'th of May marks the beginning of the Marinian Era. In the next few weeks Sandmore expanded heavily as the centre of the Kingdom Of Marinia, with several new towns such as Watermore and Conquest Island. Since Sandmore is part of the Benjamese Empire, this era marks great growth for the Empire again, after a period of stagnant growth and complicated conflicts. But mind that the Empire does not have such a firm grip on the Kingdom Of Marinia as on KSCity for example... The Kingdom Of Marinia has its own military (the Marinian Local Guard or MLG in short) and is very remote from the rest of the Empire (Snaketown and Sandmore are about as far away from eachother as you can get on the map). The Kingdom Of Marinia wishes to be more of a really close ally, remaining a more sovereign state than most BenEm territories. The Kingdom Of Marinia also keeps itself out of most international conflicts. Despite its partial independence, the Kingdom Of Marinia functions as a southern outpost of the Empire.
In late june 2018, the culprit of activity moved from Sandmore to Benjaminstad again, due to the rapid development of high rise buildings there. More information about the subject is on the BenjaminStad wiki page.
Kingdom of Marinia officially left BenEm at 22nd of July, 2018, due to a dispute between a few BenEm leaders, marking the end of Marinian Era.
Shrinking of the Empire
On the 23rd of July, 2018, Tussenstad and Isfiskholt and their respective governments decided to distantiate themselves from the centralized BenEm government, effectively leaving the Empire, just like the Kingdom Of Marinia had done the day before. The leaving of Tussenstad can be attributed to other internal disputes. By the independence of Tussenstad and Isfiskholt, the Empire has lost 2 of its key contributors (
hprick and
IvanLeshev) and a very active, innovative town. With this loss, another city started just to the east of Tussenstad; Oldville was born. Oldville functions as a new BenEm outpost on the lake to the east of Tussenstad. Oldville declared independence of the Empire on the 30th of July, 2018 to join back at the 31st of July.
Revival of Connections
On the 30th of september, 2018, prompted by
Johngi, the leaders of Tussenstad held a meeting with BenEm leaders to talk about international relations. Based on this meeting,
IvanLeshev and
Appelsaus_ decided to rejoin BenEm with Tussenstad. Later this day,
hprick agreed to join too, making this a unanymous unification of the Empire. Along with
hprick. Isfiskholt joined back too.
Rules
- All towns that are in the Benjamese Empire will be allies of all the cities and towns that BenjaminStad allied.
- All the treaties that are entered by BenjaminStad apply to the members and citizens of towns of the Benjamese Empire (except UFBP; see United Flarentian Powers )
- All the players that are banned from BenjaminStad are banned from the Benjamese Empire
BenEm Leaders
Mayor of BenjaminStad - Founder and the head (aka Emperor) of BenEm.
Mayor of Tussenstad - Key contributor of Tussenstad.
Mayor of Tussenstad - Universal helper and important contributor of several BenEm cities. Infrastructure professional.
Mayor of Tussenstad and Isfiskholt - Innovator of the Empire, designing and creating many new buildings. Infrastructure professional.
Mayor of KSCity - Former active member of BenEm, the founder of KSCity.
Mayor of Grifftopia - One of BenEm's best builders, the founder of Grifftopia
Mayor of TwanStad - Non-active member, the founder of TwanStad.
Mayor of Merchilles - One of BenEm's best builders, the founder of Merchilles
Mayor of Greenhaven Village - Non-active member, the founder of Greenhaven Village
Non-active member.
Mayor of Snaketown and New Snak City - Another very active member, the founder of Snaketown.
Mayor of Pallet Town - One of Ivan's friend's, founder of Pallet Town
Mayor of Numington Town - One of Ivan's friends, founder of Numington Town.
Mayor of Silver Lake - Another Ivan's friend, founder of Silver Lake.
Representative of New Kanal Town
Exulted High Lord Dictator of Lemonaid Town (a territory of Snaketown. Ranks low in BenEm
Original Ambassador of the Empire, City Planner and founder/owner of Winterstad
Slime_tiger - Founded Boat to get a chair in BenEm Meeting Center’s Waluigi Meeting Room
RPS_DA_BEAR - Founder of BearTown
BenEm Meeting Center
The BenEm Meeting Center is a facility in Snaketown with a room for every BenEm staff member (as of 1/15/17). It functions as a meeting centre, embassy and general place for leaders to hang out. There is a large dome above the common room, and a meeting room. It is nicknamed Shatlantis because it is governed by
BenjaminBsuper who has IBS (also because when making the dome it looked like there was poop all over it - see image below). The meeting centre is being expanded with a massive meeting hall that could fit more people than the server could handle.