Compendium of Fake Tech and Wonder Quotes

So is this is .....sarcasm? If not I apologize.

It's a reference, actually. If Sean Bean is in a movie, his character has a tendency to die before the end. (He doesn't even make it through the Civilization VI intro video.)
 
It's a reference, actually. If Sean Bean is in a movie, his character has a tendency to die before the end. (He doesn't even make it through the Civilization VI intro video.)
Thanks for the clarification. All I knew about him was that he is/was in Game of Thrones, but I don't watch the show.
 
Among other things, he was also in Lord of the Rings and GoldenEye. He also voiced a character in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

Someone did the math once, and he dies in like a third of the roles he appears in.
 
During my first game I also had a feeling that the quotes were somewhat strange. Good to know it's not just me.
My greatest concern was that they used modern quotes for ancient techs. That seems really weird. My first Civ was Civ IV, and I remember enjoying the quotes a lot, the way they were solemn and made every new tech feel like an achievement. I was always listening till the end, because it just felt important. Civ V is not bad in this respect either.
But in Civ VI, I think it's just enough to see the Mysticism quote—totally saying like "the thing you just researched is crap." And then finding Kilimanjaro in early game and listening to that silly wi-fi quote... To be fair, even when not in BC and my people are not armed with clubs, this wi-fi Kilimanjaro is still ridiculous as a wonder quote. Talking to people? For two weeks? Omg, who'd have thought, this is INCREDIBLE, that's what makes this mountain special.
 
Just chiming in to say that I completely agree. The quotes are ridiculous and really break your immersion when they're not appropriate to their relative era. I wish they'd kept to the "grand" scale that's what Civ has always been all about, rather than doing flippant and goofy stuff. I remember Googling about a natural wonder, because I'd never heard of it, and there on the first page was the exact quote from the game... as featured in a Cracked.com article. :cringe:

I really hope they re-do the quotes, though I'm not holding my breath.
 
If I may add to the list of fake quotes: "We have deadly weapons that could destroy our planet". This is from the Atomic Age introduction quote. Let's assume that the "deadly weapons" they are talking about are Nuclear Weapons. Saying that Nuclear Weapon "could destroy our planet." is pure hyperbole and patently false. Even if all the Nuclear Weapons that currently exist on the Earth where detonated all at once. The earth would still exist. It would not in fact be "destroyed". Life would still exist. Humans more then likely will continue to exist. Now this isn't to say that there would not be real and very serious repercussions for using Nuclear Weapons. Just that the literal interpretation of that line is untrue. A more accurate quote would be "We have deadly weapons that could ruin our Habitat."
 
Another issue with the introductory texts is the quote introduction the ancient era: "From the first stirrings of life beneath water... to the great beasts of the Stone Age... to man taking his first upright steps."

As I and many others have pointed out, this is not ordered correctly. Bipedalism (~4 million years ago, maybe a little earlier) predates stone tools (~2.5 million years ago, maybe a little earlier). I cringe whenever I start a game and hear this quote indicating otherwise.

Is this a very minor complaint? Yes. Should Civ have gotten it right anyway? Yes.
 
I really don't mind "funny" quotes, even if what's funny for the guy choosing it might not be funny to me, but wrongly attributed or flat out invented quotes are unarguably shoddy work.
It's not like it's hard to google a little further and verify your stuff.
 
Another issue with the introductory texts is the quote introduction the ancient era: "From the first stirrings of life beneath water... to the great beasts of the Stone Age... to man taking his first upright steps."

As I and many others have pointed out, this is not ordered correctly. Bipedalism (~4 million years ago, maybe a little earlier) predates stone tools (~2.5 million years ago, maybe a little earlier). I cringe whenever I start a game and hear this quote indicating otherwise.

I may be wrong, but I saw this as even worse. The 'great beasts' would be more appropriately applied to dinosaurs (specifically Sauropods) and therefore it's the use of "stone age" that is the issue.
 
I may be wrong, but I saw this as even worse. The 'great beasts' would be more appropriately applied to dinosaurs (specifically Sauropods) and therefore it's the use of "stone age" that is the issue.

Well aurochs, megatheriums, mammoth, rhinos, cave lions would all qualify as great beasts, and they were all present in temperate areas during the stone age. These were all megafauna that was contemporary to neanderthals and homo sapiens, and went extinct later. There were still lions in Europe during the classical era.
 
Another issue with the introductory texts is the quote introduction the ancient era: "From the first stirrings of life beneath water... to the great beasts of the Stone Age... to man taking his first upright steps."

As I and many others have pointed out, this is not ordered correctly. Bipedalism (~4 million years ago, maybe a little earlier) predates stone tools (~2.5 million years ago, maybe a little earlier). I cringe whenever I start a game and hear this quote indicating otherwise.

Is this a very minor complaint? Yes. Should Civ have gotten it right anyway? Yes.
I'm pretty sure this exact issue has already been covered. I could be confusing threads, though. Maybe it was raised elsewhere, and not here, hah.

That said it depends on what you class as upright steps. In historical terms, homini ancestors were capable of using stone tools, and Wikipedia defines the Stone Age as dating back some 3.4 billion years or so (I'm sure it's sourced, so I wouldn't worry) and has records of homo habilis (and ancestors thereof) listed. So, upright steps would most definitely come after this stage in our evolution.

It's a contestable topic (apparently the "homo" in homo habilis has long been debated, which is fascinating. My interest in paleontology was predictably from the earlier eras; the dinosaurs fascinate most children, right? I studied extensively with the aim of majoring in Archeology but homini ancestry was never my focus), so I would be very careful with what you expect Firaxis to get right.
 
So many stupid, nonsensical, irrelevant, poorly chosen quotes finally made me decide to turn off the voices altogether. I couldn't stand hearing them anymore.
 
I'm pretty sure this exact issue has already been covered. I could be confusing threads, though. Maybe it was raised elsewhere, and not here, hah.

That said it depends on what you class as upright steps. In historical terms, homini ancestors were capable of using stone tools, and Wikipedia defines the Stone Age as dating back some 3.4 billion years or so (I'm sure it's sourced, so I wouldn't worry) and has records of homo habilis (and ancestors thereof) listed. So, upright steps would most definitely come after this stage in our evolution.

It's a contestable topic (apparently the "homo" in homo habilis has long been debated, which is fascinating. My interest in paleontology was predictably from the earlier eras; the dinosaurs fascinate most children, right? I studied extensively with the aim of majoring in Archeology but homini ancestry was never my focus), so I would be very careful with what you expect Firaxis to get right.
homo habilis was already bipedal though, and homo erectus before him as the name indicates.
Upright steps definitely came before stone tools.
 
Bipedal is not the same as upright. Bipedal is the use of two legs; upright indicates a modern spinal structure and more besides. This may be a bit of pedantry but we're discussing the relative precision of archeological references in prose, so I consider the pedantry relevant.

Homo habilis is apparently an incredibly-debated example as well. Perhaps I should've used a better one, but it and Australopithecus are cited as evidence of the earliest Stone Age tools.
 
In historical terms, homini ancestors were capable of using stone tools, and Wikipedia defines the Stone Age as dating back some 3.4 billion years or so (I'm sure it's sourced, so I wouldn't worry)

(...)

I studied extensively with the aim of majoring in Archeology but homini ancestry was never my focus)
I'm sure you meant MILLION years ago here then, if you majored in archaeology. I always assumed they referred to Pleistocene megafauna with the "great beasts of the stone age", as nothing else would make sense. Unless Firaxis have creationist agents among them.

I have been through hominids and human evolution briefly (particularly in South Africa) in the early part of my archaeology studies, but I now have a PhD in actual Near Eastern Bronze Age CIVILIZATIONS, haha. Perhaps a seed sown in 1990?
 
Million, billion, single letter typo because I chose not to copypaste, yes :p That said, I always assumed that "great beasts" could be anything, really, even sabre-tooth cats were still around in those time.

And I was greatly into the original Civilisation back in the day. That said, I sadly didn't progress with the aim; I ended up in Computer Science (I had to split my letter of application down the middle, and indeed got accepted into both CompSci and Archeology courses at different universities). Quite a late development; I didn't really do any major computer programming until I was in my late teens. Funny how it works out!
 
Well aurochs, megatheriums, mammoth, rhinos, cave lions would all qualify as great beasts, and they were all present in temperate areas during the stone age. These were all megafauna that was contemporary to neanderthals and homo sapiens, and went extinct later. There were still lions in Europe during the classical era.
But still, I don't think lions qualify as "great beasts". In any case there is no easy way to say whether "great beasts of the stone age" came before or after "man's first upright steps", whereas the "first beginnings of life" clearly happened aeons earlier. Therefore the earlier and greater beasts would make more sense in every way, with man's upright steps coming last.
 
And I was greatly into the original Civilisation back in the day. That said, I sadly didn't progress with the aim; I ended up in Computer Science (...) Funny how it works out!
Haha. I started in computer science and changed to archaeology. Slight regret when it comes to work and pay though. Oh well. I guess sabre-toothed cats goes under megafauna anyway.
 
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