Was this really necessary?

[cccv]

ok, I'm thinking some people didn't read the full Ottoman description, so here you go:

"The Ottoman Empire was born in Anatolia (in modern Turkey) at the start of the 13th century. It expanded into three continents and thrived for some six centuries. Many Americans know very little about the Ottoman Empire (it occupies the blind spot Americans have for pretty much everything between Greece and China). This is a great pity, for the Ottoman Empire was vast, powerful, and extremely interesting."

They talk about the Ottoman empire, the American comment was just an aside.

Tom, think you kinda missed my point but I'm not gonna fill three pages arguing about it.

 

[tom2050]

Ottoman had a fact, fact, useless Firaxis opinion garbage, and fact.

Please, cccv... this will be fun instead... you start with 'Fun Negative Jabs' and Arabia is next on the list...

 

[Naokaukodem]

World Illiteracy is around 15% ?, so according to Naokaukodem; those people are just complete freaking idiots (which is an extremely ignorant stance to take).

lol, where did you see such a thing? I'm only saying american people are ignorant in term of geography, that's all...

Of course, Naokaukodem seems to hate anything western

Actually France is the western part of a big continent, and beside that, it belongs to the Western Civilization...

and his geography skills are probably horrible without looking at a map

At least i know where is France. It's just there. And i know where is America too.

 

[kaltorak]

In the spanish site it says: "En general, la gente sabe muy poco del Imperio Otomano"

which means: "In general, people knows little about the ottoman empire"

 

[tom2050]

Anyone with an interest in military history knows about the Ottoman Empire. So in the Spanish site, they are calling everyone geographical idiots. That seems to include you also Naokaukodem. I wouldn't think so, but Firaxis does.

BTW, people are knowledgable in their areas of expertise. You cannot expect all peoples to know everything. They often know very well what they do or what their interests are. In which case, areas of the world with high illiteracy rates will not know these things as well (being unable to read, means they can only know through being shown, having heard, but cannot study it themselves from a map).

Therefore, Naokaukodem, from your statements; you think that countries with higher illiteracy rates shown below are countries with a bunch of ignorant idiots in them (geographically of course).

Shows what kind of person you are. In which case, you believe most all of Europe is mostly ignorant as well (if America is, Europe must be, according to your flawed logic).

Start it off Naokaukodem, with Negative Fun Jabs against the next on the list, Arabia...

 

[Thormodr]

Whatever the case, the factoids were generally stupid.

My girlfriend (who is Thai) said, "In all the years of Thai history, is that all they could think of?"

A wonderful first impression for someone who has never played Civ before but had become interested when I mentioned that Thailand/Siam might be in.

I think the factoid for Arabia was blank. Even a half arsed one minute search on Wikipedia could have turned up something interesting. Well done Firaxis/2K games.

 

[Thyrwyn]

I would agree that the factoids could be improved. Significantly.

 

[I tech faster]

It's quite funny how the translators handled this negative comment.

In the french version, they just kept the two first sentences of the Ottoman overview. In the german translation, they did the same but added that the Ottoman empire was vast, powerful and extremely interesting.

I don't think that making a personnel attack on the american was the intention of Firaxis/2K but just an employee going mad.

 

[Mercade]

Touchy touchy. Tom and Naokaukodem, will you stop the trolling? The point has been made. We don't need this threat to be jacked further with gallup polls of how how many non-civ-players actually do know something about the Ottoman empire.

The description of a civ should give some factual introduction about a civ. It's peculiar in this respect that the Spanish text speaks about "everybody", the "USA" text about "Americans" and the German and French texts don't mention this ignorance at all, but I suppose that's a choice of the translator as I Tech Faster observed while I typed this.

I doubt this text was part of the marketing strategy, but more a poor judgement on the part of the person who had to write up these texts (under deadline, no doubt). Let's hope it gets fixed and we can happily look at the rest of the new info provided on the website.

 

[MrBullterrier]

I think this thread is making an elephant out of a fly... How can such an innocent statement be interpreted almost like a declaration of war against the States? How can anybody, who has confidence in his own nation take offence against it? Anyway Firaxis can't be blamed for anti-americanism, the reason beeing that the mere inclusion of America, a country that's only been existent for so long, as a civilization can be interpreted like the exact opposite.
Really this whole issue seems laughable to me...

 

[PieceOfMind]

Surely one of the golden rules in marketing is to not alienate your audience. MrBullterrier, surely you'd agree that even if it is very minor, it's not exactly smart to take cheapshots at the people you want to sell a product to.

 

[Ahriman]

Whatever the case, the factoids were generally stupid.

Absolutely, and the descriptions are also pretty weak. They just reveal the historic ignorance of whoever wrote the blurbs.
"Indeed, Russia is one of the most fascinating civilizations in all of human history." "As Winston Churchill once said, Russia is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." Seriously, that's all they could write?

 

[Dark_Jedi06]

I'm going to say that that statement is true of Americans as well as 98.5% of the world's population, considering that nearly all of humanity is either ignorant or stupid (and usually they're both).

 

[Malkaviel]

I disagree with that literacy rate map, sorry. I know for a fact we in the USA do not have over 97% literacy. I expect smaller, wealthy countries like Switzerland would approach 97% literacy. Also, what are standards of "literacy"? Reciting the alphabet? Reading three-letter words? Completing 5th grade?

To the point of the argument, I think the quote is directed to the product being primarily marketed in the USA, but looking a little bad from the outside in, as in, primarily speaking to Americans that many of "you" likely know little about caliphates.

However I do agree it should be amended to read "most people know little of Ottoman history".

 

[Del Pino]

I disagree with that literacy rate map, sorry. I know for a fact we in the USA do not have over 97% literacy.

Actually, the literacy rate in the United States is 99.0%.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html

 

[Me,myself,and,I]

CIA world fact book is awesome.

 

[Fluxx]

While I absolutely agree that any personificalication should be in the game manual I do agree with the fact that Americans history education is different and in my honost opinion lacking compared to (for example) Europeans history education.

In Europe the history lessons at highschool stretch from the Egyptean, Roman and Greece period. From there to early AD times in the middle east through the medieval times, colonization period, American revolution, Napolean and the russian revolution.

American history lessons focus more on the colonization period till the moment of the American civil war and the independence of America.
Which ofcourse is the most important moment for Americans, the founding of their country. But coupled that with the nationalitism and patriotism in America, forces the history education to much focused on America, and less on the other parts of the world.
This does make Americans with an average education know less about history of other cultures then for example Europeans with an average education.

 

[Fife]

Pople mix opinion up with facts all the time...

 

[Fife]

The fact is most people think they are right and the rest are wrong.

 

[Me,myself,and,I]

We have a terrible history education, we don't even have a good American history education. After all, the natives were peaceful until we got here, what with the scalping and the warpath and all, and don't get me started about meso-america.