What is "The Great Mistake"?

[gunnergoz]

OTOH I like a fresh start and would rather keep from mixing the SMAC and BE storylines. The thrust of BE keeps a focus on what GM drove us from Earth and that is an important topic IMO, even if in playing we are only mulling it over in the back of our mind.

 

[defiler]

@defiler

I do like the idea of UNS Unity and SMAC existing in the same timeline as CBE. So when both extraterrestial colonies themselves become spacefaring, and they meet, who will the winners be? How would ARC react to Morgan Industries, with a hostile takeover or a merger? Would the Gaians be OK with all the Harmony factions or disagree about process?

Yes, I thought about SMAC causing the start of the Great mistake, but its possible they could meet, although not a necessity, on SMAC story they only left Chiron after someone reaching transendence and on that storyline Earth died after they left, also Beyond Earth never traveled to Alpha Centauri.
Unity could be one of those derelict settlements on Beyond Earth too.
Also on the topic, its funny to think that the Data Angels, the closest to ARC UA were a splinter from Morgan Industries

 

[Browd]

This panel presentation (Will Miller and Dave McDonough) will be posted on YouTube sometime this week, but I thought I would pass along my notes from that panel. My notes are admittedly incomplete (the panel was so interesting I forgot to jot down many things ), but here is what I have.

The purpose of the panel was to explain the Earthly backstory as of the time of the seeding, laying the foundation for the factions and their unique abilities. From a gameplay perspective, since they were not confined to historical civs, they wanted to construct a plausible future history to explain how the factions arose and why the seeding was so urgent. In their view, a variety of forces/events had to come into play, including territorial upheaval from warfare and climactic devastation, population upheaval in the form of mass migration, famine and pestilence, and technological upheaval, including communications failures/blackouts (no more internet -- gasp!) and political disengagement/isolationism.

The timeline they outlined starts about 50 years from now with the "Great Mistake", followed by 4 generations of recovery (indeterminate number of years -- just "4 generations"), by which point technology has recovered and progressed to a level just ahead of where we are today. At that point, we have the technology to send seed ships and also have come to realize that the "inflection point" is nigh. The inflection point is described as the point in time when the Earth will no longer have sufficient energy resources to propel meaningful cargo beyond Earth orbit. If other planets are not seeded before the inflection point, humanity is forever confined to Earth. (In their view, the backstory did not require explanation of the propulsion methods needed to accomplish the seeding, so that is left to our imaginations.)

What was the Great Mistake?

It starts in China, with a dirty bomb being exploded in Chengdu. The Chinese accuse Iran, fire tactical nukes at Iranian cities, and invade Afghanistan. Pakistan conducts air strikes against China, and China retaliates by nuking Pakistan. Pakistan counter-nukes, triggering further Chinese nuclear attacks against Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan and, of all places, N. Korea. At this point, approximately 1/3 of the worlds population has suffered a nuclear attack. Mass migrations of refugees destabilize neighboring regions, including Russia, Eastern Europe, India and East Africa.

The next shoe to drop is dramatic climate change -- polar ice caps melt (the poles are ice-free for many months of the year), raising sea levels by 20 feet, triggering further dislocations and migrations, particularly from coastal China, India and the Americas.

Against this backdrop, the various BE factions begin to emerge.

Most Western nations turn inward, focusing on their own problems and adopting neo-isolationist policies, allowing the rest of the world to sort itself out. Two notable exceptions are Australia, which happily conducts business with everyone, and the Sub-Saharan nations that eventually form the People's African Union, which suffered the least territorial losses from climate change (Africa serves as the world's breadbasket). ARC becomes a super-corporation whose power rivals (or exceeds) that of its host nation (U.S., plus Canada and Mexico). For reasons that are a bit obscure, a hybrid Hindu/Islam religion forms in India, which leads to political union between India and Pakistan (notwithstanding their historical differences). The Chinese-led PAC includes Mongolia and N. Korea, but probably does not include S. Korea and Japan, which remain independent. The EU collapsed early, but Franco-Iberia serves as the effective successor -- presumably including also the Low Countries and perhaps Italy, but definitely not including Germany, England or any of Scandinavia. (They hinted that those countries' (and presumably Japan's) post-Great Mistake stories have yet to be told -- expansion pack material???).

They emphasized that this was the version of the Great Mistake that they used as the backstory for development purposes. None of this appears in-game or affects gameplay, so we are free to (are encouraged to) conceive our own versions of the Great Mistake.

 

[Teproc]

I'm not sure the whole nuke war chain of events entirely makes sense, but whatever. I actually like it better left as a mystery, because this is pretty boring : nukefest = dramatic climate change, the end. Well the factions/sponsors themselves are pretty good, but the general story is... uninspired.

 

[jaldaen]

Good to know that Japan and South Korea aren't part of the PAC. I'll have to keep that in mind in case I build a Sponsors mod.

 

[Browd]

Also interesting to speculate whether the Svalbard Global Seed Vault might survive the Great Mistake and form the basis for a Scandinavian faction UA.

 

[gunnergoz]

I'm not sure the whole nuke war chain of events entirely makes sense, but whatever. I actually like it better left as a mystery, because this is pretty boring : nukefest = dramatic climate change, the end. Well the factions/sponsors themselves are pretty good, but the general story is... uninspired.

Once the balloon goes up and war starts between nuclear armed powers, anything is possible - changes that we can hardly envision today.

That is one reason that nuclear disarmament and nuclear proliferation have been pursued so vigorously over the past 30 or so years by those wishing to join the nuclear club and those wishing to exclude everyone but themselves from it.

Perhaps the recent events in Ukraine, which did at one time possess nukes as part of the Soviet Union, and which voluntarily surrendered them after achieving independence, will serve as an abject lesson to other non-nuclear armed states of the risks they face of domination by those states that are nuclear armed. I expect non-nuclear nations to push even harder now for their own nukes.

And of course, after a nuclear war, any problems we have today in the way of climate change, resource depletion, income disparity and food shortages - these problems will be geometrically greater afterwards.

Firaxis may be making games, but they are also giving all of us living today a lot of food for thought about the world we live in and the direction we are likely headed towards, if things keep going the way they are in today's headlines.

 

[Antilogic]

What was the Great Mistake?

It starts in China, with a dirty bomb being exploded in Chengdu. The Chinese accuse Iran, fire tactical nukes at Iranian cities, and invade Afghanistan. Pakistan conducts air strikes against China, and China retaliates by nuking Pakistan. Pakistan counter-nukes, triggering further Chinese nuclear attacks against Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan and, of all places, N. Korea. At this point, approximately 1/3 of the worlds population has suffered a nuclear attack. Mass migrations of refugees destabilize neighboring regions, including Russia, Eastern Europe, India and East Africa.

The next shoe to drop is dramatic climate change -- polar ice caps melt (the poles are ice-free for many months of the year), raising sea levels by 20 feet, triggering further dislocations and migrations, particularly from coastal China, India and the Americas.

Against this backdrop, the various BE factions begin to emerge.

I'm a bit disappointed. I don't get why North Korea would be part of this hodge-podge Middle Eastern alliance, and I'm quite unclear on why the Chinese retaliation against Iran provokes Pakistani action but somehow Pakistani nukes flying doesn't set off alarm bells in the Indian government. Is this dirty bomb the product of a terrorist group with ties to Iran, and if so what happened to the standard international response for terrorism ("Western"-led UN coalitions and the like)? And what the hell did the Chinese nuke in Afghanistan? Are these tactical nukes to clear out rough terrain of guerrillas or something?

I'm also wondering whether all these nukes have an impact on the environmental aspect of the story, but that seems a minor concern at the moment.

Firaxis may be making games, but they are also giving all of us living today a lot of food for thought about the world we live in and the direction we are likely headed towards, if things keep going the way they are in today's headlines.

I wish I could say that. It seems very random at the moment.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

The whole China vs. Iran thing doesn't make a whole lot of sense unless alliances in the Middle East shift dramatically, like if China replaces the U.S. as major benefactor of Iran's local rivals.

I could see why Pakistan would nuke China if China is invading Afghanistan and nuking Iran. A lot of fallout would hit Pakistan and China would probably want to take out Pakistan as a flanking route into Iran. Or maybe Iran bought them off. who knows?

I can only fathom why China would attack N. Korea if the North Koreans became closer to Russia than with China.

 

[GenyaArikado]

Maybe they were trying to take over N.K. too

 

[gunnergoz]

(snip)
I wish I could say that. It seems very random at the moment.

I did not mean that Firaxis is setting out to "educate" gamers, only that this is a not unwelcome side effect of some serious discussion that went into the game's design.

 

[Browd]

On the shifting alliances point, Dave noted that this is set 50 years in our future. China today is trying to nail down its access to key resources across the globe and there's every reason to believe that their urgency about resources will continue to grow, which would likely breed resentment from those who view themselves as being exploited.

 

[gunnergoz]

On the shifting alliances point, Dave noted that this is set 50 years in our future. China today is trying to nail down its access to key resources across the globe and there's every reason to believe that their urgency about resources will continue to grow, which would likely breed resentment from those who view themselves as being exploited.

More true than I care to admit: Pentagon war planners in DC have for some time been working up possible scenarios and war plans that focus on anticipated international conflicts arising from competition for diminishing resources.

 

[Westwall]

There would have to be some drastic shifts in the geopolitical landscape for Pakistan to even consider aligning itself against China, let alone taking military action. The idea that they would launch air strikes on China over an invasion of Afghanistan is like France attacking America over a US invasion of Mali. Afghanistan simply isn't important enough to Pakistan (they're tenuous partners at best) to risk all-out war with an ally as powerful as China.

Also, the suggestion that Japan and South Korea aren't members of the PAC flies directly in the face of what's been put out by Gamereactor about the factions: http://www.gamereactor.eu/news/199534/Civilization:+Beyond+Earth+info+overload/

Centered around the old People's Republic of China, the Cooperative spans Asia from the Mongolian steppe to the megalopolis of Bangkok, with even former regional rivals South Korea and Japan laying aside their differences to work in the framework of the PAC.

 

[Civ'ed]

Perhaps China directly controls Mongolia and North Korea but the rest is only allied?
Also, in 50 years, w have no idea how bad resource shortages will be, so it's possible. Remember, no one in the past could ever see US/England, France/England or France/Germany working together either.

 

[Browd]

First, why do you assume Mike Holmes (author of the Gamereactor article) is better informed than the co-lead designers of CivBE? I choose to take the word of Will and Dave, who sat around the studio whiteboarding the Great Mistake and then wrote up the backstory for internal use. That is what they reported at Firaxicon. If you think they are mistaken about what they conceived, or that Holmes knows the membership of PAC better than the guys who dreamed it up, well....

In any event, the Gamereactor article does not say S. Korea and Japan are members of the PAC. The full quote: "Centered around the old People's Republic of China, the Cooperative spans Asia from the Mongolian steppe to the megalopolis of Bangkok, with even former regional rivals South Korea and Japan laying aside their differences to work in the framework of the PAC." The last sentence can fairly be read as S. Korea and Japan remaining outside the PAC itself, but working together closely with the regional superpower, the PAC (in a manner similar to, e.g., the way Canada and Mexico frequently work with the U.S. today).

 

[Westwall]

It could but that seems like more of a stretch. "Even South Korea and Japan put aside their differences to work in the framework of the PAC" suggests at the very least a close association, rather than outright independence.

Who knows though, I'd like to see a Free Asian Alliance but then it seems rather disingenuous to have a "Pan-Asian Cooperative" that doesn't at the very least include the entirety of East Asia.

As for why I assume the Gamereactor author is better informed... well, I don't. I'm assuming he's getting his information from Firaxis or else he's talking out of his ass. As for the word of Will and Dave, I would believe it if I heard it from them directly. All I have to really go on in that regard though is your account that they hinted that Japan's story had yet to be told.

It's not that I'm doubting you personally, just that I'd like to hear it from a more direct source.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

Perhaps the recent events in Ukraine, which did at one time possess nukes as part of the Soviet Union, and which voluntarily surrendered them after achieving independence, will serve as an abject lesson to other non-nuclear armed states of the risks they face of domination by those states that are nuclear armed. I expect non-nuclear nations to push even harder now for their own nukes.

Also worth pointing out: Libya and Iraq, the only two countries that willing gave up their nuclear weapons programs under pressure from the US, were both toppled by the US. Meanwhile, the US has never attacked another nuclear power, at least not directly.

So let that be a warning to the rest of you: don't do what we tell you, or we'll invade you and kill you.

 

[Camikaze]

The video of the panel with the full explanation has been released:

Link to video.

 

[Antilogic]

I'm quite disappointed the great mistake wasn't ultraporn.