Wait, what? In a dark future when people on earth are supposedly anhilated in nuclear war and the last men have to survive on alien planet, what should humankind need more than order ans security to ensure thier survival?
Well, except genejacks.
What is "The Great Mistake"?
- Thread starter Fabio1701
- Start date
Wait, what? In a dark future when people on earth are supposedly anhilated in nuclear war and the last men have to survive on alien planet, what should humankind need more than order ans security to ensure thier survival?
Well, except genejacks.
GeoModder
Deity
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"Social cohesion must be maintained!" - Liang Fang-Kar, Undersecretary for Civil Defense
CraziFuzzy
Warlord
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After construction of my first Gene Vault, I have come to the horrible conclusion that The Great Mistake revolved around the annihilation of the noble Llama from Earth.
LordBaal
Sistem Lord
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If this game is set around the year 2600, then if you asked what was the great mistake to someone inside this history they would probably reply: "the last 700 hundreds years of human history".
However there seems to have been a global scale event that marked the last kick in the pants needed to finally put efforts behind traveling to another planet or let mankind die here, so there's have to be something more specific. Not necessarily something as huge as failed climate control technologies, something far more mundane but equally disastrous would be some kind of economic disaster at great scale, which led to multiple wars (Pakistan/India for example) and civil wars (take notice of the mention warlords in the Brasilia speech), some of which might have escalated to nuclear/biological/chemical weapons.
However there seems to have been a global scale event that marked the last kick in the pants needed to finally put efforts behind traveling to another planet or let mankind die here, so there's have to be something more specific. Not necessarily something as huge as failed climate control technologies, something far more mundane but equally disastrous would be some kind of economic disaster at great scale, which led to multiple wars (Pakistan/India for example) and civil wars (take notice of the mention warlords in the Brasilia speech), some of which might have escalated to nuclear/biological/chemical weapons.
LoneRebel
Emperor
With the support of plenty of its citizens.
T Glenhaber
Chieftain
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After watching Interstellar, all I can think of is overpopulation/blight/not enough food.
Prophet Skeram
Chieftain
When you get the Domination victory screen, it's actually quite clear that the "Great Mistake" was actually a world war of sorts (World War III ?). However, it's also made quite clear through flavor texts etc. that Earth is pretty much doomed anyway because of pollution, starvation and over population.
TPangolin
Just the worst person
We already know the answer to this OP now. It was a Nukefest, followed by ecological catastrophes.
After watching Interstellar, all I can do is want my money back.
After watching Interstellar, all I can do is want my money back.
CraziFuzzy
Warlord
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I think the worst part of the movie, for me, was the Civ:BE commercial before it. Now THAT make's me want my money back.
Fabio1701
King
How deliciously painful!
With all this space stuff coming up in popular culture and cbe reviewing generally well in the mainstream media despite certain faults underscored by the community, I wonder if 2k would find it worthwhile to snatch the rights of smac back and ask firaxite to remake it.
prince_caspian
Prince
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IMHO it seems like the answer was in the game itself - that the Great Mistake was some huge world war.
Spoiler :
Ah, the Great Mistake. Very intelligent poll, by the way! Respect to the topic starter is.
In my opinion, it's "none of the above". Basically, i think that the Great Mistake is we. We humans. We ourselves is the mistake. See, humans are intelligent animals. It is in the nature of animals to make a mess. Intellect boosts humans' ability to do things; all things. Including making a mess. Lower-sentience animals (ones without a language and ones with rudimentary language - 1000 "words" or less, approx) lack the ability to transform their environment into "artificial" shape any much. Granted, ants, termites, some apes, some water mammals, some birds and certain other animals - transform their environment to "artificial" a little (nests, using primitive tools, etc). But only human-scale intellect allows to transform the environment on a large scale; for example, during last ~40 years, mankind cut down about 50% of remaining forests on Earth (and surely more even before that).
The great mistake, to me, - is a figurative expression. I don't see anyone (nor any group/country/corporation etc) actually _doing_ that mistake - now or in the future. Instead, we do what we must: we must eat, we must sleep, we must keep our bodies (most of the time) within rather small range of outside temperature. And being animals, we must make love (most of us anyways), have children, and care about them. This all means, we need food, clean water, shelter, medicines, clothes, etc etc. And when it's 7+ billions of us, with every last person needing all those things and more, for decades onward, - this is, inevitably, a huge stress to the Earth biosphere (which is, ultimately, the source of most of those things). And i underline, _needing_ them we are - it's not something we "could" stop getting.
Unavoidable result of the mankind proliferation into industrial ways of life (which in fact is the ultimate step on the "making environment artificial" road), - is massive reduction of natural biosphere (a.k.a. Gaia) of Earth. In simple words - Earth is getting extremely very sick, because of us. This is not a joke; google for "Sixth Great Extinction" - it is going on already as we speak, accelerating.
It's also known as "holocene extinction". It's called "Sixth", because in geologic record, scientists see five Great extinctions of species on Earth in the past. Dozens and hundreds millions years ago, they happened. One of them was about ~96% of species gone (extinct), the remaining 4% greatly reduced in numbers of surviving organisms. What caused them? Big things: asteroid impacts, possibly one or two - huge methane bursts (we're talking hundreds to thousands BILLIONS of tons of methane released short-term), etc. And we humans - are in fact on par, if not worse, with a massive asteroid impact, you see. Whos mistake is that? Noone's... Noone we know, that is. If God exists, - perhaps it is his mistake. But most theistic people will surely mention that we can't know if it is a mistake - perhaps it is a divine plan, a way to find out who's worthy of eternal life, and who's not, etc. Atheistic people will probably agree with me when i say that this unfortunate dual nature of humans (animal and sapient) - is only a manifestation, ultimately, of laws of physics, chemistry, biology, which, given enough time, eventually led (through evolution) to appearance of sapient humans, and their deeds. To clarify - myself, i'm not "theistic" nor "atheistic" - i just remain unsure. Agnostic, sort of. I say - "may be there is God; may be there is not - i do not know".
Some will ask me: "what about freedom of choice? Can't we humans prevent planetary disaster here on Earth, if we really want to do so?". The answer is: freedom of choice, sadly, is weaker force than human instincts and desires, in most of us. Only few humans develop their intellect high enough to be able to "override" their _needs_ and desires which are based on their instincts - and sadly, for most of those brave souls, it doesn't end well. Evolution itself stimulates proliferation of self-preservation instinct, breeding instincts, feeding intincts, etc - those individuals who follow those intincts have higher chances to make kids, and this means, natural selection favors them.
Many of us here - are in part, or even mostly, able to actually behave against our own survival instincts when our mind tells us it's the thing to do. For now, that is. But please don't think whole manking is so; people are different. And even more important - people's circumstances are different. We might dream all day how in the future mankind will change its ways, will stop cutting down forests, killing lots of species with our chemical, radioactive and other kinds of pollution, etc - but how many of us will keep dreaming about it, if we are put into "poor man of a third country" environment? Hungry worker somewhere in Bangladash, being paid an equivalent of a few dollars for a month of hard work, is not likely to care (any much, in practice) about well-being of Earth biosphere; his hungry kids and starving wife occupy his thoughts much more, i think. And he's not alone; most people in the world are in similar environament/situation all the time. Trust me, even few days of empty stomach changes a man VERY much, and Maslow's pyramid is not just a pretty picture - its meaning is clear and obvious (to me, at least): physiologycal and safety needs - take absolute priority...
Multiply that by 7+ billions people, several decades of keeping them alive and quite many of them (so-called "1st world") - at least relatively "thriving", and consider how you could do so on finite Earth with existing real modern-day technologies - and you will realize: we humans are killing life on Earth, and this will hit us back right in the face, during this century, and kill most of us humans - because our food, most of clean water, most of medicines and even habitable climate - we get from Earth biosphere, i.e. from other life forms. Unlike simple organisms like green algae in the ocean, we can't exist purely on sunlight and few common elements abundant in the sea water...
If that's not a "Great Mistake", then what is?
P.S. I've wrote somewhere in the internets about it already few months ago, but can't find where. Sigh...
P.P.S. If our leaders are stupid enough to do all-out nuclear war, using most of existing nuclear weapons, - then yes, it'd be very proper MISTAKE indeed; but i really doubt any space ships would be able to leave Earth in this case - even in purely fictional universe like Civ:BE. Like Einstein's popular quote says, "4th world war will be fought with sticks and stones" - after nuclear world war, mankind would be lucky to survive _at all_, barely, as a few tribes of cavemen in remote locations...
In my opinion, it's "none of the above". Basically, i think that the Great Mistake is we. We humans. We ourselves is the mistake. See, humans are intelligent animals. It is in the nature of animals to make a mess. Intellect boosts humans' ability to do things; all things. Including making a mess. Lower-sentience animals (ones without a language and ones with rudimentary language - 1000 "words" or less, approx) lack the ability to transform their environment into "artificial" shape any much. Granted, ants, termites, some apes, some water mammals, some birds and certain other animals - transform their environment to "artificial" a little (nests, using primitive tools, etc). But only human-scale intellect allows to transform the environment on a large scale; for example, during last ~40 years, mankind cut down about 50% of remaining forests on Earth (and surely more even before that).
The great mistake, to me, - is a figurative expression. I don't see anyone (nor any group/country/corporation etc) actually _doing_ that mistake - now or in the future. Instead, we do what we must: we must eat, we must sleep, we must keep our bodies (most of the time) within rather small range of outside temperature. And being animals, we must make love (most of us anyways), have children, and care about them. This all means, we need food, clean water, shelter, medicines, clothes, etc etc. And when it's 7+ billions of us, with every last person needing all those things and more, for decades onward, - this is, inevitably, a huge stress to the Earth biosphere (which is, ultimately, the source of most of those things). And i underline, _needing_ them we are - it's not something we "could" stop getting.
Unavoidable result of the mankind proliferation into industrial ways of life (which in fact is the ultimate step on the "making environment artificial" road), - is massive reduction of natural biosphere (a.k.a. Gaia) of Earth. In simple words - Earth is getting extremely very sick, because of us. This is not a joke; google for "Sixth Great Extinction" - it is going on already as we speak, accelerating.
It's also known as "holocene extinction". It's called "Sixth", because in geologic record, scientists see five Great extinctions of species on Earth in the past. Dozens and hundreds millions years ago, they happened. One of them was about ~96% of species gone (extinct), the remaining 4% greatly reduced in numbers of surviving organisms. What caused them? Big things: asteroid impacts, possibly one or two - huge methane bursts (we're talking hundreds to thousands BILLIONS of tons of methane released short-term), etc. And we humans - are in fact on par, if not worse, with a massive asteroid impact, you see. Whos mistake is that? Noone's... Noone we know, that is. If God exists, - perhaps it is his mistake. But most theistic people will surely mention that we can't know if it is a mistake - perhaps it is a divine plan, a way to find out who's worthy of eternal life, and who's not, etc. Atheistic people will probably agree with me when i say that this unfortunate dual nature of humans (animal and sapient) - is only a manifestation, ultimately, of laws of physics, chemistry, biology, which, given enough time, eventually led (through evolution) to appearance of sapient humans, and their deeds. To clarify - myself, i'm not "theistic" nor "atheistic" - i just remain unsure. Agnostic, sort of. I say - "may be there is God; may be there is not - i do not know".
Some will ask me: "what about freedom of choice? Can't we humans prevent planetary disaster here on Earth, if we really want to do so?". The answer is: freedom of choice, sadly, is weaker force than human instincts and desires, in most of us. Only few humans develop their intellect high enough to be able to "override" their _needs_ and desires which are based on their instincts - and sadly, for most of those brave souls, it doesn't end well. Evolution itself stimulates proliferation of self-preservation instinct, breeding instincts, feeding intincts, etc - those individuals who follow those intincts have higher chances to make kids, and this means, natural selection favors them.
Many of us here - are in part, or even mostly, able to actually behave against our own survival instincts when our mind tells us it's the thing to do. For now, that is. But please don't think whole manking is so; people are different. And even more important - people's circumstances are different. We might dream all day how in the future mankind will change its ways, will stop cutting down forests, killing lots of species with our chemical, radioactive and other kinds of pollution, etc - but how many of us will keep dreaming about it, if we are put into "poor man of a third country" environment? Hungry worker somewhere in Bangladash, being paid an equivalent of a few dollars for a month of hard work, is not likely to care (any much, in practice) about well-being of Earth biosphere; his hungry kids and starving wife occupy his thoughts much more, i think. And he's not alone; most people in the world are in similar environament/situation all the time. Trust me, even few days of empty stomach changes a man VERY much, and Maslow's pyramid is not just a pretty picture - its meaning is clear and obvious (to me, at least): physiologycal and safety needs - take absolute priority...
Multiply that by 7+ billions people, several decades of keeping them alive and quite many of them (so-called "1st world") - at least relatively "thriving", and consider how you could do so on finite Earth with existing real modern-day technologies - and you will realize: we humans are killing life on Earth, and this will hit us back right in the face, during this century, and kill most of us humans - because our food, most of clean water, most of medicines and even habitable climate - we get from Earth biosphere, i.e. from other life forms. Unlike simple organisms like green algae in the ocean, we can't exist purely on sunlight and few common elements abundant in the sea water...
If that's not a "Great Mistake", then what is?
P.S. I've wrote somewhere in the internets about it already few months ago, but can't find where. Sigh...
P.P.S. If our leaders are stupid enough to do all-out nuclear war, using most of existing nuclear weapons, - then yes, it'd be very proper MISTAKE indeed; but i really doubt any space ships would be able to leave Earth in this case - even in purely fictional universe like Civ:BE. Like Einstein's popular quote says, "4th world war will be fought with sticks and stones" - after nuclear world war, mankind would be lucky to survive _at all_, barely, as a few tribes of cavemen in remote locations...
GenyaArikado
Judge of Love
- Joined
- Oct 12, 2011
- Messages
- 798
Nah it was actually nuclear conflict and the enviromental reaction afterwards 
Frankly i wish they just outright included the explanation in the game. No point not having the description included for rp sake when the factions and leaders backstory reference events specific to their version of it
Frankly i wish they just outright included the explanation in the game. No point not having the description included for rp sake when the factions and leaders backstory reference events specific to their version of it
Lexicus
Deity
I think botched attempts to geoengineer as a result of runaway climate change is most likely to screw us in real life. Maybe combined with a "minor" nuclear war between Pakistan and India.
Ampharos
Chieftain
Probably nuclear war compounded with environmental collapse.
Both promotional material and in-game lore discuss environmental collapse (the extinction of elephants, certain parts of the planet being uninhabitable...) while the Domination Victory screen mentions a "terrible and glorious war" that left the planet uninhabitable. It's possible that the Domination Victory screen is propaganda, but I think that there's some truth there.
Most likely, the Great Mistake is left ambiguous (but nevertheless hinted at) so that you can piece together your own story.
Both promotional material and in-game lore discuss environmental collapse (the extinction of elephants, certain parts of the planet being uninhabitable...) while the Domination Victory screen mentions a "terrible and glorious war" that left the planet uninhabitable. It's possible that the Domination Victory screen is propaganda, but I think that there's some truth there.
Most likely, the Great Mistake is left ambiguous (but nevertheless hinted at) so that you can piece together your own story.
GenyaArikado
Judge of Love
- Joined
- Oct 12, 2011
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- 798
why are we still going with the "probably"s lol? Firaxis outright explained what the Great Mistake was.
Ampharos
Chieftain
If you're talking about the Domination Victory screen, then it's reliability is dubious, at best since it refers to the conflict as "terrible and glorious". It emphasizes the conflict and then states that the conflict wasn't the mistake. The mistake was thinking peace was possible.
You can see it here.
It's clearly an unreliable narration.
Similarly, we don't know what caused the war. It's very possible environmental collapse led to a scarcity of resources which led to the war. Meaning, the mistake was not taking care of the environment and the war was the final nail in the coffin, not necessarily the mistake itself.
Unless you're referring to something else.
Jet City Gamble
Chieftain
- Joined
- Apr 7, 2015
- Messages
- 1
Longtime lurker here, but the esoteric nature of this discussion prompted me to jump in. I'm reminded of Rust Cohle in one of the True Detective episodes (maybe the first one?)
So that's one way to look at it.
So that's one way to look at it.
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