what is the " great mistake " they talk in the story line ?

[Saglac]

what is the " great mistake " they talk in the story line ? i trried to find in the civilopedia but didnt find anything really evocative, anybody has an idea ?

[light5_fl]

The Domination victory seems to imply a nuclear war was involved while dropping a Dawn of War: Winter Assualt reference.

[zgrssd]

TV-Tropes says it is intentionally left vague, to fuel our imagination.
But it apparently involved two world wars (propably a nuclear one too) and melting of the icecaps.
It is save to say that earth is now a craphoot world. Mostly.

Not as bad as this civ game:
http://www.reddit.com/comments/uxpil/ive_been_playing_the_same_game_of_civilization_ii/
But humanity propably went halfway there.

[Goliath]

Then there is also the Inflection Point. Due to that phenomenon, the various superpowers took the opportunities to start the Seeding quickly. What is the Inflection Point? A mysterious wormhole? I think the Great Mistake is an ecological disaster that was created by failed artificial ecological experiments. Then the world descended into a global war to secure as much as resources as possible before the disaster worsened.

[=M$= Oroberus]

Well, it's interesting that people state the wars as "the great mistake" while the affinities themselfs and lots of quotes of the ingame leaders clearly show what that mistake was.

The mistake was mankinds reckless behavior regarding the planet the people had to leave.

Radiated oceans and countrysides, oil polluted oceans and air, over 6.000.000.000 organisms contaminated with synthetically created chemicals and so on.

And that's not even some sci-fi stuff ;)

I'm pretty sure that, not even "the great mistake" but the whole background of the game is a kind of social criticism. It's not uncommon for developers to integrate messages like this in their games.

[Patrick]

Copy&Paste

Taken from tweets made by @CivWikia who probably got it during a panel:

Designers of ‪#BeyondEarth‬ planned that The Great Mistake began with a weak nuclear explosion in a Chinese city.

China retaliates against ‪#Iran‬ with nuclear weapons. #BeyondEarth ‪#TheGreatMistake‬

China blames Iran and blasts Iran and Afghanistan with a nuke.

Pakistan attacks China

China nukes Pakistan and North Korea

#BeyondEarth begins a number of generations after the '‪#GreatMistake‬', by which time full knowledge of the event has receded into myth.

Humanitarian crisis follows. 1/3rd of world's population live in a nuked nation. #BeyondEarth #TheGreatMistake

Greenhouse effect is accelerated by an order of magnitude. Biggest losers are coastal China, coastal India and the Americas. #BeyondEarth

India and Pakistan find a common way. Australia is doing great. Sub-Saharan Africa unites. #BeyondEarth #TheGreatMistake

VideoEtTaco's map is now shown by the designers, turns out to be pretty accurate compared to what they had planned. #BeyondEarth

African Union wouldn't include that much of North Africa, Brazilia too ambitious too. Franco-Iberia should include more EU. #BeyondEarth

(Updated)

Governments become increasingly isolationist and turn inward to resolve devastation.

It is not until four generations pass that humans begin to look elsewhere for Earth-like habitats.

Again: this is all hypothetical, and -- as Miller and McDonough stressed multiple times -- ABSOLUTELY NOT CANON - @CivWikia

But during the E3 the developers have said the collected events aren't expressly told to the player, there is an internal list, and nuclear war does have something to do with it.

The Great Mistake is a collection of major events which has caused humanity to mount an exodus to the stars, 600 years from now.

[Skirlasvoud]

Originally posted by Goliath:

Then there is also the Inflection Point. Due to that phenomenon, the various superpowers took the opportunities to start the Seeding quickly. What is the Inflection Point? A mysterious wormhole? I think the Great Mistake is an ecological disaster that was created by failed artificial ecological experiments. Then the world descended into a global war to secure as much as resources as possible before the disaster worsened.

Earth was rapidly deteriorating, with food and most resources becoming scarcer, and the ability to start and finish massive projects quickly becoming impossible due to socio-economic unrest and the eventual collapse of governments as the humanity increasingly started to look out for its own individual interest instead of work together.

The various superpowers realized this and the "Inflection Point" is the moment in time where they would no longer be capable of doing something as huge as the Seeding Project.


Remember the intro? Remember all those desperate people trying to get into the spaceships but being kept back by the military and a functional government organisation?

Beyond the inflection point, there would be so much desperation and so many desperate people, that the seeding project would have been impossible. Those ships are packed full of food, materials and medicine for the colonists and nobody would have been crazy enough to allow that if things had gotten too bad. Soldiers won't or aren't enough to keep even bigger throngs of desperate people back if the people back home are starving and the seeding project would have been overrun on the launchpad and destroyed, or wouldn't even have been started at all. Humanity would have been doomed to a dead planet because there wasn't the willpower for a seeding project. That's what was meant with an inflection point.

At the start of the intro though, things are bad and quickly deteriorating, but not bad enough that the superpowers can't manage on last huge project to try and save humanity.

[Skirlasvoud]

Originally posted by guitare33:

what is the " great mistake " they talk in the story line ? i trried to find in the civilopedia but didnt find anything really evocative, anybody has an idea ?

You can piece it together by going over the game's Civilopedia.

The section on algea speak of "Fallout". Somehow, China is worst hit with severe ethnic uprising. Afrika and Europe are not directly affected. It leads me to deduce it's an event that happened somewhere around the Pacific Ocean. Apparently the Great Mistake knocked out all the world's satellites (Slavic Federation is proud of being the first to get its sattellites back after the mistake). Sea levels rise everywhere.

In a Domination victory, it really seems to refer hard to the fact that military aggression is what everyone tried to escape, but that it now turns out it is only the lack of victory.

Could be nuclear, but I'm not sure if that knocks out sattellites on a truly global scale.

[jensenthecat]

Does it really matter?
If it does - try using your imagination.
There are enough post "great mistake" games to give you some ideas.

[DrZann]

Originally posted by guitare33:

what is the " great mistake " they talk in the story line ? i trried to find in the civilopedia but didnt find anything really evocative, anybody has an idea ?

Windows 8.

[#GetRektasaurus]

Originally posted by DrZann:

Originally posted by guitare33:

what is the " great mistake " they talk in the story line ? i trried to find in the civilopedia but didnt find anything really evocative, anybody has an idea ?

Windows 8.

Really, mine runs fine

:/

[DrZann]

Originally posted by SOZD Monolith:

Originally posted by DrZann:

Windows 8.

Really, mine runs fine

:/

Famous last words.

[#GetRektasaurus]

Originally posted by DrZann:

Originally posted by SOZD Monolith:

Really, mine runs fine

:/

Famous last words.

Nope, still here...

[Malecord]

42

[TempyLionHeart]

The Great Mistake "story" directly from the developers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMe7-1ywRTU

[Saglac]

^^ thanks !!!