TheDarkKnight2008 TheDarkKnight2008

Thalan story needs revisions... Bad.

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Thalan story needs revisions... Bad.

from Stardock Forums

I understand it's a game, but the story being setup like this is sooooo common.

Thalans say humans destroy universe.  They want to stop them.

So.... They go back to 2225?  What, so they can give them a chance to fight, setting up the game series?!

Why not go back to the 15th century, blow up earth.  Or land on it, make them think your God and make earth your slaves.

Couldn't this have a more interesting story?

22,903 views 33 replies
Reply #26 from Stardock Forums Top
phoenixpaw that is the most logical conclusion. They have a bit of advanced or atleast foreign technology to the rest of the know space races so they claim to be "from the future". Oldest trick in the book! Unless you were also from the future how could you confirm someelse was? You can't. Maybe the Thalans feel ignored so come up with some preposterous story just to get a little attention...
Reply #27 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I think the fact that the entire design of their tech tree is based on them being time travelers, plus Brad talking about them being time travelers without ever hinting that they're scam artists, might imply that it's not a trick.
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Reply #28 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Maybe the Thalans feel ignored so come up with some preposterous story just to get a little attention...
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Which could turn out to be NEGATIVE attention, so I can merely express my doubts about that.
Reply #29 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Time travel is impossible because it assumes:A: We have no free will and all things are predestined.B: If all things are predestined, then they can't be changed.So to make time travel possible makes itself impossible.The only thing that is possible is to observe the past or the future but not interact with it. The Thalans in this case could see what was happening but could do nothing about it.Now if the universe is not predestined, then going back in time, the timeline would be completely different when you get there. Say 2000 years ago in your history there was a great war between two competing civilisations. You go back in time and they are best friends. Your thinking then wouldn't that change my history? No because the universe has no memory.The universe is only about probabilities and the further in the past or future you go, the more varient it becomes from your expectations. Time flows in both directions from point zero or this "instance". Think of it as time flows away from you in all directions. This means that if you only go back in time or into the future by a small degree it will be highly like your current universe. Going in time by a great deal would make it highly unlike your current existence.The amount of "drift" from time zero is anybodies guess. The current theory of time travel assumes a drift=0 scenario but that is not the only possibility and if time travel (interaction + observation) is possible, then drift > 0 is the logical conclusion.In this case, even if the Thalans stop the humans in the past, it is a futile exercise because it won't change their time zero. They will be destroyed, the humans will be destroyed. In fact, destroying the humans in their past might create the very event they wish to avoid! Wrap your mind around that one.   
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I don't follow. How exactly does time travel in both directions? In fact everything suggests it travels on only one...the direction of increased entropy and hence forward.

I mean you can handwve what you need for something as out there as time travel, but if it happened one way, then how could it possibly be different upon going back? Sure a random particle by Shroedinger might be different, but on the macroscopic scale we operate on how is this possible?

Simple logic experiment. Would you expect say the Roman Empire not to exist if you went back 2,000 years ago? Clearly it did. If it was even remotely possible it didn't then you've basically undermined all science.
Reply #30 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hold on here a second ...The Thalans -CLAIM- they come from the future.Do they have proof of it? (I haven't seen any ... but then I haven't played Thalan yet with Twilight.)Maybe they're just travellers from a galaxy, far, far away, and they created the hoax of "humans will destroy the universe, we have seen it in the future we come from" just to get everyone fighting each other for/against humanity so they can swoop in and pick up the spoils.Any logical faults in that view of their story?
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I would have said Drengin then...as they stand as the most powerful race, and it's not like it would have been HARD to turn everyone against them.

Game mechanics require humans to be on par with the other races, but even the Altarians have more than dozen colonized worlds already prior to Hyperdrive. Humans only strike me as dangerous for the small amount of time they were the only beings with Hypderive.
Reply #31 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Well prehaps the event the Thalans predicted to destroy the galaxy may have something to do with the Terror Stars.
Reply #32 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Well put jadehorde, but since the Drengin is the most powerful civ there is, Thalans would risk getting enslaved by Drengin for such a claim about Drengin alone. The Terrans, while a major force, are not as powerful. Especially not in the beginning of ToA (I haven't played the campaign, and feel no urge to either).

Who would you rather start a fight with?
The guys you think you might be able to beat on your own, or the one you need massive support to defeat?

It is, in my opinion, from this view that the Thalan claim targeting the Terrans (who was a fast rising star) makes more sense than aiming the blame on anyone else.

just my .02€

Reply #33 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

huh. Time doesn't travel any more than a location in space travels. its static and charted on just an additional axis. We travel through time, in one direction (and not even at an absolute fixed speed) becuase thats just how we roll, dawg.

Anyway in order to not totaly mess everything up(negate free will), if time travel exists than it has to do so with alternate universes, OR if it does not (there are other posibilities), thinking of it in terms of alternate universes simply to clarify individual 'sets' of realized possibilities is still more convinient for us humans to grasp, so it will work for our purposes here as well. Though here we get caught up in definitions. So lets just agree now that for the sake of this post a 'universe' is all the space and locations and things within that physical space that currently consitutes what ever the entierty of that which we inhabit is. An alternate universe could be a copy of this only because one thing was changed somewhere a very very small ammount of time ago that had more than one outcome, it split into how ever many universes are required for each outcome to be realized. This is NOT to be confused with entierly different sets of base variables which can be found at the root of this universe (and its alternate forms). Those would also be alternate universes i suppose, but not related to ours in any way.

To visualize think of a tree. It has a trunk and many branches which themselves branch off, every time anything that has more than one possibility. (and thanks to those peksy electrons which exist in a cloud and not a real location at any given moment you can be assured there are a metric assload of universes)... And further there are many other trees planted next to that tree, possibly. Or perhaps our root variables are the only possible ones for any universes at all. But now im just rambling about pointless things.

So, to time travel you go between the possible instances of possibilities that could have evolved from the base set of sercumstances which are responcible for creating that which is right now that we are inhabiting.

The long story short, and the point im trying to make. Is that if they are time traveling to prevent humans from destroying the future, in order to avoid the paradox that would be created by them doing so (and then preventing any reason for them to come back in time to stop anything becuase nothing ever happened), we must assume they have traveled to an alternate universe, and not went back in time through their own exact chain of possibility that lead to the universe that was destroyed by humans.

 

And if that is the case there is nothing stopping them from going back, snagging hyperdrive technology, and then going further back, killing the humans in the 15th century, and then going forward, distributing hyperdrive technology, and living in a universe free of humans having ever invented even the steam engine, yet still having hyperdrive.

 

They would just have needed to go through 4 universes.

1. That was destroyed

2. That they took hyperdrive technology from the humans. This one also ends up getting destroyed.

3. That they destroyed the humans. This one does not get blown up but nobody ever gets hyperdrive. (or some other race invents it)

4. Where there are no humans and hyperdrive, them having given the hyperdrive to the races in a universe made up of a chain of possibilities that started after the human race was eradicated. And they live happily ever after.

 

The only possible reason they do not do this is they take pitty on universe number 2. But then universe number 4 would never exist with out their intervention, so its a fairly even trade off, and universe number 3, while everyone moves around slowly, gets to live untill the whole thing burns out and is silent.

But no matter what they do, their future that was destroyed, stays destroyed. They cant change that because it happened. Just like they cant change the horrible things that will happen in other universes.

 

What you should take from this all is that events are absolute and set in stone, but if you are clever you can just avoid the universes that you dont like. In this sense free will is simply a mechanism to switch which road you are all, but all roads are already fully paved and quite real.

 

Or time travel is not possible. (or everything exists as a sort of cohesive possibility.. mush)