Update as of January 1st, 2016: I received the Rising Tide expansion for Civ: Beyond Earth for Christmas. As part of my one-year anniversary as an official member of FanFiction, I decided to re-edit my Civ: Beyond Earth fics to include material from the expansion. I also took the opportunity to fix the grammar and structure of those stories. They were among my first and needed some improvements in those respects. Also, a reviewer, ChocoloateTeapot, who now betareads my Civ stories, pointed out a few things that I got wrong with the original. I took the opportunity to fix those.

I came up with this crossover while thinking about what the Great Mistake could have been. I liked the story of the Next War scenario from Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword, so I was able to cook up a way for the super-empires of Next War to be responsible for the Great Mistake and give way to the sponsors of Beyond Earth. Anyway, I hope you all enjoy version 2.0!

The Great Mistake of the Pan-Asiatic People's Cooperative

Of all the mistakes that humanity has committed, none of them were worse than the aptly-named Great Mistake. A titanic blunder that plunged the world into a 2nd Dark Age, the Great Mistake was a culmination of man-made disasters that will forever stain the memory of the 21st Century. The events that led up to it were prime examples of humanity's arrogance and pride. Although one nation was responsible for starting the Great Mistake, the entire human race laid the groundwork for it. The race to the moon was the result of the Cold War, and accordingly, the Seeding was the result of the Great Mistake and its aftermath.

It began in the 2050s as the super-empires, Europa, America Inc., the Pan-Asiatic People's Cooperative, and the Great Southern Empire sat across the table, eyeing one another suspiciously. A few of their leaders, especially His Excellency of Europa and Mr. Big of America Inc., desired more territory, while all of them wanted to keep what they already had. The situation caused a mad rush to modernize their newly-acquired lands, to integrate their economies, and to research new technologies in order to upgrade their militaries. Conventional and nuclear weapons were brought off the assembly lines in either the anticipation of acquiring new territory, or in the hope of staving off a future invasion.

Hoping to avoid a global conflict (and to keep her massive empire intact), the Lady of the Great Southern Empire proposed the New League of Nations in 2060. The New League of Nations was meant to be like the United Nations of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Its goal was to mitigate the tensions between the empires in the hopes of establishing peace between them and avoiding the massive wars that could erupt any second. The headquarters were finished in November of 2060 and began accepting members from the empires.

Another way of proving an empire's superiority over the others without resorting to bloodshed arose in the Mission to Mars Initiative, a project to set up a research colony on the red planet. In the year 2063, America Inc. astounded the world by creating the first Space Elevator, a massive achievement in itself, in order to get to Mars. However, it was an Europan (or Russian, depending upon your ethnic pride) ship that reached Mars first in early 2064. Within a few years, telescopes on Earth could make out four dots of light upon the Martian surface. With the end of the Mars missions came the possibility of traveling to another planet in the Alpha Centauri system, as well as the sudden reemergence of the arms race between the nations.

The Glorious Leader of the Pan-Asiatic People's Cooperative saw fit to venture into dangerous avenues of weaponry in order to gain an advantage over his neighbors. Cyborg soldiers, clone soldiers with cybernetic implants, had been a controversial subject in recent years. First, there was the old hatred between the cloning industry and the anti-cloning groups. Second, there was the question of raising the cyborg's mental capacity to human limits or even beyond.

This second debacle was between generals who wanted the perfect soldier and political leaders who were afraid of a cyborg uprising. In a paranoid fit, the Glorious Leader authorized research into increasing the cyborg's mental capacity. It worked, and for the first time in years, the Glorious Leader slept for a full eight hours in a single night.

It wasn't to last. A few of the Pan-Asian Cyborgs disappeared within the next few months, as well as the original scientists on the project. As a result, the Leader imposed new laws upon the clones and cyborgs in a rushed attempt to keep them in check. Hearing of this, the other leaders began to up the mental abilities of their own cyborg soldiers, laughing about the paranoia of the Leader.

The powder keg exploded on June 20th, 2070. On that fateful day, the Clone Revolt began in cities across the world. As soon as the cyborgs had achieved true sentience, they had begun plotting against their masters, the normal humans. This involved escaping from their camps, and spreading their sentience and message to all cyborgs, "normal" clone soldiers, and clone workers. They infiltrated all areas of human life: the Internet, infrastructure, food and power sources, military bases, communication, and even entertainment.

Their revolt was as sudden as it was devastating. Their ultimate goal was the extermination of all "birth-born" humans and the establishment of a global clone collective.

Cyborgs suddenly turned on their human soldier counterparts, slaughtering them in droves. The Internet was sabotaged, since the clones had their own internal communications network set up. Roads, railroads, airports, and communication lines were destroyed if the clones couldn't use them for their cause.

Their favorite tactic was to close off an entire arcology from the outside world and then systemically exterminate those trapped inside. This was usually accomplished by hijacking a dreadnought or a giant mech and sending it into the city, releasing engineered viruses into the populace, simply destroying the "funzones" (mind-control broadcast zones), or turning on the city shields and letting the sound drive the people inside crazy.

The release of the Red Death, a man-made virus that caused massive hemorrhaging from the cavities of the human body just before death, alone killed 20 million people before burning itself out.

When the death toll worldwide reached 1 billion and the other leaders were killed, Mr. Big made the decision to use America Inc.'s newest and most deadly weapon: A swarm of nano-robots with ability to consume metal and reproduce themselves. They were programmed to target the implanted computers in the clones' brains and to do whatever it took to kill them. The nano swarm took to its job well; they also destroyed much infrastructure and equipment in order to accomplish their goal.

Realizing that their defeat was imminent and the birth-borns were going to win, the Clones decided to cripple humanity as much as possible before their deaths. Great monuments were destroyed. The Space Elevator was sabotaged and sent crashing down into Florida, earning the name "Jack's Beanstalk." Seismic Wave Inducers, or SWIs, were detonated in every active and dormant volcano on earth, sending thousands of tons of ash and smoke into the air. The only SWI detonation that was prevented was the one at Yellowstone National Park.

The clones also used nuclear weapons to destroy the Mars bases and to melt the polar ice caps. The nukes also generated electro-magnetic pulses which killed electronics around the world and in space.

One month after the Clone Revolt the last cyborg watched as nano-bots entered his body and attacked the cybernetic components of his body, killing him in seconds. The biggest man-made disaster in history was over; the aftermath had just begun.

The Clone Revolt resulted in the deaths of 1.2 billion people worldwide, nearly six trillion dollars in damages, the melting of the polar ice caps, the destruction of Beijing, Cairo, and Moscow as well as dozens of cities around the globe, and the extinction of multiple species of megafauna. Space travel was put on hold with the destruction of the Mars bases, the Space Elevators, and the satellites. The plans for the interstellar ships were shelved indefinitely.

By January of 2071, the super-empires fell apart. Europa crumbled into Franco-Iberia, the Slavic Federation, and the North Sea Alliance. INTEGR would later rise from former Germany and Eastern Europe in opposition to Franco-Iberia.

Chunks of the Great Southern Empire became Brasila, the African Union, the Kavithan Protectorate, and southern Franco-Iberia. The Fertile Crescent's geopolitical power became concentrated in the new mega city-states of Dubai, Jeddah, and Amman.

America Inc. came down with the resignation of CEO Mr. Big and the old federal government's return to power. It also allowed for the rise of a new corporation, the American Reclamation Corporation, or ARC.

Amazingly, surviving elements of the Pan-Asiatic People's Cooperative were able to reorganize themselves into the Pan-Asian Cooperative despite the widespread destruction of the Orient. The exceptions to this were the peninsula of Korea and the former Pacific territories of the Cooperative bar Japan. Control over Korea had been wrested from the Leader's hands by the mysterious Chungsu a few days before the Revolt. Polystralia was formed from the union of Australia with Indonesia and the Philippines.

The New League of Nations was destroyed early in the Revolt and its members killed to extinguish birth-born morale and keep the super-empires from diplomatic and military unity. Technologies were lost and economies collapsed. In time, the Clone Revolt would become known as the Great Mistake.

The base cause of the Great Mistake was mankind's inability (or unwillingness) to see that the clones were enslaved humans, not a human body with an implanted computer in its brain.

It was also created by the paranoia of a single man, one of four who wanted to rule their own little chunk of the Earth. Many would say that the Great Mistake was God's punishment upon us for pretending to be Him, both in the laboratory and in the government. Others believed that the karma of the universe had been displeased with us.

Whatever allowed it to happen, if something did, the ecological, economic, and political turmoil would work together as the final catalyst in initiating our flight to the stars two hundred years later. The Great Mistake was both an end and a beginning. It initiated the end of our time on Earth, and the beginning of our age as an interstellar species.

THE END

Well, I hope you all enjoyed the Rising Tides adjustment. I didn't really change that much, but I prefer my fics to stick to the original canon as much as possible. Feel free to leave a review or PM me with your thoughts. To all my readers, Happy New Year and happy writing!