Why is Cleopatra black?!

[UnOrthOdOx]

Originally posted by Heraclitus
My point: Making Cleopatra look like a tanned Macedonian with pharoaonic symbols would not have hurt sales in any way.
It would ever so slightly improved the educational value of CivRev. Why not do it?

Educational value.

[FadingBeano]

Originally posted by Heraclitus


The Arabs would disagree, not only where they unfiied but they conquered the Spanish and Persians as well.

And Quite possibly could have taken France. Now think on that for a bit if Arabs DID defeat France. Would be a much much different world.

[Heraclitus]

Well now I know you did not read my posts, since just about everything you state in your posts has been thourghly debunked in my previous posts.




Also, I am tired of asking you to stop misrepresenting my opinions. What is this a hobby of yours?

[Locutus]

Wow, you are REALLY making an entire horde of elephants out of a mouse. I can't even be bothered to read all that...

All I was trying to say is that there's NO SUCH THING as an 'Arab civilization', having one in the game is a stretch of historical accuracy to begin with.

But Firaxis does want that part of the world represented in the game, which makes perfect sense and I happen to agree with. But doing so will lead to some weird inconsistencies like a Kurdish king of Egypt leading an Arabian civilization. If that's a big problem for you, maybe you should move on to other things, or stick to Civ4 and mod it to your liking. No need to get your knickers in a twist over a few (very) arguably misplaced dots on a map on a promotional website...

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Locutus

I'd merely be repeating myself: this is a game, not a history research project;

Never said it was or expected it to be.

Originally posted by Locutus
you're misinformed about Saladin and Cleopatra, and if we'd talk more I'm sure you have misconceptions about plenty of other civs as well. Nobody's perfect, not you, not me and not Firaxis either. Don't hold them to higher standards than to ones you can hold yourself.

I've already commented the first part. You have since failed to point out one bit of serious misinformation I supposedly spread about Cleopatra or Saladin. Stop the Ad hominen attacks already.

But, I am revisitng this because I just noticed the boldened bit. The funny thing is that I am not. In fact I am holding them to a much, much lower standard than I hold myself to. I also understand the need to conform to popular belief in order to sell.



That is why I proposed an "Egyptian Cleopatra".

But your reasoning is that since an Egyptian looking Cleopatra is not very likey (and may I point out again that a tanned Southern European, as long as he does not have blue eyes will not look very differnet from an Egyptian) we may as well go for an impossible black Cleopatra. But since none of the leaders are perfectly accurate we may as well make Shaka Zulu a green eyed Asian!

Originally posted by Locutus

I'm merely trying to calm you down a bit with sense and reason.

Odd, I tought I was doing that. POW I guess. I've already speant way too much time arguing about the arab thing you commented. It was just a bit too much you arguing the Arabs of civ are like the hypothetical "Europeans" of civ. They are not!

They are like the hypotetical "Iberians" or "Eastern Slavs" or "Germanic" civs we could have in Civlization. Or like the Scandianvian civ we alread had. Do you get my position on that sad off-topic point now?

Such groups would fit that silly 90% understandable criterion you pointed out. Yes you being Dutch can understand 90% of German and English with knowledge of just your native tongue. The same would not be true of a Bulgarian, heck I’m Slovenian and I don’t understand 90% of Russian! I could understand like 70% German but this is only because we have a few of their words left over from the millennia of first Frankish then Habsburg rule and because of how similar English can be to German.


Europe if it was treated the same as the rest of the world would have 3 or so civs. Just like let's say Japan, Mongolia and China.

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Locutus

Then don't play Civ. Ever read the Civilopedia? The number of times that thing contradicts itself is astounding, although I guess it's no more inconsistent than the Bible, Encyclopedia Britannica or Wikipedia, so maybe that's just an inevitable result when many people are working together on a single project...

Reasonable consistency. Which the Wikipedia and even the Civiliopedia provide. And I am not sure how making a website compares to writting up the Bible, but I am going to assume it is a bit easier.

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Locutus

Under Muhammad the Arab 'empire' was a small desert kingdom, it didn't even encompass half of present-day Saudi Arabia, that's not an empire by any stretch of the definition. It didn't grow into an empire until after his death, but that's also immediately where the first rift between different factions was born.

But no, neither the Arabs nor the Europeans were ever a unified empire, which is exactly what my point was (although on this point I wasn't talking about Europe at all).

The Arabs would disagree, not only where they unfiied but they conquered the Spanish and Persians as well.




The "Arab World", personaly I would not include some states in western North Afirca, nor most of the Sudan.

Originally posted by Locutus

Yes, both are true. There are minor inaccuracies in the map, but when they DO get things right, like by putting Saladin in Egypt rather than in Iraq or Saudi Arabia or whatever other unhistorical place you'd put him, you still fault them for it.

Not true. Sladin did not rule from the Sudan. If they had put him in Egypt I would have been the first to applaud them, if they had gotten other less obscure stuff right as well. I mean the Aztecs? Dosen't firaxis know where Mexico City is? If you know nothing else just aim for that when placing the Aztecs and I will swallow it.

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Locutus
Only the very sparsely-inhabited far-north and most of the Soviet Union territory were basically not under Roman influence, but most of the people living there today are immigrants from the Balkan region (Slavs) or from Central Europe (Germanics) where Rome's influence was quite significant.

Ok, I am sorry but this is blatantly wrong.


Eastern Europe 300 BC


Likley spread of Slavic languages in the 6th century AD



You are confusing cause and effect among other things. The peoples in those regions acquired elemnts of Roman culture from their brethren who had migrated to former Roman territories or by peoples of other barbarian groups who had accepted elements of Roman culture. It didn’t happen the other way around (Romanized barbarians migrating to those regions).

Originally posted by Locutus

You'd have a very hard case to make if you say Roman culture is NOT a major influence in modern Scandinavian and Russian culture --

Fortunately this is not the case I am trying to make. I would kindly ask you something but I have been doing so the entire thread and I see little purpose in repeating myself.

Originally posted by Locutus
Moscow has always claimed to be the Third Rome, their leaders long called themselves Tzars and the Russian Coat of Arms is a carbon-copy of the Byzantine one, they inherited their Orthodox religion from the Eastern Roman empire,

All this is true, but tell me which was "second Rome"? You are making a strong case, which I would fully support on the profound influence of the Byzantines on Russia. You have yet however to explain to me how they where in the sphere of influence of the Romans (you know the guys who speak that latin gibberish )

Originally posted by Locutus
Latin has had a significant influence on the Russian language

And on a million other languages, many outside of Europe. If not by any other means then by many international scientific terms. Were all these languages in the sphere of influence of the Roman Empire?

Also the influence of Latin on the Russian is not that strong.

Originally posted by Locutus
Russian art, architecture, morality, etc all have strong Roman influences, etc.

And Indonesian art, arhitecture and morallity all have such Arab influences.

You are arguing against grouping together “the Arabs”, and the arguments you try to use to prove this by comparing them to Europeans, indicate they are grouped together but not only amongst themselves but with Persians, Pakistanis and Indonesians.



But to be serious those are the influences of Islam, just as similarity in the Western world mostly stems from Christianity. BTW Christian values were quite different than the values of “proper” Romans.

Originally posted by Locutus
Scandinavia is probably the least 'Romanised' part of Europe but in terms of language, religion, culture, etc they still derived much from Germany and Central Europe and copied the Roman influences from there.

See my many above points.

Originally posted by Locutus
Yes, European culture has evolved a lot over the centuries and there are large differences between Icelandics, Russians and Greeks, but there are also a lot of similarities. But my whole point is that the SAME trends exist in the Arab world. The difference between an Englishman, a Spanish and a Czech is no smaller than the difference between a Moroccan, an Egyptian and a Persian. I've been to all of those countries (well, except Iran), met all of these people (including plenty of Iranians) and studied their histories, cultures and languages (except for Farsi and Czech): just because they all look brown and speak gibberish to us doesn't mean they're all the same.

We are talking about Arabs as in Saudies, Palestians and Syrians. You are trying to win the argument by misrepresenting my position! You are simpley expanding the region I supposedly claim should be one civ!

I never grouped the Persians or Turks with the Arabs! And BTW they have their own civ.



Yes there is a major divide in the arab world, as shown here:







They are diferent to an extent just as Russians and Belorussians or Ukranians but we only have a Russian civ because they are too similar despite their relativley large size.

And on a last point. Egypt is already a civ, the civliopedia of Civ3 and 4 describet their history all the way to Naser. Despite a change in language and several changes in religion and a complete change of the society. Identify with Ancient Egyptians as strongly as Italians with the Romans. They aren’t Ancient Egyptians, but the Italians aren’t Romans either. And in civ we don’t have Italy since they are too similar and start in the same spot.


So the Arab Egyptians already have a seperate civ.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Heraclitus
Again, please stop misrepresenting the situation, I am really tired of you doing that. You perfectly understand what I mean, but have taken advantage of the unintentional ambiguity of the original comment.

I'm not misrepresenting anything, I used the EXACT same LITERAL phrasing you used (I even used quotation marks to emphasize that), how could that be misrepresenting? And no, I actually didn't understood what you meant, or I wouldn't have addressed it.

I was merely trying to clear up a minor point you made with a minor counter-point, it wasn't even remotely a big deal in my mind (it was half a sentence in a 600-word post) -- that's what you're making of it now. If it was a misunderstanding we had then it's good to have it cleared up and nice to know we're on the same page, but there's no need to make a huge deal out of it. I'm really not out to get you or anything, just trying to offer some alternative perspective on this matter and give some thoughts on the potential how and why of Firaxis and 2K's decisions...

That is not even 50% let alone 90%.

Only the very sparsely-inhabited far-north and most of the Soviet Union territory were basically not under Roman influence, but most of the people living there today are immigrants from the Balkan region (Slavs) or from Central Europe (Germanics) where Rome's influence was quite significant. You'd have a very hard case to make if you say Roman culture is NOT a major influence in modern Scandinavian and Russian culture -- Moscow has always claimed to be the Third Rome, their leaders long called themselves Tzars and the Russian Coat of Arms is a carbon-copy of the Byzantine one, they inherited their Orthodox religion from the Eastern Roman empire, Latin has had a significant influence on the Russian language, Russian art, architecture, morality, etc all have strong Roman influences, etc. Scandinavia is probably the least 'Romanised' part of Europe but in terms of language, religion, culture, etc they still derived much from Germany and Central Europe and copied the Roman influences from there.

Yes, European culture has evolved a lot over the centuries and there are large differences between Icelandics, Russians and Greeks, but there are also a lot of similarities. But my whole point is that the SAME trends exist in the Arab world. The difference between an Englishman, a Spanish and a Czech is no smaller than the difference between a Moroccan, an Egyptian and a Persian. I've been to all of those countries (well, except Iran), met all of these people (including plenty of Iranians) and studied their histories, cultures and languages (except for Farsi and Czech): just because they all look brown and speak gibberish to us doesn't mean they're all the same.

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Locutus
at least 90% of Europe was once part of the Roman empire, or fell closely within its sphere of influence, and that fact still forms the basis of modern European culture. There's no such common heritage in the Arab world.

The Roman empire


Europe



That combined with the "sphere of influence" as you termed it is not even 50% let alone 90%.

Yes, Rome had a very important influence on European culture, but this is because of the success of the Christianity (it’s Catholic and to a lesser extent its Orthodox branch) which spread elements of Roman culture and the succes of nations, peoples and states such as the
Byzantium Empire, the Frankish empire of Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Empire, France....

Originally posted by Locutus

Virtually all of the Romanic, Germanic, Celtic and a major portion of the Slavic world was either Roman or fell closely under the Roman sphere of influence (and in case of the Slavic world later was very closely tied to Byzantium, if you consider that to be separate)

You know there is a reason why the Romaic group is called Romanic; because it has strong ties to Roma culture. French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italia and Romanian all derive from Latin which fractured into many languages during the middle ages.

The Celtic world is mostly lost to us since it was gobbled up by the Germanic language group and the Romanic one. Its only remaining fragments are minorities in the British Isles and in France, Brittany (called that for a reason since the people there actually came from the British Isles, the Celts who lived there before the Romans came were completely assimilated). So considering this it is no wonder their culture is similar! They have lived under these two groups for millennia!

The Germanic group was never under predominantly Roman influence! Sure Holland and places like Western Germany, Switzerland and Austria were, but places like Scandinavia never hear of the Romans.

Slavs only ever had contact (which we know of since it is possible some ot the Eastern European people the Romans encountered were Slavs) with the Byzantium! A entitiy which is best described as Greek. That is why eastern Europe mostly uses a different alphabet (derived from Greek) than its western half (which uses a Alphabets derived from the Roman one).

Originally posted by Locutus

(by the fact that they're all Christian nations alone).

Indonesia has the largest muslim population on the planet, this does not mean it is part of the "Arab world". All of the converting of Northern, Central and Eastern Europe was done by later Christian states not Rome. In fact many lands that were once part of the Roman emprie had to be converted all over again after pagan peoples displaced and assimilated the Romanic population. Also the reason other parts of the empire retained Christianity was either because the barbarians that arrived (like some of the Gothic peoples) were already Chirstian (altough heretical Christians, by Roman standards) or because they were governed by the Byzantium Empire.

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Locutus


I'm merely quoting your own post: "since firaxis is probably just going by where the civs are not where the civ leaders come from".

Again, please stop misrepresenting the situation, I am really tired of you doing that. You perfectly understand what I mean, but have taken advantage of the unintentional ambiguity of the original comment.

Originally posted by Heraclitus
Locutus your explanation, while tehnically plausible, is a bit far fetched, since firaxis is probably just going by where the civs are not where the civ leaders come from. Why else would they put Chatarine in the depts of Eurasia (beyond the Ural) and not closer to a center of her power or where she was born ( )?

Take a look at this sentence, I used “where they come from” as “country of residence”, the place they are associated with. If someone was born in Paris and went to live in London at the age of 9, they he would later in life become the mayor of London, would you say when introducing him “This is Smith he comes from Paris.”?

I admit it is a poorly formed paragraph, I am not a native speaker, I’m Slovenian. But I suppose I have no excuse right? You are convinced that anyone who speaks Slovenian or Bulgarian can be understood 90% by an Englishman, right?

But if I get back to it, if I had meant “where they come from” as in “where they where born” or “where they spent their childhood” the second part of the paragraph would have made no sense. The one referring to Catherine’s place of birth with the smiley (since placing her there would just confuse the hell out of some people).

[snoopy369]

Locutus, you should be well aware that you come across much stronger than you intend to It's that unflinching Dutch spirit...

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Heraclitus
I never said he came from the ther , please don't put words into my mouth. In fact in the up and coming polycast I explicitly mentioned he was of Kurdish descent.

I'm merely quoting your own post: "since firaxis is probably just going by where the civs are not where the civ leaders come from".

Disagree, the differences betweeen lets say Russia and England are far bigger. Firstly the language barrier, secondly religus division, thirdly no common origin.

The differences between Arab factions are the same, or very similar to, the differences between European nations. There is no common Arab language, it's really a family of strongly deviant dialects. If a Moroccan, an Egyptian and an Iraqi met and wanted to have a conversation they couldn't, they wouldn't be able to understand 90% of what the other guys were saying, much like if an Englishman, a Norwegian and a Bulgarian came together. The religious divisions are there as well: some dynasties were Sunni, some Shi'a, some Sufi, etc. These religious differences are actually considerably larger than the differences between Anglicans, Catholics and Othrodox Christians. And Moroccans, Egyptians and Persians have no more common origins than Germans, Romanians and Spanish. In fact, if anything there is more variety in the heritage of the different 'Arab' peoples than with Europeans: at least 90% of Europe was once part of the Roman empire, or fell closely within its sphere of influence, and that fact still forms the basis of modern European culture. There's no such common heritage in the Arab world.

Under Muhamed. Granted it was not quite "grand" but it was pretty unified and it represented the common origin.
In Europe we don't have that we have Romanic, Germanic, Slavic and Celtic peoples.

Under Muhammad the Arab 'empire' was a small desert kingdom, it didn't even encompass half of present-day Saudi Arabia, that's not an empire by any stretch of the definition. It didn't grow into an empire until after his death, but that's also immediately where the first rift between different factions was born.

Virtually all of the Romanic, Germanic, Celtic and a major portion of the Slavic world was either Roman or fell closely under the Roman sphere of influence (and in case of the Slavic world later was very closely tied to Byzantium, if you consider that to be separate), and present-day European culture from Iceland to Russia and from Finland to Spain is still very heavily informed by this heritage (by the fact that they're all Christian nations alone).

But no, neither the Arabs nor the Europeans were ever a unified empire, which is exactly what my point was (although on this point I wasn't talking about Europe at all).

If I rember you said Firaxis couldn't win with me, and now you recognise the innacuracies yourself.

Yes, both are true. There are minor inaccuracies in the map, but when they DO get things right, like by putting Saladin in Egypt rather than in Iraq or Saudi Arabia or whatever other unhistorical place you'd put him, you still fault them for it.

Also I can quite confidently say, there is no bug. They put Alexander in Athens and Egyptians in Cairo because that is what people percieve as the heart of those civs.

How can you say that confidently? Did they tell you that, did you invent a mind-reading device? You are merely speculating based on ill-informed arguments, which isn't much more than I'm doing but at least I don't pretend differently. The fact that ALL Mediterranean civs are off by the EXACT same amount of pixels in the EXACT same direction smells very strongly like a bug/design error, not a deliberate design decision. As a programmer and web designer I've made these kind of mistakes myself plenty of times, it's really not uncommon.

And there is no need for years of study, it is farcical to claim so! All I want is consistency,

Then don't play Civ. Ever read the Civilopedia? The number of times that thing contradicts itself is astounding, although I guess it's no more inconsistent than the Bible, Encyclopedia Britannica or Wikipedia, so maybe that's just an inevitable result when many people are working together on a single project...

You completley skipped my argument about how a single leader "is" a civ.

I'd merely be repeating myself: this is a game, not a history research project; it's made by many people who are all only human; there's no such thing as an 'Arab civilization' and Saladin was never was the ruler of Arabia, etc. The Civ 'universe' that was created in the last 12 years has thousands of inconsistencies, this is far from the biggest one. And yet it's still one of the most historically rich and accurate games ever made...

Yes they are a direct rip off of Civ4's civilopedia. And yes civ is not a source of info. But I do expect some minimal standard, something that a 9 year old kid could use without his teacher pointing out blatant inconstencies.

Well, you can't get it right either: you're misinformed about Saladin and Cleopatra, and if we'd talk more I'm sure you have misconceptions about plenty of other civs as well. Nobody's perfect, not you, not me and not Firaxis either. Don't hold them to higher standards than to ones you can hold yourself.

You are arguing quite strongly for a very weake cause. It would take like 15 min to move those little circles and fix the darn website!

How ironic It's you who's arguing so strongly, I'm merely trying to calm you down a bit with sense and reason. If it's just a few dots being out of place and a skin colour being off by a few degrees, what's it to you? Does your life depend on this promotional website (made by presumably a community manager and an art intern, or something along those lines) being historically perfectly accurate? Firaxis has a game to finish and 2K has about 2 dozen other games to promote and publish, I don't think this issue is very high on their list of priorities...

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Locutus


They didn't put Saladin where he 'came from', as he was actually born in present-day Turkey somewhere I believe (he's a Kurd), they put him where his empire was: he ruled Egypt, Yemen and a small area of the Arabian peninsula, North Africa and parts of the Levant, with Egypt as his base.

I never said he came from the ther , please don't put words into my mouth. In fact in the up and coming polycast I explicitly mentioned he was of Kurdish descent.

Originally posted by Locutus

It's the same reason Caesar is in Italy, as Italy was the centre of the Roman empire, much as it controlled the entire Mediterranean basin. The Arab civilization however was never a unified empire like the Roman one, it was very much splintered in different factions with different sultans ruling over different parts of what us ignorant Westerners consider to be the 'Arab Empire' and actually competed with each other and fought over territory, much like the European kings did in Europe -- if you really want to mimic history accurately, having one Arab civ really makes about as much sense as having one European civ. There were different factions, different dynasties and different states which constantly changed over time.

Disagree, the differences betweeen lets say Russia and England are far bigger. Firstly the language barrier, secondly religus division, thirdly no common origin.

Now the Dutch and Germans or even the Portugese and Spanism may be more in line with your argument, but not the entire contient. Not by a long shot.

Originally posted by Locutus

Saladin was the founder of one of these factions/dynasties (the Ayyubids) and his kingdom (the Ayyubid Empire) was based around Egypt -- he never ruled over most of the Middle East as we think of it when we think of the Arab 'empire' or 'civilization': he never ruled over present-day Iraq, Iran, Israel (+ Palestine), Turkey, most of Saudi Arabia and only had brief control over Jordan and Syria. He was really the Sultan of an Egyptian kingdom, not the leader of some grand Arab empire -- that never existed.

Under Muhamed. Granted it was not quite "grand" but it was pretty unified and it represented the common origin.
In Europe we don't have that we have Romanic, Germanic, Slavic and Celtic peoples.

Originally posted by Locutus

And yes, that map is off on a couple of points: all the leaders in the Med basin are a little off to the south which must be a bug of sorts (Caesar is in Southern Italy rather than Rome, Cleopatra is in the area around Luxor when she should be in Alexandria, Alexander is in Athens when he should be in Macedonia and of course Saladin looks like he's in present-day Sudan when he should be in Cairo or central Egypt) and some of the others like Montezuma are off by quite a large margin as you pointed out yourself. But you're really nitpicking over ridiculously obscure details here: this is a promotion website for a game, not some detailed scientific model that's the result of years and years of study, someone didn't earn their master's thesis in ancient history on this.

If I rember you said Firaxis couldn't win with me, and now you recognise the innacuracies yourself. Also I can quite confidently say, there is no bug. They put Alexander in Athens and Egyptians in Cairo because that is what people percieve as the heart of those civs. You completley skipped my argument about how a single leader "is" a civ.

And there is no need for years of study, it is farcical to claim so! All I want is consistency, either go with the "heartland" of the Civs (as in the case of Greece and France and Egypt) or have realistic cores of power according to what they were in the time of the leaders rule. It is very easy a high school student with a B in history could all of those right in one try.

Originally posted by Locutus
That text entry I have to say is exceptionally poorly written, but to be honest most of the Civilopedia in most Civ games are (in fact it wouldn't surprise me if it was copied directly from the Civ4 Civilopedia -- I would be surprised if it was made by the same person who made the map). These games and websites are not made by history majors (I came up with a lot of the historic stuff in Civ4 and my background is in Computer Science, just like most Firaxians), they provide you some historic flavour but if you really wanna learn about history there's no substitute from getting out and buying some real books.

Yes they are a direct rip off of Civ4's civilopedia. And yes civ is not a source of info. But I do expect some minimal standard, something that a 9 year old kid could use without his teacher pointing out blatant inconstencies.



You are arguing quite strongly for a very weake cause. It would take like 15 min to move those little circles and fix the darn website!

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Heraclitus
Locutus your explanation, while tehnically plausible, is a bit far fetched, since firaxis is probably just going by where the civs are not where the civ leaders come from. Why else would they put Chatarine in the depts of Eurasia (beyond the Ural) and not closer to a center of her power or where she was born ( )?

They didn't put Saladin where he 'came from', as he was actually born in present-day Turkey somewhere I believe (he's a Kurd), they put him where his empire was: he ruled Egypt, Yemen and a small area of the Arabian peninsula, North Africa and parts of the Levant, with Egypt as his base.

It's the same reason Caesar is in Italy, as Italy was the centre of the Roman empire, much as it controlled the entire Mediterranean basin. The Arab civilization however was never a unified empire like the Roman one, it was very much splintered in different factions with different sultans ruling over different parts of what us ignorant Westerners consider to be the 'Arab Empire' and actually competed with each other and fought over territory, much like the European kings did in Europe -- if you really want to mimic history accurately, having one Arab civ really makes about as much sense as having one European civ. There were different factions, different dynasties and different states which constantly changed over time.

Saladin was the founder of one of these factions/dynasties (the Ayyubids) and his kingdom (the Ayyubid Empire) was based around Egypt -- he never ruled over most of the Middle East as we think of it when we think of the Arab 'empire' or 'civilization': he never ruled over present-day Iraq, Iran, Israel (+ Palestine), Turkey, most of Saudi Arabia and only had brief control over Jordan and Syria. He was really the Sultan of an Egyptian kingdom, not the leader of some grand Arab empire -- that never existed.

And yes, that map is off on a couple of points: all the leaders in the Med basin are a little off to the south which must be a bug of sorts (Caesar is in Southern Italy rather than Rome, Cleopatra is in the area around Luxor when she should be in Alexandria, Alexander is in Athens when he should be in Macedonia and of course Saladin looks like he's in present-day Sudan when he should be in Cairo or central Egypt) and some of the others like Montezuma are off by quite a large margin as you pointed out yourself. But you're really nitpicking over ridiculously obscure details here: this is a promotion website for a game, not some detailed scientific model that's the result of years and years of study, someone didn't earn their master's thesis in ancient history on this.

That text entry I have to say is exceptionally poorly written, but to be honest most of the Civilopedia in most Civ games are (in fact it wouldn't surprise me if it was copied directly from the Civ4 Civilopedia -- I would be surprised if it was made by the same person who made the map). These games and websites are not made by history majors (I came up with a lot of the historic stuff in Civ4 and my background is in Computer Science, just like most Firaxians), they provide you some historic flavour but if you really wanna learn about history there's no substitute from getting out and buying some real books.