Is it possible to switch the dating system?

[Eldoran]

As seen in legendarymarvins stream it is quite easy to mod and he will release his mod upon release. With that you see the auc and the bc date in the right upper corner.

I think thats a quite perfect fot for modding. Sonce it violates the design goal of the dev but some players just want ot their way, so there is modding.

 

[DominusNovus]

Kinda irrelevant to the topic, but I'm pretty sure we'll have at least 1% of players from countries that don't use the event called "birth of Jesus Christ" as a start for their calendar


Just so you know, "BC" and "AD" are still extremely popular in vulgarization and popular culture, but most scientists switched to "CE" and "BCE" by now. ("common era" and "before common era"). It's more neutral (which is important when you work with scientists who are not christian but care about religion, for example), and also less confusing when you're talking about topics such as the real date of the birth of Jesus Christ, for instance.

For a similar reason I don't really care whether the date is AUC or BCE, but I find it really, really weird to have it "before Christ" because you're literally playing with the circumstances that could make someone like Jesus Christ appear or not. I know there's an increasing number of bigots and "traditionalists" in our societies who think that writing "BC" or "AD" is part of their identity, but it feels unimmersive to me.

You're casting a lot of aspersions there.

 

[durbal]

If you can't comprehend how displaying a number and calculating a date counting inversely are different, technical things - then luckily for you nAssailant has explained it using quite basic terms/examples. It's really not that difficult to understand why it requires re-writing code.

All dates in computers are arbitrary. There are elementary libraries (if you don’t do it yourself) that handle these in every language. Computers don’t do calculations on dates themselves ffs, they do them on underlying primitives. This is not a technical concern.

 

[aantia]

All dates in computers are arbitrary. There are elementary libraries (if you don’t do it yourself) that handle these in every language. Computers don’t do calculations on dates themselves ffs, they do them on underlying primitives. This is not a technical concern.

It's not using a date, though, it's using a state. After all, the date in-game isn't tracking time, it's counting ticks. And there are triggers which pop on a certain date, as well as ones that count the numbers of days since an event.
It would be pretty trivial to display a different date than what's used internally, but personally I'd find that really annoying to work with.

 

[nAssailant]

Again, I'm gonna need a source on this one. Where in the world are you people getting this information??? I feel this is like the "Clausewitz engine doesn't support multithreading" debacle all over again, where people use the relative lack of verifiability to assert ludicrous nonsense as fact.

I'm a programmer, but you don't really need a source to tell you that with a system based around dates, it's very important to have the numbers moving in one direction. Many underlying systems rely on the date. I never said this was a limitation, but it certainly is a hurdle when displaying data and information and is something you have to take into account.

Nothing about technical infeasibility, just their opinion that it was a bit weird given the time period. For people like me who've studied history with the BC/AD split, such weirdness is fine if it allows me to have a better reference point, as many have pointed out in the thread already.

He doesn't mention any technical issue but he doesn't explain it away, either. He only mentioned that the date counting down is weird from a user standpoint, which makes sense.

Indeed. The Civ games count down from 4000 BC, and yet in all my time playing the series I've never heard anyone complain about it ever.

The Civ games are turn based, though. They don't rely on the date for things, they rely on the turn number which indeed counts up. Same thing for Total war. Paradox games are different, because each tick is a date and is a primary source of information for the user.

In effect, the same thing is true here. The thing you pay most attention to counts up (the AUC date/turn timer) and the thing that gives you a better connection to history/time is there for you to look at if you like (the date in civ/the BCE date in Imperator).

It isn't a problem since the game ends in 27 BCE. However, if you wanted to extend the timeline into CE/AD in the future (when the numbers begin to count up), you have to take that into account. I don't think it's far-fetched to say that the devs and PDox recognized this early on and made the decision to use AUC in order to make that possibility less of a hurdle if it came to it. It'd be jarring for the user and unnecessarily complex otherwise.

 

[Sarog]

Just so you know, "BC" and "AD" are still extremely popular in vulgarization and popular culture, but most scientists switched to "CE" and "BCE" by now. ("common era" and "before common era"). It's more neutral (which is important when you work with scientists who are not christian but care about religion, for example), and also less confusing when you're talking about topics such as the real date of the birth of Jesus Christ, for instance.

For a similar reason I don't really care whether the date is AUC or BCE, but I find it really, really weird to have it "before Christ" because you're literally playing with the circumstances that could make someone like Jesus Christ appear or not. I know there's an increasing number of bigots and "traditionalists" in our societies who think that writing "BC" or "AD" is part of their identity, but it feels unimmersive to me.

Out of interest, what happened in year 1 CE that makes it the Common Era? What great event was it that united such far flung places as Korea, Ethiopia, and Norway in a shared era of mutual importance and dignity or whatever "Common Era" is meant to mean? Was there such an event? Is it still refering to that other event, just in euphamistic terms? Or is it not refering to anything at all - just sounding nice but meaning nothing?

A second question, if you'll indulge me. If the goal is to secularize the calendar to make it neutral, why is it necessary to stop using BC/AD, but perfectly fine to keep using "March", "July", and "Wednesday"? Why is it neutral for the calendar to refer to some deities, but not to others? Invoking the divinity of those entities is certainly equally offensive to certain groups around the world. Julius Caesar was a mass-murdering warlord, and we still set aside one month a year for his deification. If it is truly a secular "common era", why does one tradition and only one need to be ripped out of our dating conventions?

Personally, I still use BC/AD, and will continue to do so. Not because I'm making some absolute religious claim every time I write a date, and cetainly not because I'm a scary bigot out to oppress people through the way I use to refer to events that happened before I was born. BC/AD is what we inherited, it's what I learned, it refers to a specific event (which may not be accurately dated, which perhaps may not have happened at all, but I still know what it is and what it's supposed to mean), and I've heard no convincing argument to change it other than "we (academia) will punish you if you don't".

I understand that there's for room for respectful disagreement in these matters. I personally think it would be best to leave words like bigot out of the conversation.

 

[blackninja9939]

Its in the tooltip and you can mod it in if you want to fully replace the top bar date as the primary information.

Its not an engine limitation, anyone saying that does not know what an engine is and is just playing video game tech word bingo to try and explain things

It shows AUC as the primary date because counting down looks super weird. It works better in Civ because Civ aims to show you all of these time period via different technological ages and you progress through and mirror them all. Imperator doesn't do that, you play through a very specific slice of time and having your generals tell you they will arrive at a location in -2 years or that a truce will end in -5 years just looks plain strange

 

[Reaperdamo]

I think that most people who play this understand the concept that BC counts down. Not a deal breaker for me, but like all things - what looks strange to one person seems normal to others.

 

[Reman]

Its in the tooltip and you can mod it in if you want to fully replace the top bar date as the primary information.

Its not an engine limitation, anyone saying that does not know what an engine is and is just playing video game tech word bingo to try and explain things

It shows AUC as the primary date because counting down looks super weird. It works better in Civ because Civ aims to show you all of these time period via different technological ages and you progress through and mirror them all. Imperator doesn't do that, you play through a very specific slice of time and having your generals tell you they will arrive at a location in -2 years or that a truce will end in -5 years just looks plain strange

Many thanks for this post!!!

It's crazy how quickly misinformation propagates and is accepted as fact. It's great to have a dev come in and clear things up.

Do you know if this type of mod will prevent ironman/achievements or not?

 

[durbal]

It's not using a date, though, it's using a state. After all, the date in-game isn't tracking time, it's counting ticks. And there are triggers which pop on a certain date, as well as ones that count the numbers of days since an event.
It would be pretty trivial to display a different date than what's used internally, but personally I'd find that really annoying to work with.

And none of those things have anything to do with dates at all in computer logic, like I said. If it’s a problem anywhere it’s in the script files since those are interpreted from real dates into whatever primitives the date types in the code (I’m guessing that’s what you’re referencing when you said ‘triggers’ even though the script files never actually trigger anything themselves.) It’s also only an issue for absolute date triggers since timespans are relative.

 

[durbal]

Its in the tooltip and you can mod it in if you want to fully replace the top bar date as the primary information.

Its not an engine limitation, anyone saying that does not know what an engine is and is just playing video game tech word bingo to try and explain things

It shows AUC as the primary date because counting down looks super weird. It works better in Civ because Civ aims to show you all of these time period via different technological ages and you progress through and mirror them all. Imperator doesn't do that, you play through a very specific slice of time and having your generals tell you they will arrive at a location in -2 years or that a truce will end in -5 years just looks plain strange

Thanks for debunking that ‘engine limitation’ nonsense.

Then say that they’ll arrive in 2 years. I can’t believe I’m typing this.

 

[Red_warning]

Its in the tooltip and you can mod it in if you want to fully replace the top bar date as the primary information.

Its not an engine limitation, anyone saying that does not know what an engine is and is just playing video game tech word bingo to try and explain things

It shows AUC as the primary date because counting down looks super weird. It works better in Civ because Civ aims to show you all of these time period via different technological ages and you progress through and mirror them all. Imperator doesn't do that, you play through a very specific slice of time and having your generals tell you they will arrive at a location in -2 years or that a truce will end in -5 years just looks plain strange

Even if it looks weird could you at least give us with a higher tolerance for weirdness the option for B.C numbers?

 

[Ivashanko]

Kinda irrelevant to the topic, but I'm pretty sure we'll have at least 1% of players from countries that don't use the event called "birth of Jesus Christ" as a start for their calendar


Just so you know, "BC" and "AD" are still extremely popular in vulgarization and popular culture, but most scientists switched to "CE" and "BCE" by now. ("common era" and "before common era"). It's more neutral (which is important when you work with scientists who are not christian but care about religion, for example), and also less confusing when you're talking about topics such as the real date of the birth of Jesus Christ, for instance.

For a similar reason I don't really care whether the date is AUC or BCE, but I find it really, really weird to have it "before Christ" because you're literally playing with the circumstances that could make someone like Jesus Christ appear or not. I know there's an increasing number of bigots and "traditionalists" in our societies who think that writing "BC" or "AD" is part of their identity, but it feels unimmersive to me.

While in the context of the game it doesn't matter, I absolutely hate the BCE/CE convention. They are too similar, too easy to confuse at a glance, and can be even trickier for someone with dyslexia/dysgraphia/etc. I wish they went with abbreviations that used completely different letters.

 

[blackninja9939]

Thanks for debunking that ‘engine limitation’ nonsense.

Then say that they’ll arrive in 2 years. I can’t believe I’m typing this.

Except they give you long form dates so you know exactly when, that means it shows the full year so it would still end up showing that they’ll arrive and count down to when that is.
Which is still weird to read

 

[Flamur]

Imperator doesn't do that, you play through a very specific slice of time and having your generals tell you they will arrive at a location in -2 years or that a truce will end in -5 years just looks plain strange

And this is the part that would require re-writing code, no? Meaning it's not worth the hassle and easier to use a date system counting upwards, as the engine is already written that way.

When I have more time I am going to find this damn video of Johan in my head saying it would require re-coding (cant remember his exact words) so they chose to use AUC out of convenience. I don't even read reddit so I have no idea where I've dreamt this up. I'm determined to prove my sanity. Otherwise I will be DMing apologies.

In any case, dev clarification/input is always strongly appreciated.

 

[Buladelu]

Its not an engine limitation, anyone saying that does not know what an engine is and is just playing video game tech word bingo to try and explain things

 

[Borgratz]

Except they give you long form dates so you know exactly when, that means it shows the full year so it would still end up showing that they’ll arrive and count down to when that is.
Which is still weird to read

I thought it was really strange that you guys keep telling us that displaying the date in the standard way is weird. Kind of an oxymoron.

"Humans are used to add dates and have problems with substracting them" sounds like a much better argument. So thanks for the clarification

 

[elessar90]

I don't know how people managed to compare it to Civ because Civ always show you ETA in TURNS, not years. Do you want Imperator to show you that your diplomat will arrive in 77482 ticks or what?

 

[blackninja9939]

And this is the part that would require re-writing code, no? Meaning it's not worth the hassle and easier to use a date system counting upwards, as the engine is already written that way.

When I have more time I am going to find this damn video of Johan in my head saying it would require re-coding (cant remember his exact words) so they chose to use AUC out of convenience. I don't even read reddit so I have no idea where I've dreamt this up. I'm determined to prove my sanity. Otherwise I will be DMing apologies.

In any case, dev clarification/input is always strongly appreciated.

Some parts would require refactoring sure, all dates are just stored as an integer which is then masked to get something meaningful out of it. But as proved by the tooltip already in game the masking lets you show things just fine. To actually make it internally count down that would require refactoring.

I thought it was really strange that you guys keep telling us that displaying the date in the standard way is weird. Kind of an oxymoron.

"Humans are used to add dates and have problems with substracting them" sounds like a much better argument. So thanks for the clarification

Words are hard do good language

 

[___Vardan]

@blackninja9939 keep saying it is weird, but this is how I personally (and I think many people here) learnt history - doing that weird arithmetics all the time. So why can't it be a fully integrated option to switch between the systems?