Question of The Week: Should the Date be shown by default?

This has a caused a lot of controversy in the last few weeks, so much so that I did reverse my initial decision to hide the date by default by default in AND v1.64.

I initially hide the date because I don't feel that the date has any significance in a historical simulation. The timing events in Civ rarely lines up with the real time, so I often had complaints the someone had rifles in 1400AD or no railroads until 2050AD. It is impossible to make the date match the actual because of many factors. Map size, the general peacefulness (or lack thereof) of the players, game options, and myriad of other factors insure this impossibility.

However, immediately after my decision, I received numerous complaints. More complaints for hiding the date than I received for inaccurate dates. And I don't want to ignore you, my player-base, because ultimately, the success of any mod depends on you.

One last note: I wasn't removing the date from the game, just turning it off by default. It could be re-enabled in the BUG Panel in the "Date & Time" tab.

PS. Sorry for the late QoTW this week.

Also, regardless of your vote, I would like to hear your opinion on the matter. This isn't a simple yes or no question, it's a two-parter. I want to know why as well.

I voted yes because Civ is a history game, it should have the date. Since it is not a true history simulator, the date does not have to match.

I say yes, because the Date(although it is rarely correct) is great to see how well someone could progress through time...

i.e:
-Someone trying to beat themselves by a certian Date(as in have a higher score in 1000AD than the last time someone played)
-When one sees the 'End of Time' pop-up and clicks through to the replay, the person isn't suprised that they beat it before x(or that they lost before x).

x=insert year here!

I voted for date because you didn't have the actual option I wanted. What I want is the golden age icon and the number of turns left in it. That you can only get with the date on.

NO!

• Because the date of this game is biased to Christianity.
• Because the date is surrealistic, especially in maps of larger size and modded ResearchPercents that resulted from the sizes.
• Because the date is deeply irrelevant to the progress of mankind excepting concerning to astronomy, agriculture and few others and only in terms of describing time periods as measurements.
• Because it can be easily modded by BUG team or by Afforess (I assume) to have Golden Age Remaining Turns be shown separately from dates.
• EDIT: Because it should stop ridiculous complaints about dates being messed up by map sizes/types/etc!

I am fine with it ether way as because I can just turn it back on.

Because the date of this game is biased to Christianity.

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A.D. has been the standard of the west so that is why it is like that.

EDIT: Because it should stop ridiculous complaints about dates being messed up by map sizes/types/etc!

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os79 said:

• Because the date of this game is biased to Christianity.
  

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No Offense, but CE is just as biased.

Wikipedia:

Common Era, abbreviated as CE...is also known as Christian Era... Dates before the year 1 CE are indicated by the usage of BCE, short for "Before the Common Era" or "Before the Christian Era".

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I don't understand why Christianities influence always has to be a bad thing. Should we demote Christmas and force government employees to show up on the 25th? Religions are part of all our history, for good or ill.

i voted yes, and my reasons are the same as the other yes voters i guess...

Afforess said:

No Offense, but CE is just as biased...
[...]

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I know about how silly CE is compared to AD but at least it is a right step toward eliminating religion's influences on our lives. Hopefeully, religions will fade away in next hundreds of years or so.

However, it is not about real life religion but rather about how the game is coded. See, if other religion in a game become a dominant force, should not it be given a dating honor?
Answer: yes.
Practical answer: no.

Better to remove dates from the screen in the first place for above and other reasons I described.

However, it is so minor a thing that I'm surprised you even bothered listening to complaints from either side anyway. You could had told "dates are messed up" complainers to go **** off in polite way and realize that it is extremely difficult to calibrate dates because of variability in games played. Then it would had been settled for once and all.

You already have a very good reputation for a very superb mod that the complainers would had been slightly offended but moved on anyway .

os79 said:

I know about how silly CE is compared to AD but at least it is a right step toward eliminating religion's influences on our lives. Hopefeully, religions will fade away in next hundreds of years or so.

However, it is not about real life religion but rather about how the game is coded. See, if other religion in a game become a dominant force, should not it be given a dating honor?
Answer: yes.
Practical answer: no.

Better to remove dates from the screen in the first place for above and other reasons I described.

However, it is so minor a thing that I'm surprised you even bothered listening to complaints from either side anyway. You could had told "dates are messed up" complainers to go **** off in polite way and realize that it is extremely difficult to calibrate dates because of variability in games played. Then it would had been settled for once and all.

You already have a very good reputation for a very superb mod that the complainers would had been slightly offended but moved on anyway .

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Sorry but uh Religion isn't going away the Catholic Church is an immovable bulwark, 2000 years later and it's still going strong,

Also despite your seemingly hate toward religion the Catholic Church is probably a least offender in your book, after all in the US it is the source of excellent education, it opposed slavery nearly 600 years ago when colonization was just starting, why do you wish for it to die?


Back on topic: I vote yes but it is ultimately up to you to decide

os79 said:

I know about how silly CE is compared to AD but at least it is a right step toward eliminating religion's influences on our lives. Hopefeully, religions will fade away in next hundreds of years or so.

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I'm starting to deviate from the topic, but this is my thread & my forum, so oh well...

Why should religion's influence be removed from our lives? Doesn't each person deserve the right to choose whether or not to accept a religion? If I want to be a Buddhist, why is that a bad thing, (provided I don't violate the US Constitution)?

Afforess said:

However, immediately after my decision, I received numerous complaints. More complaints for hiding the date than I received for inaccurate dates.

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Well there you go then. For such a trivial issue (in the sense that it can easily be changed by players according to their wishes), it would seem reasonable to have the default setting be what the majority wants? For those who don't want it visible, it'll just be a matter of disabling it in the BUG menu.

For what it's worth, I personally like the date to be visible.

draz said:

Well there you go then. For such a trivial issue (in the sense that it can easily be changed by players according to their wishes), it would seem reasonable to have the default setting be what the majority wants? For those who don't it visible, it'll just be a matter of disabling it in the BUG menu.

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I know, and I did concede to the majority with v1.64. However, I decided to make it a formal poll to truly gauge the player's opinion and not just the complainers. However, it's looking like it's going to be a blow-out.

(Sorry Os79, I agree with you)...

I voted yes, but mostly out of an 'eh, it's my civic duty to vote' kind of reaction. It didn't bother me too much either way.

It's neat to have it there and go "Oh look. It's 1650 AD and I have armored cars. Whatever, now who do I *USE* them on?"

#1 Real-life religion: I don't object to you having religion. I just expressed a hope that religions will fade away for various reasons, and not going into them . No need for debate when it would lead to nowhere in particular. I'm an atheist for my reasons and you are a religious for your own reasons. As long as we don't interfere with each other's quests for whatever, we are doing great .
Civ-king, just wow . That's all I'm going to say .

#2 Gameplay: I still stand by my reasons. But then again, it is so minor that we can just playfully imagine that if Buddhism, for example, become a superior force in the game, then AD can represent its prophet's year. Since AD is just a translation of "Year of our Lord". It can refer to anyone .

So, since my opinions are in a minority, I'm more than happy to let it go . I'm a fairly skillful modder, enough to change default of Config files on my own every time I install AND .

Wait...WTH? I've been studying history for years and there are people expanding CE as Christian Era? Never noticed that.

I always thought the whole point of abbreviating it as CE instead of AD was meant to be a half hearted attempt not to have a Christian reference date and pretending that it starts from an arbitrary date that just coincidentally happens to be the same as the AD one.

My answer is: YES

It is simply historic.

As for the complaints that you have rifles in XV century: first of all, why you complain to that, and do not complain that Bismarck has become a vassal to Shaka? Is that accurate and historic?

I have an impression that dating is not as big problem in the game, as some state. The development in the game goes pretty much along with the historic reality. That is at least my impression. No railroads till till 2050 AD? I'm sorry, we here in Poland are still building ours . I believe there are still tribes around the world, which don't have common knowledge about some stuff.

As for religion: this is a thin ice.... I really respect everybody's believes and opinion, but to remove the date, because it is biased to Christianity? C'mon. Do you refuse to use the calendar in real life too?

You don't need to believe in God to understand that Christianity brought a lot of ideas and features to our lifes which are commonly accepted. They became elements of our culture. So lets not to throw the child along with the water out of tubby, please. Do you feel that basic rules which are common in our societies are also biased to Christianity? Guess what: they come from 10 commandments. Are you going to kill, steal, cheat, humiliate your parents and neglect (or oppose) to holidays, just because they come from Christianity?

I find it indeed humorous how people react to my "anti-religion" comments earlier in this thread .

:Shrug: Such is a progress of discussions on a forum where you got comfortable enough to express your true feelings about stuff .

Repeat: I hae no objections to other people having religious feelings or inclinations. I only expressed a hope that religion's impact on political and cultural lives will fade away enough so that secular applications would be more frequent used. That is as far as I'm willing to go on here .

I'm no civic Atheist minded person . (Referring to RoM's Atheist civic . I'm ore of Free Church/Secular type of person leaning toward secular. Hope that should clarify my positions .

os79 said:

I find it indeed humorous how people react to my "anti-religion" comments earlier in this thread .

:Shrug: Such is a progress of discussions on a forum where you got comfortable enough to express your true feelings about stuff .

Repeat: I hae no objections to other people having religious feelings or inclinations. I only expressed a hope that religion's impact on political and cultural lives will fade away enough so that secular applications would be more frequent used. That is as far as I'm willing to go on here .

I'm no civic Atheist minded person . (Referring to RoM's Atheist civic . I'm ore of Free Church/Secular type of person leaning toward secular. Hope that should clarify my positions .

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I agree with Civ-king. Your idea is alright OS because you don't want to force anyone.

I'm going to continue to triangulate on this one. I played my first game without the date on and liked it because you can pretty much just play without worrying about the arbitrary benchmarks imposed by numbers like 100 AD and 450 BC. All of a sudden, it didn't matter if I was researching Horseback Riding in 450 AD because I didn't know it and no one had even researched Chariotry yet. So it was sort of liberating.

On the other hand, it was sort of bittersweet to not have the AJP Taylor historian voice in my head as I played. You know, the "and then, in 104 AD, the Persians siege of Ulundi was broken, when a vicious counterattack smashed the already depleted Persian infantry, leaving their siege engines at the mercy of the Zulu Horsemen"-style narration that goes along with playing Civ in a dark room at 3:30 AM on a Wednesday. It sort of tipped the world simulator/game scale more towards the game side.

Ideally, it would be best to allow the player to pick a turn as year 1, then go from there. This would have the dual benefit of not tying the date to an event that will likely be irrelevant in most games while keeping the spirit of the date intact. If would only be possible to provide inexact dates beforehand, all the better to simulate the loss of information from early civilization. Since this is probably impossible, I will reluctantly vote for date on. In the end, it is a game after all, and the Golden Age turns are too important to not have visible. We can all learn to live with a slightly off date/tech progression.