Manipulate starting year?

[Gundus]

I am wondering if it's possible to hack Civ1 so that you
can manually set your starting year (instead of starting in 4000 b.c.)

Hopefully this could be useful for a couple of reasons,
firstly the computer civs start acting aggressively at year 1 AD,
so if this is postponed you can play a peaceful game
a lot easier.

There might be other advantages also.

So, do you think this could be done, and are there any other advantages
if you could start your game at, say 20 000 b.c.?

 

[Dack]

I would say watch out for untended consequences.
There are two counters that in a normal (regular) game are in sync the turn counter that counts each turn and the year. I have no idea if the turn counter controls when the turns become a different number of years.
Attached is a game – turn counter = 1 , year = 20,000 BCE

On the first move I went in to a hut and received a city for my trouble. Anyway play this out and report back.