As someone who very much wants the time gaps in the calendar dates "fixed", I understand it is cosmetic and not mechanical. I don't want to play the game with placeholder graphics either and they don't effect gameplay. Aesthetic choices effect the end result. I find it jarring after to have the game skip a couple hundred years but I am still the leader. (Not to mention delete units and downgrade my cities.)
Now, if we talk actual mechanics I like this idea even worse.
This is going to be very jarring to the "narrative experience" they are trying so hard for. Why is there an unexplained time skip where your empire spend hundreds of years disbanding & retreating units, and downgrading cities all without your agency. Even if you go out on a limb and hand wave this by saying "every crisis leads to this same result ultimately" it is still very weak and a horrible attempt at narrative. This is pretty big to remove player agency at such a pivotal moment in the narrative. A pivotal moment that is not explained in the narrative at that.