Mankind has advanced more in the past 100 years than in the past 100,000 prior to that put together. That sort of exponential change argues extremely strongly against one-size. I would argue that the exact opposite problem is at work here: you are not appreciating the degree to which things are different now as opposed to then. From the Industrial Revolution forward the world pretty operates on completely different rules. Before then you can pretend it advanced linearly and not deviate from the curve too much in error. After that, it's nothing but folly to presume it continues on in such a way. It changes. Exponentially. One-size-fits-all lines don't do so hot on fitting exponential curves.
Bullcrap. This is going to make you rant and rave for half an hour, but it's true: not all that much has changed. The most significant technological change of the past century has been the computer, and that is arguably the only important change, as it allows us to automate much of what previously had to be manual. Prior to that, I challenge the assertion that advancements are that impressive. Humanity has seen only a few landmark changes: language in the last 50,000 years, civilization in the last 10,000. If you want to subdivide it, the Bronze Age was from 5000-c. 1500; the Iron age lasts nearly to the present day. The toys of the Industrial Revolution were really just extensions and harnessing of the power and mechanical resources that were already there in the Iron Age. We're still looking for more efficient ways to turn things and send things flying.
Now, yes, things did change significantly with the introduction of Electronics, but I dispute that they are so utterly different that an entirely different scheme is needed for the NESing environment. Things are not changing much faster now than they were before: the last decade has not seen a significantly higher degree of change than any decade long period. You merely think it does, because you undeniably have a bias, having lived in this decade. Who will really care about the War in Iraq, a hundred years from now? Only a few historians. Who will really care about specific conflicts like Kosovo? They will remember the breakup of the Soviet Union and the American crusade against terrorism, I think, but that's hardly too much to be covered in one or two updates.
The idea that somehow humanity is radically altered purely by the introduction of massive automation is silly. The last true revolution has been the electronic, and we have yet to see how the effects of that will fully pan out. In reality, things are not "progressing" much faster: information might be exponentially exploding, but important technological advancements, no, and changes in the basic scheme of how things were have not come to full fruition. So no, 20 years per turn works remarkably well for the Bronze Age; it works well for the Iron Age, and it works well for the 20th Century. We need to get over ourselves; a year in our life is not somehow more eventful than it was a hundred years ago.
People might be more or less the same, but that hardly matters when the tools at their disposal are such orders of magnitude more powerful, and their are powers more of them to use them. You can't just ignore advances and write them off because people act more or less the same in their base desires in computing a useful time-scale.
No, no, you don't understand. People aren't just acting off of the same base desires--that wasn't my point. Most people think just as quickly. Events, contrary to the belief that seems to be held, do not advance more quickly.
Time has not sped up. The only reason to break years into shorter and shorter turns would then be to accommodate more events occurring in a single year, and even this is not so. Just because people take days where they would take minutes to get from place to place does not make things happen faster. Warfare still takes years to fully carry out: the occupation of even a small country like Iraq has been taking years; the ground war is fought quicker, yes, but that hardly means the war is over, as we are discovering to our sorrow. Cultural changes, and the
big changes, are happening just as quickly or slowly as they did in the olden days, because people generally resist change, and the big things, those that involve the change of societies, must then wait for those people to fade away and be replaced: the generational length. This happens to be roughly the same for all of history. The simple stuff, like sending a package around the world, might happen much faster. An army can deploy much faster. But culture does not change faster, and culture is ultimately the true storyline of history.
Borrow excessively, though don't mind adding a few of your own
Like "Most Ridiculous Character: King Ryan" and etc etc
But I have seen worse orders.
