In relation to a question that was brought up at TWC and was brought to full fruition in my mind when someone here at the org asked an innocent question about merchants...

I find the ratio an interesting dimension for levelling, but it also has the power to be destabilizing if all aspects of it are not taken into account. Further, there are some most entertaining possibilities and also pitfalls if one is not wary of what can of wormholes they are opening... to wit:

1) The TWC thread discusses as this one does that tweaking the number of turns can correct the Lazarus-like aging quirk because aging is tied to TURNS, not DATE...however, you can also increase or invert the aging process by changing the ratio...
2) As it has been made quite clear, the game can be forshortened or telescoped in number of turns because the game end is determined by DATE not TURNS.
3) While events will still happen on the right DATE because they are DATE determined, not TURN determined, building rates are TURN determined, not DATE determined! This means that buildings are finished "faster" relative to the date they are begun and in relation to the end of the game where the new ratio is < vanilla. This could have a deep impact on the play balance of the game especially at .50

This is the tip of the iceberg.

4) I have been thinking about the manner in which other items are fixed by TURN instead of DATE. Not only would buildings need to be looked at for balance if there were a manipulation of the year/turn ratio, but so too would the impact of more unit production, and also money surpluses. Since a surplus is based on the end of a turn and unit production is also, increasing the number of turns significantly ups the quantity of these two resources in relation to the end of the game and given dates. While your merchantmen will now die more often, you will also be earning cash faster per year and build up experience more than once and rather quickly. While it will still be the same number of TURNS to get somewhere on foot or by boat, this will also happen faster in terms of historical dates and the end of the game...

A .50 game would mean 900 game turns compared to 225, and surely there are other things that fall in category 4 such as the impact of more crusades or jihads, more conversions and so forth I have not thought of...

Al Jabberwock