I'm still not used to the years per rounds

[screwtype]

I can't believe how wound up some people are getting over this very trivial issue.

It's really quite simple to understand: CA wanted to cover a 500 year historical period in 250 turns, to give gamers the opportunity to play with different generations of combat units in a reasonable period of time. That meant one turn every two years. But one turn every two years means generals only get an active lifetime of about 30 turns, which is very little time to develop them. So they abstracted the aging rate of generals to one year every two turns, to give them an active "lifetime" of about 60 turns.

There are already a number of time abstractions in TW, some of them much worse than this one. For example, how realistic was it in MTW/RTW that your army could only march one province per year? What about sieges? Do you really think it takes a year to build a battering ram?

But if you really can't bear this latest abstraction which is very modest by comparison, then as others have pointed out, it's easy enough to mod it.

[Fixiwee]

It's really quite simple to understand: CA wanted to cover a 500 year historical period in 250 turns, to give gamers the opportunity to play with different generations of combat units in a reasonable period of time. That meant one turn every two years. But one turn every two years means generals only get a lifetime of about 20 turns, which is very little time to develop them. So they abstracted the aging rate of generals to one year every two turns, to give them a "lifetime" of about 80 turns.

I'm very aware of your point and I understand it very well.
The problem is just, for me... It kills all the fun that the emperor doe not age rightly. I can get used to the turning system as you play really long for 500 years. But at least give me an option that my emperor does age the same. I know this would destroy balance abit, but it's important to me, to replay history in a somewhat proper way that COULD be realistic.
I hope you understand that it is such trival issues, that kills all the fun in the game for me. And the game is really really great besides that little point, causing so much trouble for me.

[Quickening]

I'm very aware of your point and I understand it very well.
The problem is just, for me... It kills all the fun that the emperor doe not age rightly. I can get used to the turning system as you play really long for 500 years. But at least give me an option that my emperor does age the same. I know this would destroy balance abit, but it's important to me, to replay history in a somewhat proper way that COULD be realistic.
I hope you understand that it is such trival issues, that kills all the fun in the game for me. And the game is really really great besides that little point, causing so much trouble for me.

Same here. The distance troops march is insignificant compared to this because it isn't as blatant and it would obviously be impossible to have a scale map of Europe.
The aim of such a game is to create a believable world that we can immerse ourselves in. This isn't believable in any way, shape or form and it's such a simple, unneccesary thing.
And what will come of the great stories that some people enjoy writing about their campains? They will make no sense whatsoever.
The worst thing is I can't imagine this being an accident. It's far too big a thing to be an oversight. If CA do read these forums then please, for the love of God, sort this out in a patch. Such a little thing is marring what seems to be the best Total War game yet.

EDIT: Also, I never mod my games and Im not going to start now. Things are done officially or they aren't done at all in my view.

[econ21]

EDIT: Also, I never mod my games and Im not going to start now. Things are done officially or they aren't done at all in my view.

Off-topic - I used to have that attitude, then I found RTR and EB. You have no idea how much better some things can be when done "unofficially".

[Barbarossa82]

I don't have M2TW, but surely what matters with construction times etc. it the number of turns it takes to build, rather than how many years that stands for. If a barracks is set to take 8 turns to build, then that means a set, defined amount of global development that can take place in that time - armies marching, assassinations, diplomacy, exploration etc. The important thing is not that a barracks takes 16 chronological years, but that it takes 8 "opportunities to move/act". Simply altering the amount of time that one of those opportunities stands for (from 2 to 0.5 years) would not affect that ratio. A barracks still takes as long to build as it takes to move an army or a ship 8 times, regardless of whether that's 16 years or 4 years.

The only impact I can see is that increasing the number of turns in the game by modding the timescale to 0.5 will, dependent on the game, throw up one of the following problems, either
a) With certain units/structures/discovery events like gunpowder weapons and the new world dependent on reaching a certain year, it is unlikely that they will ever be reached since there's too many turns preceding it, during which the campaign will probably have been won
or
b) if gunpowder/new world etc are dependent not on a set year but on a faction's development, then it could reach such milestones anachronistically early.

Either way, the problem could be mitigated by modding the start and end dates of the campaign to give a smaller window of time, which is also not ideal but surely better than the immersion-killing turns.

[Bob the Insane]

The important thing is not that a barracks takes 16 chronological years, but that it takes 8 "opportunities to move/act". Simply altering the amount of time that one of those opportunities stands for (from 2 to 0.5 years) would not affect that ratio. A barracks still takes as long to build as it takes to move an army or a ship 8 times, regardless of whether that's 16 years or 4 years.

You make a very good point there...

The only impact I can see is that increasing the number of turns in the game by modding the timescale to 0.5 will, dependent on the game, throw up one of the following problems, either
a) With certain units/structures/discovery events like gunpowder weapons and the new world dependent on reaching a certain year, it is unlikely that they will ever be reached since there's too many turns preceding it, during which the campaign will probably have been won
or
b) if gunpowder/new world etc are dependent not on a set year but on a faction's development, then it could reach such milestones anachronistically early.

I believe this has been answered already (at least at the TWC) in that the events are year (or year range) based and not tech or turn based so the events occur when they should.

If you increase the build times by x4 surely that would slow the develop in the game and the appearance of better troops and more available cash. I would have thought this and the reported improvments in the AI would prevent the player steamrollering the map...

I guess we will only see through experimentation...

It may have been impossible but this the character aging was just expressed externally in the same manner as the timescale this discussion would be mute as the biggest issue most are having is dealing with the concept of your generals aging so slowly...

[Fixiwee]

It may have been impossible but this the character aging was just expressed externally in the same manner as the timescale this discussion would be mute as the biggest issue most are having is dealing with the concept of your generals aging so slowly...

Yepp, that is what I meant. I don't mind having 2 years per round, if the generals do age in the same manner.