I'm 76 turns into a campaign as the Moors and I have to say it is works very well this way. I've probably invested 30 hours into this campaign at the very minimum. The year is something like 1230 right now and i've gone through multiple sultans. You need to remember this game covers almost 5 centuries. If every year was a turn the game would go incredibly slow and you'd probably conquer the whole world without even being able to try to conquer the new world or even experience the mongol horde. If they were to keep the turns the way to are and have realistic aging you'd be losing agents and generals before you could even get much use out of them. Is this completly historical? Nope. I prefer having the game as historical as possible but I have to say a little sacrifice of history for gameplay worked out extremly well in this game. Also since turns are what is displayed on the main campaign screen you hardly realize this feature.