Quote Originally Posted by zulukiller
Ive altered the timescale myself to 0.5 and the only thing ive noticed is you get the blackdeath at the odd random settelment before you get the main event for the black death coming into the game (were you get it at loads of settelments). I cant remember if thats normal though from the other campaigns ive played
Yes, thats normal. Plague can happen in any city at any time, the black death is a scripted event occuring at a predetermined time and affecting all cities.

As for the ships thing, thats just an interesting side effect, in that youre delaying the discovery of gunpowder till 4 times as many turns, and you arent getting a similar delay on the rest of your tech progression. This sort of thing is inevitable, so you will just have to live with the odd side effect - unless you want to mod the game to be totally consistent and reduce movement speeds, income, pop growth, and build rates (for buildings, and units) by a factor of 4.

I will say that i think anyone who loses sleep over whether their characters are ageing at the correct rate needs to step back a little and get a sense of perspective. Its a GAME, not a historical simulation.