Dates, Seasons and Ages

[Didz]

The characters aging slower than campaign time is likely just to keep them from dying too quickly... or perhaps more correctly, one could say that the timeline moving 4x faster than the characters age is really a method to make all the important historical bits fit into an appropriately short campaign.

Another consideration would probably have been that characters can't acheive very much even in their extended lifespan, so having them age 2 years per turn would prevent them acheiving just about anything.

For example: Even travelling by sea it took my merchant 14 turns to reach his target gold resource in Africa from Scotland. If he had been aging at the rate of 2 years turn turn he would have left Scotland at the age of of 26 and arrived in Africa aged 54, just about in time to die. Even 7 years to travel to Africa is a long time to be on a boat but at least its playable, and you are likely to see some profit before your agent dies.