Hello!

I'd like to propose the adoption of the Holocene / Human Era Calendar for this game.

Using the Common Era Calendar (BC/BCE - AD) distorts our view of Humankind history.

Its harder to understand the complete history of our species, as stating that we are in the year 2020 limits our thinking of the past and focuses on the most recent millenia.

Its also counterintuitive that for the largest part of written human history we have to count the years backwards.

We can also argue that with the current calendar there is no year zero and we are only focusing on a single culture. Not every nation in the world uses this calendar, as people follow their own cultural or religious relevant events.

The Holocene Calendar was proposed by Cesare Emiliani in 1993 to address this issues.

By adopting a calendar starting at the beginning of the Holocene geological epoch and the Neolithic Revolution, essentially captures the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to agriculture and settlements, the birth of civilizations.

Human Era Calendar makes for easier geological, archaeological, dendrochronological, anthropological and historical dating, as well as that it bases its epoch on an event more universally relevant than the birth of Jesus. All key dates in human history can then be listed using a simple increasing date scale with smaller dates always occurring before larger dates. Another gain is that the Holocene Era starts before the other calendar eras, so it could be useful for the comparison and conversion of dates from different calendars.

So lets adopt the Human Era Calendar, a calendar that represents us as a species and includes all cultures.

Interesting idea, I was aware of calendar disparities between civilizations, but I didn't know about this one. The idea is really good, but I'd propose something a little different by keeping this as a custom option available for the player - with the possibility to choose between several calendars, not juste this one and BC/BCE. It would really adds to the "culture" aspect of the game (or what we've seen of it as now).

I think that's a great idea, even if it will also be coherant to have multiple calandar in the game, depending on the history of your people. Also; the YouTube channel Kurzgesagt make a video about it, that's how I discover this type of calendar. But I think that it's the best way to reprensent all cultures in a simple way.

I've read somewhere that for the moment there is no Calendar in Humankind but only a "turn counter".

More than a Universal calendar, I think that different calendars for different cultures triggered by different situations would be more historically accurate. In any case what really counts is the "turn conter", and it makes no difference if one culture is in its year 1967 and another one in its 663 while both are at count 115.

Perhaps the calendar could be something variable, depending on the inclination of your culture, and the year 0 for one culture could be the birth of a religion, for another one the foundation of a city... and this can change through the game even for one culture if they change religion or decide to start a new calendar.

In the end, I do not believe that this is of a great importance for the development of the game, it can add a bit of "flavour" and perhaps some interesting mechanic of trying that other cultures addopt your calendar, with an impact on Fame.

While I think the sentiment is good, I don't think the calendar is relatable to most people. After awhile people would adjust, but there will be those who are outright turned off from it. If possible, I think like Flykz said, keeping the type of calendar as an option to the player is best. Maybe even pulling the type of calendar from what the computer is currently using? Otherwise simply the number of turns will work. 

I think if incorporating a calendar is necessary, the Holocene/Human Era calendar should definitely be used over the Gregorian calendar. However, I'd be fine with having no calendar at all. Different cultures and civiilisations progress at different paces, and this will also be the case for different players. In an alternate history game, there need be no set date by which something should be expected to have happened, or been discovered/invented. Furthermore, I've always disliked how games like Civilization seem to slow down time in the later eras to compensate for the explosion of new technologies since the Industrial Revolution. I feel it makes the final chapters of the game feel rushed as a result.

I would prefer the common era calender tbh, if there were some other system I would find myself "translating" to BCE/ CE just because that's what I've learned in my history classes. I also like to compare where I am in the game to real history - so say I just crossed the ocean and found a new continent around 1420 CE, I say "ok cool I beat 1492." If it were 11420 I would just find myself converting to CE. 

Also I prefer the slowdown in time in the late game, if you went from one tech every 6 turns to one tech every turn it would feel poorly paced. 

Hi!

Thanks for the suggestion! We're looking into that and checking how we could implement an in-game calendar fitting well with Humankind :)

Cheers,

Hello,

A year has passed and with the launch of the Victor OpenDev I see you've gone with a BCE/CE calendar.

Any chance we can also get the Human Era calendar? Or at least have the calendar easily moddable to change it :)

An interesting approach would also be to not have the calendar at start, but when the first culture evolves from Neolithic, the calendar would begin at 1 HE.

CapitaoRolinho wrote:

Hello,

A year has passed and with the launch of the Victor OpenDev I see you've gone with a BCE/CE calendar.

Any chance we can also get the Human Era calendar? Or at least have the calendar easily moddable to change it :)

An interesting approach would also be to not have the calendar at start, but when the first culture evolves from Neolithic, the calendar would begin at 1 HE.

In the Settings you can choose between Gregorian and Holocene calendars.

WOW

Big facepalm moment there, thanks for the info

Love it