BC/BCE dates

[mrinku]

They can run reign years and Anno Domine years in parallel. That is historical; the church kept track of the latter with most others using the former.

In game terms, the latter gives us an easy to use timeline, with the former providing character.

They could also drop the numbering of rulers of the same name from routine use; at most people would refer to "old king Edward" or use their nickname to distinguish them from a same-name successor. It's always been slightly jarring to have the numbers used throughout the game. It's fine to have it on the Chronicle or the reign list, though.

 

[mrinku]

As someone with a variety of dys disorders, I cannot stand BCE/CE. Why did they have to make acronyms that are so similar?

Because it's "Common Era" and "Before Common Era".

At least that's more consistent than "Anno Domine" (year of our Lord) and "Before Christ", which mix up Latin and English.

You could copy the clock and have "Ante Domine" and "Post Domine" I guess, but that would likely Not Go Down Well.

Here's a problem though - with either AD/BC or CE/BCE system - no year zero. So whatever is used can't even be stored as normal signed integer. You have to account for 1BCE being followed by 1 CE in any calculation (such as for age).

 

[Ivashanko]

I honestly have not seen BCE ACE used anywhere beyond college text books and occationally government documents.

Don't be lazy. Don't steal other's inventions. Invent your own calendar based off a valuable secular center point.

Because it's "Common Era" and "Before Common Era".

At least that's more consistent than "Anno Domine" (year of our Lord) and "Before Christ", which mix up Latin and English.

You could copy the clock and have "Ante Domine" and "Post Domine" I guess, but that would likely Not Go Down Well.

Here's a problem though - with either AD/BC or CE/BCE system - no year zero. So whatever is used can't even be stored as normal signed integer. You have to account for 1BCE being followed by 1 CE in any calculation (such as for age).

Yeah, I already knew what BCE and CE stand for. I'm complaining that they didn't pick something that cannot be so easily confused together, especially by those of us with dys related issues.

 

[Heiliges Thüringens Reich]

Why wouldn't it? It's just an integer.

 

[Faerillis]

Nothing to do with the topic, but if you wanted to create a secular calander, don't use BCE and ACE and pretend like it's not about the Christian era. There's nothing common about it. It's Christian. You just removed the name. If you want a true secular calendar, choose a secular 0 year. Can be the transition from republic to empire if that's convenient because it's similar, or you can choose the founding of Troy as where western civilization really began-ish. IDK. But don't culturally appropriate Christian calendars. That's just dumb.

Actually there is an alternative it's just incredibly hard to convince people to use. It's the Holocene Calendar using the 'Human Era' HE. BCE and CE are stupid for exactly the reasons you entail — there is nothing I have more in common with someone in 2 CE than I have with someone in 2 BCE, the difference is someone's guess about Jesus — it's just Before Christ and Anno Domini with more steps. The Holocene Calendar uses a rough estimation of the first permanent human settlement uncovered, which is roughly 12000 years old. Given the difficulty of pinpointing the exact dates of the foundation of that settlement, one common strategy is to simply add a 1- to the year to make adapting easier; ie it is the year 12019 HE.

 

[Ezumiyr]

What would be interesting is different calendars for different nations/cultures. So if you play as a Muslim nation you get the Muslim calendar (so it be like year 300), for the Romans you can use the roman calendar, the jews the jewish one (year 4000 for them i think in the game) etc......

I think it would be great for immersion. Of course, allow players to switch to their favourite calendar if they want, but if the calendar matched your religion it could also make it possible to include the date into events like "the great holy war of XXX". Christian, muslim, indian etc calendars, and for people who didn't have a calendar, just user years of rule.
Btw I really hope that the interface is based on religion like in CK2. One of the reasons I dislike Imperator is that everyone gets this white marble on the interface.

I think I saw somewhere that CK3 will use ruler-based years. So the year 1066 will display as "Year 7 of King Phillip's reign" for everyone in France, "Year 11 of Emperor Henry IV's reign" in the HRE, etc.

That would be nice to have that visible somewhere at least. Maybe below the "regular" calendar for example. In CK2 we need to check for the length of rule, which is sometimes a bit annoying when you have to wait for timers to end for instance.

 

[Blackfang12]

Actually there is an alternative it's just incredibly hard to convince people to use. It's the Holocene Calendar using the 'Human Era' HE. BCE and CE are stupid for exactly the reasons you entail — there is nothing I have more in common with someone in 2 CE than I have with someone in 2 BCE, the difference is someone's guess about Jesus — it's just Before Christ and Anno Domini with more steps. The Holocene Calendar uses a rough estimation of the first permanent human settlement uncovered, which is roughly 12000 years old. Given the difficulty of pinpointing the exact dates of the foundation of that settlement, one common strategy is to simply add a 1- to the year to make adapting easier; ie it is the year 12019 HE.

Well, IIRC not strictly the first permanent settlement, but the first major construction project. A temple in Turkey.
Just me being pedantic

 

[Ezumiyr]

Actually there is an alternative it's just incredibly hard to convince people to use. It's the Holocene Calendar using the 'Human Era' HE. BCE and CE are stupid for exactly the reasons you entail — there is nothing I have more in common with someone in 2 CE than I have with someone in 2 BCE, the difference is someone's guess about Jesus — it's just Before Christ and Anno Domini with more steps. The Holocene Calendar uses a rough estimation of the first permanent human settlement uncovered, which is roughly 12000 years old. Given the difficulty of pinpointing the exact dates of the foundation of that settlement, one common strategy is to simply add a 1- to the year to make adapting easier; ie it is the year 12019 HE.

"Common" era obviously doesn't mean that you have more in common with people from CE than BCE.
"Common" means that we "commonly" agree to use that date. And btw it can also mean "current era".

I never heard of HE, and it's probably because scientists who study prehistory rather use "BP" (before present). It doesn't make sense to me to just try to guess when the first permanent human settlement was created, because we won't have a precise date, and also because it sounds incredibly arbitrary. And whether history starts with the first settlement is a whole debate on its own.
In any case, BP is much more widely accepted.

 

[faiuwle]

I honestly have not seen BCE ACE used anywhere beyond college text books and occationally government documents.

Don't be lazy. Don't steal other's inventions. Invent your own calendar based off a valuable secular center point.

It's not "lazy" to use the same calendar as everyone else, it's sensible. And it's not an "invention" to choose an arbitrary date from which to begin an era.

Actually there is an alternative it's just incredibly hard to convince people to use. It's the Holocene Calendar using the 'Human Era' HE. BCE and CE are stupid for exactly the reasons you entail — there is nothing I have more in common with someone in 2 CE than I have with someone in 2 BCE, the difference is someone's guess about Jesus — it's just Before Christ and Anno Domini with more steps. The Holocene Calendar uses a rough estimation of the first permanent human settlement uncovered, which is roughly 12000 years old. Given the difficulty of pinpointing the exact dates of the foundation of that settlement, one common strategy is to simply add a 1- to the year to make adapting easier; ie it is the year 12019 HE.

And if we find an earlier settlement in the future, what then? We change the year, and literally every record of a date we have ever recorded? No, it's much better for the era to begin at an entirely arbitrary point in time.

 

[Stuckenschmidt]

The secular BCE/CE may take from Christian BC/AD, but it's taking the numbers that are already used and makes sense to those using them and divorces it from its religious origins.

You can either be secular or have a calendar system that evolves around the alleged birth date of Jesus Christ. Two things, pick one.

 

[guinea prince]

You can either be secular or have a calendar system that evolves around Jesus Christ. Two things, pick one.

You can make that demand, but real life will shrug and continue as is. It's not a major deal

And it is disingenuous to demand otherwise. It is already a secular calendar by virtue of divorcing itself from Christian terminology. But "it was Christian in origin, it doesn't count" is pointlessly insistent, and overly particular about one facet of the historical development of the calendar.

 

[BrokenSky]

Why wouldn't it? It's just an integer.

There is no year 0. That kinda makes the whole negative years thing a problem, because they're offset and you have to add an exception and that means anything which runs off years has to have that exception built in .. it can get messy if you don't plan ahead of time to sort it out (no pun intended).

 

[Bearnest]

People can claim that BCE/CE makes the calendar totally secular, but the bottom line is that it still hinges on Jesus' alleged birth to change eras.

 

[Siegfriedfr]

So, will CK III be able to handle BC/BCE dates? Or negative years of any other calendar, for that matter?

Imo it doesnt matter what dating system is used. What matters is that the UI must show the current dating system for temporal reference.

 

[Stuckenschmidt]

You can make that demand

I am not making demands. I am just saying that your statement gets shred to a thousand pieces by basic logic.

 

[faiuwle]

You can either be secular or have a calendar system that evolves around the alleged birth date of Jesus Christ. Two things, pick one.

CE doesn't depend on Jesus's birthdate. It depends on what most people are using for their era.

 

[Niall101x]

CE doesn't depend on Jesus's birthdate. It depends on what most people are using for their era.

I have no idea what point you are trying to make.

"It depends on what most people are using for their era" What is that supposed to mean, 1453 AD is exactly the same year as 1453 CE.

 

[faiuwle]

It's the same because AD is what most people use. It really very simple. The Common Era is always going to be the same as some other era. That doesn't mean that the Common Era is based on the same thing as that era.

 

[guinea prince]

It occurs to me that the beef with CE originating from AD really doesn't have much to do with whether or not CK3 is capable of displaying negative years or uses BC (or an equivalent) or continues the CK2 approach

 

[Bearnest]

I don't know how Imperator tackled this issue, but I remember AGOT mod for CK2 began the count 8000 years before the events of the game (IIRC, Aegon's conquest). CK3 could do something similar and "mask" the year somehow to translate to a more approachable number that most people could understand.