Imperial Calendar

[Antonine]

As some people may have noticed, I'm currently in the middle of compiling a complete history of the Far East. In addition to events since the island was launched, I've included the RP pre-history of the island in order to add a bit more depth.

Since Arcaea now dominates the island with the Arcaean Empire, and since the original Arcaean Empire at the launch of FEI has an RP date of creation 42 years before the island launched then I've created a calendar based on days, seasons and the "Imperial Years" since the foundation of the first Arcaean Empire.

Since seasons last 22 days and winter started 12 days ago, this makes today the 12th Day of Winter, 77 I.Y. with I.Y. standing for Imperial Year. I've counted the years since FEI started basically by using the known dates of seasons and extrapolating forward and backwards assuming a year starts with spring and ends at the beginning of the following spring.

Any thoughts?

[Haerthorne]

I really like this idea. Make a calender and then everyone should be able to get on board by checking their friendly, simple calender year. How well do the passing of seasons stack up against the passage of time for nobles (not including the constant acceleration due to wounds)?

Edit: The "unknown personal enmity" between Jenred and Keffer was largely because (I believe, asking Matt now to double check) Keffer tortured and deported a number of Arcaean nobles, including Jenred who was briefly an infiltrator. I think Aerywyn was an infiltrator too for a bit when I was checking out the game for the first time and got my fingers caught in an Ethialan tax pot before the war, so I was deported as well. Basically the higher ranks of Arcaea hated Keffer for being mean to them as Judge as well as being insulting and other things.

[Bedwyr]

Poke me to have some discussions about this!  If you have any particular questions, I'd be happy to answer them, and I'd like to look over the whole thing before you put it out there (I have a lot of history kicking around).

I always wanted an Imperial Calendar so that everyone would finally freaking use some standard range.  I would suggest, though, that dividing it into epochs would be more colourful.  "In the Third Year of the Old Empire (3 OE).." or "Five years after the rise of the New Empire (5 NE)..." or (gods willing) "In the Second Year after Unification (2 AU)..." with your Imperial Years being the standardized dating would be cool.

You should be able to set up some Excel formulas to translate RL dates into your calendar easily enough.  I remember actually doing that at one point, but I can't find it for the life of me.

Also, regarding the Jenred/Keffer enmity, I gave Jake the full story, but can go over it again with you if you like.

[De-Legro]

Poke me to have some discussions about this!  If you have any particular questions, I'd be happy to answer them, and I'd like to look over the whole thing before you put it out there (I have a lot of history kicking around).

I always wanted an Imperial Calendar so that everyone would finally freaking use some standard range.  I would suggest, though, that dividing it into epochs would be more colourful.  "In the Third Year of the Old Empire (3 OE).." or "Five years after the rise of the New Empire (5 NE)..." or (gods willing) "In the Second Year after Unification (2 AU)..." with your Imperial Years being the standardized dating would be cool.

You should be able to set up some Excel formulas to translate RL dates into your calendar easily enough.  I remember actually doing that at one point, but I can't find it for the life of me.

Also, regarding the Jenred/Keffer enmity, I gave Jake the full story, but can go over it again with you if you like.

It is also possible to set up some wiki templates to convert dates to whatever calender setup you want. I remember doing this either for FEI or Dwilight at some stage in the past and would be happy to set up a new system.

[Indirik]

Non-standard dates on the wiki will screw up the semantic tagging. There are lots of features to the semantic tags that make some pretty cool timelines and tricks available, but they only work with rl style dates.

This kind of stuff is neat for rp, but pretty impractical for regular usage. That's partly why they're is no official calendar for the game. It's mostly good good histories but not daily usage.

[De-Legro]

Non-standard dates on the wiki will screw up the semantic tagging. There are lots of features to the semantic tags that make some pretty cool timelines and tricks available, but they only work with rl style dates.

This kind of stuff is neat for rp, but pretty impractical for regular usage. That's partly why they're is no official calendar for the game. It's mostly good good histories but not daily usage.

Using a template you can store the real life dates for the semantic features while displaying the user defined calender on wiki pages if desired. They are a straight conversion for display only, you still enter the standard dates into the wiki template when configuring it.

[Indirik]

Sounds like a great idea.

Having said that, though, I'm not really a fan of the custom calendars, really. They create a higher barrier to entry for new players. Besides, I can never really keep them straight. "What years is it? 7 IY? How does that compare to this 3 AU date?  Does that make it 3 years ago, or 4? If I know that it happened on July 6th, 2011, then was that before or after 3 OE?" God help us if you actually use 3 or 4 different schemes based on different landmark dates...

[Antonine]

I'm not really sure how this would affect the semantic elements of the wiki given that hardly anyone seems to include actual dates in articles on the wiki. The closest thing to it are the continent timelines which only tend to update if there's someone active and willing to manually update it with happenings.

For the history I'm writing I'm actually dividing FEI history into three ages and giving dates in years after the start of the respective age in order to make it an "impartial" history. I'm also outlining the Imperial Calendar in it though and I'm in favour of it because it's simply in game years since the start of FEI + 42 years - which shouldn't be too much of a barrier to any new players since it's pretty straightforward.

I've created an excel document which has calculated the years and seasons (could a dev please confirm a season is 22 days long?) up until 2030, which should probably be long enough for practical purposes :p

It has some anomalies in it due to seasons changing length at some point but it's definitely accurate from now onwards so if there's anyone who knows and is willing to come up with some sort of date conversion system to stick on a wiki page (I have no idea how to do it) then that would be great please :)

[Antonine]

Incidentally, winter started on the 8th of July 2014 and spring (and the new IG year) is due to start on the 30th which hopefully gives a reliable starting date for anyone making a calendar/converter.

[Qyasogk]

Seriously Antonine, amazing work. I spent some time trawling through a bunch of the various Far East realm wikis in order to peace together what the history "looks" like, but you've gotten a great start on a comprehensive history of the continent.

I even like the idea that there are "lost" periods due to no one making a record of events. This reality encourages those realms to keep records if they want to have any lasting "legacy".

[Indirik]

I'm not really sure how this would affect the semantic elements of the wiki given that hardly anyone seems to include actual dates in articles on the wiki. The closest thing to it are the continent timelines which only tend to update if there's someone active and willing to manually update it with happenings.

There are interesting things that *could* be done. It's just that nobody uses it. So nobody sees them, so nobody uses them, etc....

For example: The dynamic timeline feature that we sue for unique items:
http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Category:Armour_(unique)

Imagine using that as the timeline for your Empire. It can only work using RL dates.

There are various other ways dynamic lists can be used to create combined lists and timelines. You could tag pages for Arcaea, someone else can tag pages for Kindara, and someone else for Cathay. You can then run a semantic query to bring all those items together on a combined list in a common format, with various features like the dynamic timeline.

[Antonine]

Well I can see how the semantic features could be really useful in that respect but I have no idea how to use them and I haven't found any guides on how to use them. And since most players struggle even to edit a regular page then I have my doubts about how widely used they'll ever be I'm afraid.

[bofeng]

I am sure some players would like to play the role of historians. For example, Sir TNaismith in Cathay would be more than happy to write down these records. He is a live history book for us.

In ancient China, each emperor has his own era name, and the year counting are based on the first year of each era. For example, the first such era name was designed in 140 BC as "Jianyuan" by the then emperor of Han Dynasty. So 140 BC was the first year of Jianyuan. And we just count the following years from that year. Historians have to reconcile the year counting with AD system.

[Vita`]

I believe seasons are 21 days, not 22. Also, player aging (sans wounding additions) is either an ic year for 3 ooc months or 4 ooc months. I *think* its 3 ooc months, but if not, its the other. Some simple math with the seasons should figure that out. I don't think it was intentional considering the years between character aging and seasons being implemented, but they do line up. Check out Dwilight timeline for some good evidence of this.

[bofeng]

I just requested this feature:

http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,6035.msg133357.html#msg133357