Hey everybody,

Not only are we a ways into what was the Classical Age in a lesser universe, but in terms of exploration and technology, I foresee the setup for an increasingly exciting episode in Dawn's history. Iron-working is finally beginning to become widespread (with a few of the more inventive metalworking civilizations coming up with even better iron-working methods), horses are beginning to diffuse along Dawn's south, and the world's only getting bigger. (Yes, we have to fill in some empty space as well, but we're working on this and are currently talking to three prospective players.)

Given all of this, a couple of us mods think it might be appropriate to slow the progression of time once again. While fifty years per week has been fairly good for balancing progression of civilizations and granting reasonable lengths of time to play out conflicts, I think diplomacy, warfare, lore, and new contacts are going to be important enough to this era that it would be appropriate to slow the passage of time to 25 years per week instead, shifting the focus of gameplay somewhat from long-term historical progression to the nitty-gritty of politics, warfare, and lots of other fun stuff.

That said, we want to hear players' opinions on this as well. After all, we don't want to focus excessively on a given era if not too many players are interested in it. With this in mind, we're going to get some public input before we change the calendar again. Please leave your input in the comments on this thread; I see no need to run a closed ballot, as I'd rather see players share their opinions and discuss with each other. Options:

• If few or no players object, we will go ahead and slow the progression of time to 25 years per week. As far as techs go, we would still stick with a maximum of ten per century, with techs posts being spread out pretty much however players prefer. That said, we would be less tolerant of late tech posts as y'all will have up to a month to write them.
  
• If y'all mostly like our current fifty-year progression and don't feel like focusing on this era, we'll carry on as we have been.
  
• I can't really see any good arguments for alternatives, but I'm open to hearing some. I don't anticipate any plans to rush through this era, and we still want to keep big-picture progression integrated into the overall experience to some degree.
  

Please comment on this thread soon! Ideally, we would like to come to a decision before Tuesday at midnight. The official date-change is normally on Mondays at midnight; we'll consider it to be the new week then, but we won't change the date until we've made a decision here.