17. Real-Time World Clock & Pacing

17.1 The World Clock

Compression 12×: 1 real day = 12 game days; 1 real month (30 days) = 1 game year. A Kindle presidential term (4 game years) = 120 real days; a Party Congress cycle (5 game years) = 150 real days. These match the brief’s ‘1 real month = 1 game year’.
Confirmed in v0.4: 12× compression stays, and every shard is fully persistent – no seasonal resets; new shards may open later (Section 6.3).
The clock is global and never pauses, including during maintenance (server downtime is credited back to timers).
Game seasons (spring/summer/autumn/winter) rotate every 7.5 real days and affect farming, sea lanes and campaigning.
Holidays and festivals are scheduled in game time (e.g., Aurelle’s Kite Festival each game spring, Hoarvale’s Aurora Opening of the Moot, Veldwood’s Ring Moot midsummer, Fulmara’s Storm Regatta, Veldwood’s Dividend Day), plus the festivals of the six faiths (Section 14.1), which each nation endorses, tolerates or bans.

Layer	Cadence (real time)	Examples
Moment-to-moment	Seconds–minutes	Chat, market trades, minigames, battle-round decisions
Shift	2–8 hours	Job output, construction steps, troop marches
Daily	1 day (12 game days)	Rations, wages, Stability recalculation, news cycle
Weekly	7 days (≈ 1 game quarter)	Plan quarters, Production Drives, Favor decay, Assembly sessions
AI governance (v0.7)	2 hours · 1 day · 1 week	Routine AI decisions each game day; Cabinet session and up to 2 major decisions per real day; weekly leader addresses (Section 8.4)
Political	15–150 days	Veldwood Vote Days (15), Varkand Chair rotation (60), Fulmara Lodestar (90), elections (120), Congresses and plebiscites (150); Hoarvale governments can fall at any time
Lifetime	≈ 4–6 years	Citizen aging, dynasties, heirs, eras of rule
Ages	≈ 12 game years (12 months) [ASSUMPTION]	World events (Commons node shifts, new tech tier, climate events); Age rankings and commemorative titles. No wipe.

No action requires being online at a specific minute: votes run 72 hours; Congress sessions last 24–48 hours with asynchronous ballots; battle windows are defender-chosen.
Offline progress: shifts complete on timers; daily rewards are not streak-punished (missing a day costs nothing beyond the missed shift).
Daily soft cap on productive shifts (e.g., 3 per real day [ASSUMPTION]) so hardcore players can’t dominate economies purely by time.

Inactivity	Status	Effect
7 real days	Away	Removed from conscription/quotas; job slot held.
30 real days	Dormant	Not counted in quorums or turnout denominators; job released; home and items preserved; no upkeep charged; small home-currency savings covered by the Dormant Savings Shield (Section 12.8, v0.4).
180 real days	Archived	Citizen ‘sleeps’ in their home city; returns instantly on login with a ‘Welcome back’ briefing. Never deleted while the account exists.