The way I see it this basicly boils down to how we want to handle time in AC…
Most similar games accelerate time so that a year in the game become maby a couple of hours IRL.
For me, that approach causes a lot of immersion issues.
One solution would be to allow us to somehow “skip” uneventful parts of time.
Im not entirely sure how that would work, it could be as simple as only letting us play our tribes during certain periods of time with specific goals in mind.
For example: Summer is turning to fall. The tribe needs guidance to ensure that they have enough food stored for the fall and Winter ahead. They also need weapons as they will become more Reliant on hunting.
This could be our “goal” for that period. And when we feel we have completed it good enough (or when we run out of time) then we are not allowed to play that period anymore and instead are presented with a summary on how the tribe fared that fall. If we did good, then their chances increases, if we did bad then they decrease. The next period we play will be the switch from fall to Winter where we have to choose wether to dig in and prepare for the Cold harsh Winter months or gather enough supplies and migrate to a new location.
This would allow us to treat time normally, a Child might take 13 years to grow into someone useful to society (that sounded harsh :S ), but for us players that might be equal to 52 periods. How long these periods will take (IRL hours) could of course be debatable.
This could also have Another interesting effect:
Planning Buildings. Constructing a building takes time, and in most games this is done in mere seconds (shivers). Also very immersion-breaking. With this way of playing we could allow the Buildings to take a “normal” amount of time to be built. Especially complex Buildings might have several steps and might even take a year (ingame year) to be built. During our playable season-switches we could see the Buildings different stages of Construction.
There we go, wall of text has now concluded