The question of scope is a very important one that needs to be answered. My question is whether it will be balanced or not, as in things happening accordingly based on time. However, in game, i don't really see any possible way of it working out. If we are going to have sons and daughters who age, then shouldn't my units age as well? But I probably wouldn't be too happy when my elite paladins suddenly "die of old age". Now if the scope were long enough, it might not be an issue for my soldiers to die of old age (as long as I knew it were coming). It might provide some interesting "old and wise teacher" scenarios where old units can give bonuses to younger ones through training. Yet, then I'd probably be upset for having to wait so long for my children to come of age...
So I think this topic needs to be given up on, although it's hard to do... I'd sure like to see a balanced scale of time progression but unfortunately Winter is right, it will never be precise enough. So whatever they decide to do, we will just have to be happy with.