Because of a debate with people who can't for some reason see how real time is unpredictable, I'm going to explain a little more here.
Shard average seconds per tick, is 3.
Severe issues like right now, have it at 10.5-11.
Game.time = ticks, this is a constant. You will always get a tick from Game.time
new date = fixed real time, unknown tick.
1000 ticks at 3x is 50 minutes.
1000 ticks at 10.5x is 2 hours 55 minutes.
Guy outside the novice zone has received threats from the guy inside the zone.
Guy who sent the threats from inside novice zone needs to prepare an army as well.
They both know that at exactly 8AM server time the novice zone will drop.
Player1, it ends at 1AM his time so he sets his army to start producing 40 minutes before 1AM his time using "new date" while he sleeps. He assumed that, since the server is always 3 seconds per tick, his calculated approach would work and he'd be ready by then.
Player2, its a weekend and 10AM for him when the novice zone goes down. He's awake and sees that tick time is 10.6x. So he starts producing his army 2 hours 40 before novice period ends because he was able to re-calculate the real ticks remaining before novice period ends.
Unfortunately, the guy who set his to use real time, lost the war. Because time dilation screwed up his army production and only 24% of his army got produced before he was hit.
But if tick time is used. Knowing Novice Zone will end at exactly tick 1,000,000.
Both players start producing their army at tick 999,000.
Regardless of any server speed ups or slow downs.
Both armies will produce in perfect synchronization.
Regardless of who's asleep and awake, regardless of how bad the tick lag is, both armies will be produced simultaneously and attack at the exact time the novice area goes down.
Real Time, just can't be used to predict what tick to prepare your army at. Creeps live 1500 ticks, not 25 minutes. Don't use real time for things that depend on tick time.