Do I need to enable the day/night cycle to unlock the 1001 Nights trophy/achievement?

There is a trophy described as follows:

1001 Nights

Experience 1001 nights in the game

My question is, does the day/night cycle need to be enabled to achieve this?

I know it may seem obvious to assume it does, but it could also quite easily be possible that there is always a constant counter in the background that tracks the day/night cycle, and thus could still count towards the trophy, even it the actual visual event does not occur.

From what I can tell, unlocking this could typically take between 70 and 150 in-game hours on a single map. So it's not something I can easily test for myself to find out the answer. My preference is to play with it disabled, which is why I want to know if I need to switch it back on to unlock the trophy.

Note, that 1001 nights does not mean 1001 days passed on the in game calendar. This is evident from both my experience in game play, and research on the internet.

According to one Guide on TrueAchievements, you need to have the cycle on:

Make sure the day/night cycle is on in the options menu.

This was for the Xbox One edition of the game, but I'm sure it's the same for every platform. Another thread states that it's the visual day to night effect that needs to occur 1001 times. I assume if you turn off the cycle, you won't see the effect, thus making the achievement unobtainable.

From searching for an answer, it appears the easiest way to get this achievement is to have an empty map with the day and night cycle on, and turn the speed up to max, allowing time to go by as fast as possible. It still will take some time, but perhaps this is something you may want to do "AFK" when you have to go do something else (work, school, etc.).