I'm actually loving the naval battle. It's crazy amounts of fun and somehow much more satisfying than the Land battle.

This is actually good news as I have a dual core labtop and was worried it may only run on desktops. Huzzah :)
I'm not sure what it was really. At first my lappy was having horrible load times too, and I almost gave up, but once I tinkered a bit and lowered a few things it ran it can now run it even better than my desktop can. Using much higher settings!

Optimization is a problem that can be fixed, which is the good news. Just look at The Witcher, a game who's loads were longer than this demo's were. Those problems are a thing of the past and it's actually a largely better game because of it. Here's hoping the final product has had a bit more optimization, or if not let's hope CA introduces some fixes in the future.