Medieval had a nice slider so that you can choose your own pace. Rome makes starcraft seem like chess, its too fast to the point of being frustrating. The unplayable speed simply rewards the tactic of throwing masses of troops at your opponnent, as there isn't really time to do anything else before the battle is over. I tried flanking the enemy, but was disgusted to find out that infantry move so fast as to negate the speed advantage of horses. This is in custom battles, too, not in the fixed trebia battle. Infantry move at about the top speed a human can run, with unlimited endurance, while wearing metal armour. Battles are also over almost before they start, and I had to use extensive use of the pause button, which I never needed to use in MTW.

The pace of battle is unacceptable in the demo. It lacks the grandeur of deliberate troop movement of MTW and takes away the feeling of controlling a mighty army. On trebia, I felt as though I was trying to quickly fend off a swarm of zerglings, not romans.

I'm not too worried though, because I know that if this problem isn't fixed, someone will definately mod it, seeing as how there is so much reaction.