Some explanation on why speed matters to MPers.

[Doug-Thompson]

I'm single-player only, but am surprised at how little discussion there has been on this thread about time: Not rate or speed, but the actual amount of time needed to finish a battle.

My impression of the TW game-playing community is that they are a far more patient group of people than your average online player.

"Age of Kings," for instance, was very popular. My impression is that going from a Dark Age village to finishing the final battle in AoK took less time than a single battle in MTW.

A mad rush where everything is decided in a single collision between "perfect" army combos is, possibly, just fine with the vast majority of on-line game players.

It's not fine with me. Hopefully, there will be some options and adjustments to be made.

However, as long as the relative speeds of units are in line, I'm not overly worried about how quickly units cover ground. As long as my infantry is as fast as the other guy's, for instance, I might not like the "Speedy Gonzales" effect but can live with it.

[Puzz3D]

I'm single-player only, but am surprised at how little discussion there has been on this thread about time: Not rate or speed, but the actual amount of time needed to finish a battle.

That's why it hardly makes sense to me to go into overdrive speedwise during the melee. That phase represents a small fraction of the overall time of a battle even in online play. It's almost as though the running speed was increased just so routed units would leave the map faster. However, we already have a solution for that online. Players simply rout all their units when they no longer have a chance of winning. That ends the battle immediately before the units even leave the map.