The battle speed isn't that bad when you have your lines setup properly but if there is even the SMALLEST break it is exploited immediately and your whole line buckles. To my utter humiliation I've now used the Pause button twice in one battle to redeploy troops which had begun chasing routing units half across the map - which just barely got back to the main fight to turn the tide in my favour. I think that there should be a "don't chase routers" kind of button. I guess the Gaurd mode would do that in a sense but if you ever clicked to attack a unit it would null that and the unit would begin to just attack the unit until it was gone.

Overall the battles are awesome with small amounts of troops but once you get over 800 or so on either side it gets rather sketch trying to keep control of your units - but it isn't as bad as I thought it would be as you fight a lot of small scale battles.

I've yet to autocalc any land battles or seiges, which I think is a testament to the battle engine and the work which was put into it; in MTW I would autocalc almost every seige or would starve them out and small bands of brigands I would always autocalc.