Quote Originally Posted by Intrepid Sidekick
The game unit movements and kill rates haven't sped up, at all, in any area of the game.

Perhaps this perception to the contrary is either as a result of playing modded versions of the RTW game? i.e. where speeds and kill rates have been significantly reduced or a mistaken recollection of the original game speeds?
I play an RTW mod where the movement speed is slowed by 10%. My impression of the BI demo was that at least heavy cavalry was moving about the same speed as in the mod which would be slightly slower than vanilla RTW.

Remember, LongJohn made the argument in MTW that movement speed determines the effective size of the battlefield. Slower movement making the battlefield effectively larger. He refused a request to increase the running speed of cavalry in MTW, which was set at about 15 mph, by even 10%, and he even argued that 15 mph was historically accurate. I can dig out the post if you want it.

Relatively fast movement means you have to separate units by a greater distances, and it therefore takes more time to scroll the camera which makes it more difficult to control all of your units. The Battle of Chalons devolves into total chaos very quickly if you try to make individual unit matchups as the AI is doing. You were able to play by making individual matchups in the Total War games prior to RTW.

The way I got around this fast pace, and the way virtually everyone in multiplayer is coping with this is to use what CeltiMordred calls "snowball" tactics. For instance, as the Huns in the Chalons battle, I put my infantry line in guard mode and put my cavalry into two groups way out on the flanks. Once the Romans charged my line, I swept in with the two groups of cav on each flank. I didn't target any specific enemy units or give any unit specific commands. The battle is effectively reduced to 3 things to control, and that's how you keep up with the speed at which things are happening. In multiplayer, it's even more simplified as players are mostly using only two "snowballs"; one to engage frontally and the other to flank. In singleplayer, you have an AI that's trying to make individual matchups, and doesn't recognize the threat from massed groups sweeping in from the flanks.

At least with mods which slow fighting and movement, you can get back to a gameplay that allows giving orders to the individual units at the height of the battle. The mod I use only slows movement by 10%, but when coupled with a slowdown in fighting speed it allows a player to issue more movement orders to individual units which makes maneuver of individual units more important and increases the tactical complexity of the game. The AI copes well with this because it's trying to do the same thing.