I was holding off posting to this thread, since what I had to say had already been expressed by others.

Up until the other night, I would have said I am in favour of the time limit, especially if it helps sort out tricky situations like routing AI soldiers getting 'stuck' on a glitch in the map and to press escape to break the loop loses you the battle.

Also, I would have that I'd never run into time limit issues since starting with MTW - in STW it would crop up quite often, working against me as much as in my favour.

I've now had a large battle which I fully expected to win but half the clock went on just maneuvering around the field to a point where I could fire on them (they had no archers but did have superior numbers), not helped by my choosing the wrong hill at first. I think my use of time acceleration gave me a false sense of how much remained and I was so carried away with the action that the timer running out caught me completely by surprise.

Actually, mere seconds before that, half my forces were busy routing, the rest were damaged and exhausted. Thanks to holding back for so long, only my RK's were fresh enough for mashing the peasant reinforcements which were beginning to reach my end. I was considering ordering a controlled withdrawal, so perhaps the battle was lost anyway?

Removal of the time limit (I'm saying I'm now in favour of it) does require a certain amount of additional skill on the part of the player, in that you need to recognise that your forces are spent but the battle is not won and unlikely to be, even if you regroup and allow them to rest. If your faction leader is present, you need to ensure that he does not get himself captured, or killed and that he's withdrawn off the field properly, in such a way that he does not pick up 'good runner' vices, or similar.