CA clarifies turns

[Dead Moroz]

The controls of the older TW games were fairly hard to learn, but when you learned it they were superb. That changed in RTW. Now they are comparably easy to learn, but nowhere near as good (the turner is a major step down from the very effective and fast right-click hold system of previous titles).
The battlespeed was enhanced significantly, fatigue was basically removed and so were terrain features. That indicates that CA was afraid that someone might not understand these things and get annoyed when they got beaten all the time because the AI took advantage of it.

Well, those suspicions are kinda true. Strange unusual controls in STW was one of the reasons I din't played this game after trying its demo (the other reason was poor graphics). When MTW demo came out I made more effort to understand its controls and logic (don't already remember why). But when I got it I just forgot about almost all other games.

(how hard is it to press , and . to turn?).

Harder than to just turn. That's why I didn't like new RTW camera and always used old one. Though in the rest I'm satisfied enough with RTW controls (especially since 1.2) except for bugs and some minor weaknesses.

The faster battlespeed in itself makes the game harder (and again, in a bad way, IMO).

(Not in opposition to your words.) Fast battlespeed is just pure fantasy. People never used to kill each other as fast as in RTW before invention of machine gun.