Quote Originally Posted by parcelt
actually, legioner, it wasn't that fast until Rome... previous MTW and Shogun titles had nice tactical battles. I never understand why some people keep saying they were too slow. They simply were not (and there was a SPEEDSLIDER!) But now I am repeating a signicant part of all the discussions on this and other forums ever since Rome came out so I'll just leave it.
I guess some clarifications:

STW is the first in the series. So, it is used as point of comparison.
STW battle is fast pace compared to MTW due to two factors:
- there is no pavise arbalesters, so missile duels ended quickly. Either one side successfully clear archers with cav raids, or both sides ran out of arrows/ammo, or one side won the duel, or one side decided that they need to rush. But when arbalester with pavise was introduced, the pavise gave +3 armor to the arbalesters. It is no longer possible to clear arbalesters with cav raid: I have seen and personnally used arbalesters to trap cavs. So it is no longer advantageous trying to clear out the arbalesters. So in battle, you have a long period of about 15 minutes to 30 minutes waiting for the slow loading pav.arb. to empty or get tired. So, MTW battles are longer, usually 30-45 minutes each battle, while STW battle lasts about 15-20 minutes each.
- The map of MTW is larger and the speed of infantry march is slower than STW, so it takes quite a long time to walk from one point to another.

RTW has faster pace than MTW (due to general demand to shorten the battle time). However, the speed was not calibrated so that sometimes you can have a situation where two armies are not marching, but the next second, they are already engaged. Thus there would be no time to react.

If we see a quicker pace of march than in MTW, with smooth movements, and reduction in pavise advantages (allowing cav to kill pavise and disengage when another cav come to the rescue) then it would be good.