justanoldgamer: Now you have me hemming, arghing, hawing and hrming about it too. I played one settlers game way back then (do not remember which one) and did not like it. I was expecting Command & Conquer or Warcraft 2 and got a very slow paced game instead. That was a long time ago and I've changed a bit since then and also got a little slower myself.
Now going back to hemming, arghing, hawing and hrming while eating dinner (spaghetti).
I'm a big RTS game fan, going back to C&C and then Warcraft 2 and beyond since. Played zillions of hours of RTS with the most hours probably racked up in Starcraft although my favourite RTS of all time is "The Lord of the Rings The Battle For Middle Earth II The Rise of the Witch King" (holy crap that has to be the longest video game name ever made). :) Unlike probably the majority of RTS gamers out there (so it seems to me observationally anyway) that seem to strongly prefer setting the game speed to warp speed as fast as possible so you can't even think and you're controlling one of your units while the other 200 units are standing around doing nothing, I am definitely the type of RTS player that likes to have my units all doing things and not standing around and I play the games at a slower pace so that I actually have time to give them all orders to do stuff and to have time to think about strategy and what I'm actually doing. I'm not a "build guys, send them in battle to their kamakazi death, build and send more" player, but a "devise a strategy, keep my army alive the whole time, savour the strategy and tactics and take my time" kind of guy. :) So I usually start a game on "normal" speed, and if I find that too fast I back it off one notch at a time until comfortable. Once I've become familiar with a game enough I might speed it up a notch or so if I've slowed it down previously.
I hate playing RTS games on greater than "normal" speed though with "horserace" players. That's not strategy to me but rather has a feel of it like playing those mindless zombie attack games on a video game console where the enemies have no AI and you just spray bullets endlessly and run forward. I need real strategy and tactics and thought to keep me interested and a casual pace. I watched several documentaries on Sun Tzu "The Art of War" as well as reading much of the book, and I employ Sun Tzu techniques and strategies in my video game play both against AI players and human opponents and such tactics work awesome. Loads of fun to be had with strategy when I can kick back and relax with them. Drives some folks nuts though so I avoid playing with speed demons. :)
