Yes, buying this game was a HUGE mistake. The difficulty is PUNISHING, even set at the lowest level. No morey buying games "on sale" without a very careful Google search for me! I went looking for help, and back in 2003, many people on the Eidos forum were saying the same things I am saying now: too hard, too fast, too frustrating. Great game, but fatally, insanely flawed. Eidos knew it sucked, and did nothing but say, "Sorry, no cheat codes. The game just sucks."

Well there may not be cheat codes but there are trainers for the game.
[url=]http://www.cheathappens.com/cheat_index.asp?titleid=7127[/url]
As with all 3rd party cheat programs use at your own risk. I have no idea if they hid anything nasty in trainers like these so always scan before using them.
Though if its the entire game thats too fast paced and hard they might not help either.

Thanks. I'm just so desperate for something to finally be good, that I impulsively buy
this stuff. Unless there's a mod so the player can govern the game speed, I'll just delete this off my hard drive. I wish I could give it away to someone who would like it. Such a waste, as otherwise, I really like the game. If I wanted frantic, I'd go play an FPS.

You should maybe try the dawn of war(first games) or company of heroes if you want an rts to play. They are kinda fast paced but in single player they allow pausing at any point in the game and then you can issue orders amongst all your troops and use special abilitys. Then when you unpause they execute what you told them to do. Stops it from getting overwhelming with that ability.

I've been going through the game this last week. I had read this post before that, so when I played the tutorial and the first two missions on normal and beat them I went "what was this guy talking about? Speed seems fine to me."
I'm trying to defend the nervii fort from the hordes of the helvetii now.
DAMN!
I tried blocking the bridge, but units don't really block each other that well and there's a lot of things happening at the same time. The speed thing you speak of is not so much building speed or even moving speed but how fast unit die to their counters. Equites and noblemen die almost immediately to spearmen and you can't even tell when a specific troop is being attacked, since there are no minimap pings or voice warnings telling you your army is being attacked (the fact that almost every unit has the same voice doesn't help either) so when you scroll your screen over you just see your dead men sprawled all over the place and the enemy advancing.
I'm not giving up so quickly though. Blocking the bridge has failed me but now I'm going to try different tactics and see if any of them work. The beauty of strategy games is that when on the battlefield, you're not tied to a specific approach and can try several different ones.
Things that are helping me in this regard:
1) Grouping units and hotkeying them makes their icon on the top bar flash red when they're being attacked. Still, it's confusing because it also flashes when they're attacking someone, even if they're not being attacked back. The music also changes to a more action oriented tune, but that only tells you combat has started, not where it's happening.
2) Don't send units to fight their counters or the fight will end mighty fast for you. I rush my equites to kill archers and avoid spearmen, I turtle my legionnaires when arrows are flying by and open them up when engaging infantry. I try to keep physicians and generals around so my troops last longer and the speed of the game doesn't work against me.
Things that are really giving me trouble:
1) Controlling units is a hassle. They all seem to pop out on aggressive stance and march to their deaths if you're not looking.
2) Units come out very slowly. If you lose your army in a blunder, getting it back quickly is very hard. I pretty much load my last saved game when this happens.
3) Units can't retreat from a fight once engaged. They only obey orders once the fight is over and they've come out victorious or died trying.
I'll try to survive inside the fort this time around (it's a survive for 20 minutes type of mission anyway) and see how I fare.