I'm an idiot not to have thought of this earlier. This game can be sped up a LOT with one program. It is called CheatEngine 6.2 (google it, it's free). So...

1) Download CheatEngine, install it, run it. Get to this screen. Start the game too.
http://sadpanda.us/images/1569837-BZV9MCR.jpg

2) Click the icon on the top left corner. Find eador_mbw.exe. Choose it.
3) Put the tick next to "speedhack" (middle right of the screen).
4) Set the speed in the box below. 10x is more than enough for me, you may try more.
5) Click apply below.

Enjoy. If your processor is fairly good (it should be if you can run this game), you will skip most animations, reduce the time of some loading screens, cut opponent turn times. A battle takes WAY less time like this.

6) Love me. No homo please.

Thank you for the detailed info, does this work for other games,too? Could be useful.
6.I am loving you. (I just assume you are a girl)

btw...kain1980 also posted this in the other thread about animations, but without all the detail.

Dang. I thought I had this idea first.

Oh well, I guess great minds think alike >.>

Now about other speeding up other games... sometimes it works well, most of the times it doesn't. It speeds up SOME processes, meaning that, let's say, in Battlefield, you may move quicker but your reloads take usual time. Generally it isn't too useful since games are coded to squeeze as much processing power as possible.

Slowing down (putting 0.33 for example) works much better. I had great fun in Mass Effect 3 Armax Arena with a silenced pistol that is meant for headshots. Aiming has never been that easy.

If that's true, it would be a sign of some truly atrocious programming. I can't imagine why the game clock would affect this otherwise.

It's very true.

it's not as significant with opponent turn times (I think it only speeds up due to their battles going faster), but some transitions (let's say from library to general shard view) become instantaneous. Same with battle animations - you won't see that nice flight of pegasus, he will basically "appear" in the new spot, and you won't see opponents turn in battle almost at all - just a few damage numbers flying up quickly and it's your turn.

That it does speed up anything graphics or animation related is of course not surprising. But for loading times or opponent turns, there's little reason. Autocalc battles shouldn't have anything to do with the game clock. Maybe the game renders opponent strategic map movement, though, even if it's invisible to the player (there are strategic map movement animations in MotBW, right?).

This is really cool... thanks!

That said, I find 1.0.5 to be the first version that really solves the slowness problem for me, while providing some eye candy. In other words, I have to wait through the animations, but they are finally fast enough not to bug me.

So, 2 good fixes come at once depending on your desire for eye-candy vs. speed. :)