This question is asked in the support question under the title "This may be dumb but..." where the op asks about slowing down the text speed in combat. I've tried changing the delay and that doesn't seem to do any good. There was a solution to this on that thread, but the link takes you to a non existent page. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Also when I talk to the bartender when you ask about rumors, the message is a bleep so fast you can't read it, I just started playing so that's all I've noticed so far.

The best I've found (I haven't looked very much at all, though) is to reduce the cpu cycles in DosBox from 2000 to about 463. Just press alt+F11 a number of times.

Ok i tried pressing alt + F11 both in full screen mode and with the game windowed after alt-tabbing, and i noticed in the small windowed it says cpu cycles 2000 but nothing changes when i press F11. Am I missing something?

This is a known "feature" of MM1. It expects the DOS to take a certain length of time and uses that as part of its delay. Of course, computers are faster and more efficient, so it no longer takes that long, and even altering the delay doesn't help very much.
A fan made fix can be downloaded from here: http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?p=183149#183149

This. It's awesome. It completely fixes the "fast text" problem without you needing to mess with DOSBox cycles, which also slow down the rest of the game (movement, etc.). There are only a few, rare instances of fast text that this doesn't fix; an example is if an enemy "passes" in combat, it goes by really fast.

Also, getting a latest version of DOSBox will improve the text speeds. If I recall correctly, the version of DOSBox that comes with the GOG installer for the MM pack is not actually the current version (unless it has been updated since I last installed it). You can get the latest version of DOSBox from the DOSBox website.

The GOG installer might freak out if you have a newer version of DOSBox that it doesn't recognize, though. The best way to do it is to install the game and DOSBox from the GOG Installer, and then install the new version of DOSBox over the old verison.

Sweet! Much better than my half-way solution! Thanks a bunch :)

I don't get why alt+F11 didn't work for you, though Jackgouber. It can be pretty useful to adjust the cpu cycles in other games too, I think. Although I haven't needed to in other games from GOG.

The cycles can also be adjusted in the .conf file for the game, which is located in the install directory. This doesn't let you change cycles "on the fly" the way the shortcut keys do though. You have to quit the game, change cycles in the .conf file, then relaunch the game, which could get pretty annoying.

But with the fanmade fix you shouldn't need to adjust cycles anymore.

I figured out why alt + F11 didn't work, it's actually ctrl +F11 fyi thanks for all the posts.

Yeah, but in the case of Might and Magic's text I'd advise against it, because by the time you get the text to a decent speed it makes the game unbearably slow in all other regards, especially in comparison to the patch.

Doh, you're right. Sorry!

It's a moot point now, but I actually didn't have trouble with the rest of the game becoming noticeably slower at all. It was bothersome, but it worked no problem for me.

That patch was great for dosbox 0.73 (or was it 0.72?)

Since 0.74, it's no longer necessary.

Do you know if the GOG installer for the MM pack now comes with v0.74 of DOSBox? Or do players still need to upgrade DOSBOx manually?

I think it comes with 0.72. You'll most likely have to download the latest dosbox from the official site and configure it manually. That means re-writing ALL the config files to make them 0.74 compatible - which is a pain when you have as many dos game as I do.

I never bothered changing my old config files. DOSBox 0.74 worked fine for me.

Same here, I just had to point the MM game shorcuts to my new DOSBox and it was fine. But then again I had already installed the text-slowdown patch, because I started the game before v0.74 was released.