Question: How long is a medium sized (details inside) battle taking you guys to finish?

[Action]

I've been playing a Long Campaign and I'm enjoying it, but I seem to be taking a long time to finish each battle. I'm curious to see if I'm somehow playing slowly or if it's normal for it to take this long.

How long would it take you to play this battle?

Meeting engagement, 1939, Germany vs Poland.

Two companies of regular infantry each with attached medium machine guns (x2), 80 mm mortars (x3), 3.7 mm anti tank guns (x3), anti tank rifles (x2), 150 mm infantry guns (x2), light flak (x2), armored cars (x2) and halftracks (x4).

One company of tanks, 8x Pz II, 6x Pz IV, x3 Pz III.

One security company with attached medium machine guns (x3), 75mm infantry guns (x2) and half tracks (x4)and a couple platoons of AUX motorcycle troops

vs randomly generated, infantry heavy Polish force with 125% of my points? (I can't currently see my point value, but I'm guessing it was about 2500-3000.)

It's looking like it will take about 8 hours to finish.

I've turned down the message settings and animations quite a bit, so the delay between shots isn't very high anymore, although it still takes at least 20 seconds to fire off all the shots from a unit with a lot of machine guns. Maybe 30 seconds if I'm Z firing a lot.

Taking the objectives and smashing the Polish tank force was relatively quick, but mopping up all those large Polish squads requires advancing carefully, one square at a time, after a lot of Z-fire and bombardments. I presume that I should be clearing them out, rather than sitting and holding the objective?

Is it customary to play smaller forces in long campaigns? Perhaps I have too many support units? Figuring out what support team to reposition with the half tracks takes a lot of time.

The other thing that takes a lot of time is making sure nobody got missed. I go through once from top to bottom, coordinating each area of advance, then cycle through again with the "Next" key to make sure no units were missed.

Any guidance you can provide would be appreciated, I think I'm probably doing something wrong.

[Kartoffel]

In my opinion you are spending far to long on your game unless of course you are still learning the ropes. To give you a little perspective it usually takes me around 6 hours or so of dedicated gaming to finish what I consider a medium sized engagement. I consider this to be a regimental sized battle against the a.i. with three tank companies, six infantry companies and
divisional artillery support and assorted AA, ATG and recon elements. A large battle hits the point/formation ceiling.

To cut down on the time it takes you can do three things. 1) Cut message delay to zero. 2) set the graphics delay in out of game menu to as small of an integer as you can while still being to make out where the op fires are emanating from. To give you an example: in my 1932 USMC generated campaign against the Spanish (to represent a alternate history invasion of Cuba) fires occur so quickly that a marine section's BAR is done before the 1903 Springfield sound ceases. It goes without saying that the fire animation is long completed before the sound ceases, you could say I have it almost set to the speed of a bullet . Another example is when I am playing the British and I have cause to utilize a Vickers HMG. In this instance I am already firing from a another unit while still hearing fire from the immediately previous Vickers. I have probably saved literally days of my time by cutting these unnecessary, anthropogenic-programming-originated delays to the bone. I cut them so far in the interests of time saving that sometimes its hard for me to pin point a fire location (playing without the hideous hex-grid doesn't help ). To this I say "Good", I have far more information than a bird colonel would have and so this "negative" effect only adds to the realism. 3) Only use z fire when it will make a difference, I sometimes even skip line-of-sight fire if it is unlikely to make a difference.

TLDR: play more SPWW2 in the same amount of time by somewhat sacrificing the graphical "brilliance" of those horridly primitive battlefield animations and also sacrifice some situational awareness of enemy fire locations (which a real commander wouldn't have to the extent we do anyway).

Hope this helps

[Kartoffel]

P.S. My comments pertaining to my personal estimation of the qualitative status of the animations were not meant to be insulting to the devs, far from it while I consider the animations horrible (and they were state-of-the art when first utilized) I also consider the tank, airplane and vehicle models to be not only accurate but also works of art.

[Imp]

Kartoffel gives good advice set the graphics delay & unit move delay on the splash screen under the misc tab so you are happy with them. Also adjust scroll speed if you like. You can also turn animations off if so wish I tthink from the prefs screen.
I normaly play with fast arty on so when its the AIs turn I watch its arty fall as the replay doesnt show it then do something else & watch the replay so no waiting while the AI thinks.
These will save you time the rest is down to your playing style.