The Pros and Cons of 1.0 Speed by Celestial Dawn

Heaven’s Reference Pages

In general, 1.0 speed favours the better player. The faster the speed, the easier it is to narrow the skill gap between players.
The reason for this is that good players make full use of the extra time whereas new players often sit around watching their villagers gather berries and thus do not understand why it is necessary to sit around and wait.
For them, the game only ‘starts’ once they hit Tool or Bronze (and in many cases Iron) and they don’t do much in the meantime except sit around and watch their SimCity, hence their preference for faster speed settings.
Good players, on the other hand, subscribe to the maxim – “God is in the details.” They understand that games are won or lost in Stone, that starting positions, effective scouting, finding good places to wall and locating the enemy is important. For them, the First Four Minutes are the most important in the game. It is in this time that you need to squeeze out the maximum amount of production and scouting before you finally decide on where to plop down that important first wood pit.
For players like these who understand the importance of making use of the extra time, 1.0 speed is the natural preference. (For those of you who are wondering how speeds come about, hitting F11 will show you the clock and the speed setting, whether it’s 1.0, 1.5, 2.0).
The advantages of 1.0 speed for the non-newbie player also extend beyond the first four minutes. After the initial frenzy of economic activity, the extra time is now used to find secondary and tertiary sources of food, chokepoints in which to wall, a good place to dock, shallows to cross and control. All this is done while avoiding lions (or at least surviving lion fights where possible).
This again is the other distinction between a skilful player and a weaker one – the skilful player is a masterful explorer, and makes maximum use of his extra time on his way to Tool.
In Tool, the extra time is used to Wall – to make a snap decision on where to place the initial military building(s), moving villagers from food to wood and/or gold and stone – these little things improve your Bronze times, and often – strengthen your economy.
In sharp contrast – the new player who insists on 2.0 speed does not understand how to fine-tune and micromanage his economy even at 1.0 speed, and will be frustrated by having so much extra time.
Contrary to one other person in this thread said, it is not more difficult to play at 1.0 because you need more patience – in fact, the opposite is true – you can never run out of things to do. Whatever extra time I have is spent examining Achievements, and even that examination is limited to a hasty 3-4 seconds.
With 2.0, the efficiencies gained from fine-tuning your economy and effective exploration are lost.
I have a maxim of my own that pretty much sums up micromanagement and making full use of the extra time:
“If you are sitting around waiting for something to happen, or have nothing to do, you are doing something wrong.”
Good players always can do something with that extra time, and if there is nothing to do – they make something happen. In essence, this is why the better players prefer a game at a slower setting to a faster one. 1.0 allows players to seize and dictate the initiative while keeping their economy at full hum.
The other reason for not playing 1.5 and 2.0 is that it limits the tactics and strategies that can be employed. It does not allow you to try fancier tactics like outflanking, diversions, raids and surprise attacks.
You will find that even in DM, top-flight DMers (and I’m not talking about the big group that call themselves ‘experts’) prefer 1.0 speed simply because they can better manage a combined-arms army backed up with Towers. No single-minded 1 unit Choson Legion army for them – which is probably the easiest way to play DM if it is at 2.0 speed.