So far I played several hours against hard AIs (who were also allies) in the previous and the new versions of the beta. I am still divided on the change.
Pros:
1) More time for decisions.
2) Dragon is finally useful.
Cons:
1) Less Micro/Macro. I was really engaged when I was defending several fronts against allied AIs... and it felt interesting and challenging.
2) There is now even less balance - Dragon vs Macro/Micro. It was one of the points of the game. You could not spend a lot of time as a dragon without hurting yourself in terms of macro. Now you can easily spend a lot of "free" time as a dragon, since you are waiting on units, especially at the start of the game. I suspect that a person with a lot of dragon skills can just destroy opponents at the start of RTS mode, but I have not played against people/ only AIs.
3) AIs flaws are more visible and I am not really surprised by its actions, since I see them a mile away.
I really can't say if I like the change or not.
I'm with him. The current pace is fun because as many people say they are new or adapting to it, but on the long run it seems to hurt the game. I know you're still deciding who to cater to, so it's just a choice.
If you go for the hardcore...well, DC will never be the game at Dreamhack so it's not really your audience. You can hook most of them with easy(ish) and let them stay for modded-in balance patches, worked for other games.
