I had a chance to play against people for once (well, not for long because all the matches desynched), and adding enemy Dragons into the mix definitely changes things up a lot. The slower pace - even with the 110 build times for Battle Forge units allows for the Dragon to be deployed too early, letting the Dragon user steamroll a player before they have the chance to do much at all. The Dragon can disrupt the critical early-game economy quite dramatically.
The change of getting 4 Recruits per RC "payday", and the initial starting amount of 10 recruits in Skirmish mode is an unfortunate combination, because it means that a player has to wait for 2 complete "paydays" before they can do anything at all. A Battle Forge costs 15, and after 1 (which seems to take a while), they only have 14, so they have to wait another really long seeming time just to get started.
I'm sure people will object, but the Dragon spawn cooldown doesn't seem slow enough in the Skirmish mode. It's better in the Campaign because you already start with units.
Also in Skirmish, you should start with 11 Recruits, not 10, to cut back on the needlessly long initial waiting around period.
