I have the same opinion of the game speed when it comes to war. I guess it just bothers me that I'm supposed to have a war of the same magnitute as WWII in a few short turns which aren't even long enough for me to mobilize my military let alone conquer and then loose most of Europe.
Anyway, what I've done is pretty simple...
1) Decreased production costs of all military units by 50%. It isn't a big of a change as it sounds and since the upkeep is no different you can easily cripple your economy. The AI seems to handle it ok and it's been a lot of fun charging head-first into a garrison of 12+ assorted defenders. It's now possible to build up a propper army of Macemen, for example, before they are obsolete.
2) Increased the movement speeds of most military units. This is a more gradual change, early units such as warriors have no bonus while modern units all move twice as fast. It still takes years to walk between cities (don't these grunts have trucks yet? ) but it is pretty easy to mobilize your military. I'm not sure about the increased naval unit speeds yet, on large maps it's perfect but on standard and smaller maps they're a bit too quick.
3) Increased road & railroad speeds. This is a HUGE benefit for the defending army and in the time it takes the enemy to move their units withing striking range of your city you can move in reinforcements from several cities. It also offsets the problem of marauding mounted & armored units since. At the same time it makes destroying road & railroad improvments a very sound tactical descision, you can litterally cut the enemies army in half by destroying their infrastructure.
4) Increased technology research costs. Again, this is a gradual change starting with a small 10% increase in the Renassance Era, 25% in the Industrial Era, 50% in the Modern Era and 100% for Future Techs. This has helped increase the amount of time before units become obsolete later in the game. Combined with the production cost & movement change I've been enjoying some unusually large wars with units I never had the chance to really use before.
5) And finally, some minor changes to the game speeds. Right now I'm testing it with twice as many turns, each of them lasting half as long (1 year seems to be the minimum without more modding) for Epic games. Combined with the rest of the changes I have more time to fight and I can effectively move units up to twice as far in as little as half the time.
None of the non-military (e.g. worker) units have increased movement rates so I've actually had some early wars with opponents when we weren't building cities right next to each other. It's a fun feeling to march a hoard of Axemen & Archers over the hills and through the woods to Ghengis' house
It still needs some work and tweaking but as a basic warmonger mod it has a lot of fun potential to it. Multiplayer testing has been a lot of fun too, the AI uses the units to some degree but no computerized opponent will ever hit you with the tenacity of another human. So far in games against the AI the earliest I have hit Future tech has been 1946 after conquering three of six continents on a standard sized custom continents map, without these changes I could easily hit Future Tech by the 1400's on the same maps. It's been most fun with the AI set to aggressive and raging barbarians enabled, large & huge maps can be problematic because of the sheer volume of units crawling over the globe.
This isn't an add for my unreleased & unannounced mod, just some examples of what can be easily changed and what effects you can expect from it. I had first tried something as simple as decreasing the build costs & increasing the movement rates but it wasn't enough...
j/k I didn't know that someone should clarify.
