Tried out a new game with setting:

Pace: Slow

Difficulty: Nation

Competitors: 10

Map: Pangean single Continent

Version: Latest Beta where AI should be more aggressive in expansion

Why?: In normal settings tech is very slow compared to stars and era progress and there is no time for units and buildings to shine before they are replaced or are outdated in theory

Expectations:

- Lots of time to build buildings and units matching the current era

- Lots of changes in diplomatic stance, wars within a single Era to make them feel more substantial (let the era breath)

Findings at Turn: 86

- Era progression is still too fast and tech too slow: we are in "Classical Era" already

- Ancient Era had no noteworthy events: no wars, alliances or notable grievances. Partially due to distance and lack of units conducting actions on the map

- Each culture only has 1-2 cities - borders barely meet: AI expansion is too slow but also that of the player

- Not a single ship has been built by any of the faction at this point: naval dimension is completely untapped in the mid of Classical Era

- After so many turns of lack of strategic level events the game feels to boring to continue

Conclusion: The game is slower in general across all aspects and thus less eventful = boring

Recommendation: During Pace balancing recommend to only alter some parameters of the game while leaving other as on Normal setting:

- Double amount of stars each Era requires before progressing

- Slightly slower tech progression (nut much as Tech is being outpaced by Era)

- Building and unit construction time remain as is so that cities are built out faster and more units are produced quicker (relatively)

- City creation and expansion using the same fame values as on Normal (they might already do that but better make sure)

The goal would be to have the player experience where instead of wait time there is the same amount of action as in a normal game but screeched out on a much longer time scale so that each Era sees its fair share of diplomatic events, wars and shifting borders

Target milestones for balancing Slow Pace:

- Alliances and/or wars need to form by the mid segment of Ancient Era

- Ships need to hit the waves by the end of Ancient Era

- All regions within populated continents need to be claimed by at least Outposts by the end of Ancient Era

- AVG strong cultures should have at min 3 cities by end of Ancient Era

Target milestones for balancing Endless Pace:

- All of the milestones of Slow Pace but bump up the 3 cities requirement to 4

If the team doesnt have the capacity/will to balance pacing I recommend having the an Advanced Pacing option that lets the player adjust the pacing of each component separately:

- Stars per era before Era progression triggers

- Cost of Research

- Cost of buildings, units, cities and outpost establishment/merge

For those that wish to play a lot in a every Era creating tons of cities and having large wars with many units right in Ancient Era we could set the first two options to marathon speed (every research takes a long long time and stars almost newer trigger new eras) and leave the Cost of units, buildings and influence actions on normal level so cultures can expand, build up rapidly and have many conflicts without downtime

It sounds like a slightly different game you'd like, but also a fun one.  I do find that at slowest speeds (Slow, Marathon), the empire moves slowly while the units and warfare move at normal speed.  However, you're right that the empire produces units more slowly.  I'm willing to bet there are mods out there that allow units to be made quickly (and without costing population?) at slow speeds while the rest of the game is properly Marathon, I just don't know what those mods may be.