It ranges from slower than CiV's marathon speed setting to "How in the name of Arceus are we supposed to react this quick" fast. However, most of the time you will be playing it a fair bit slower than AOE 3.
They are the speeds you usually play at but you are not limited to them.
Once you play GSGs for a certain amount of time, you realize that no decision is "small". Choosing to let the inflation rise by 1% without having appropriate advisors or national ideas in place so that you can maintain your army during war can cause your entire economy to spiral out of control, especially if you don't take steps to curb it after the war or the war lasts for very long and/or you gain a lot of provinces leading to high revolt risk due to factors like nationalism and war exhaustion meaning that you cannot disband extra units but instead have to split the army to stomp out rebellions and also have to keep a standing army incase someone else attacks. But the inflation has ensured that maintaining your army gets more and more expensive over time meaning that either you can disband your units and open yourself to aggression or you can let the inflation rise even more. Each decision you take leads to more decisions that need to be taken, each affecting your empire in various ways. You may think it is fine to let inflation rise by 1% so that you can take over Burgundy, but it has the risk of ruining your long term prospects for a short term gain.
Play Hearts of Iron 3 and you'll understand.
Are you trying to scare him away from GSGs even before he gets started? HOI III is probably one of the most complex GSG out there, and definitely isn't suited to a person who has no experience thinking through complex simulations and has never done any real micromanagement. EU III is probably the most beginner friendly one out there that doesn't try and mask the kind of domino effect your decisions can have.
Yup.
