There are things you can do to be better at speed freestyle games. First of all, use firefox and install clickable maps greasemonkey script (
viewtopic.php?f=526&t=116987). Second, freestyle has gameplay strategy unique to itself that you need to learn. An example of this is you need to know when you can end early and when you can't...and always try and start your turn as quickly as possible. I would say most of the important moves that happen in a freestyle game occur within the first 5 seconds of a turn or the last 15 seconds (if you're playing someone who's any good). Lag is bad, obviously, so if you consistently lag, you should probably not play freestyle speeders too much.
Anyway, beyond that, learning a map well is a good idea for freestyle. Some common freestyle maps to learn for 1v1 games are Feudal War and Feudal Epic, New World, Oasis, WWII Poland, City Mogul among others. Other maps are commonly used for freestyle, but don't require much map knowledge, such as Luxembourg, Doodle Earth and Classic.
Andy's right in that Trench Warfare slows down the freestyle game somewhat because you are limited in your attacking and expansion capabilities. However, that does not change the need for speed at points in those games. An example of this is
Game 10959115. I won the game because I was able to capture 2 territories (completing the objectives for the map) before douitashimashite could take my territory even though he had far more troops than I did.
The last thing I'd say about your original post is to observe that you must be playing 8-player doodle or lux assassin games, probably with manual deployment (started by KingRat, more than likely). Those games are frequently over before everyone deploys troops. That all depends on drop and dice. I would recommend playing standard freestyle games if you want to get your feet under you before the game is over. Just my opinion, of course. Those assassin games can be very addicting because you get a ton of points if you can win...but you need to get drop and dice AND be very fast to do it. Even the best freestylers have low win % in those settings because it relies so heavily on luck.
Anyway, this is probably more than you wanted... Happy freestyling!
