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Playing the first Art of War challenge the game clock runs almost double speed with the Gold medal clock (8 mins is the target) running out in just 4:51. Tried three times, impossible to even get Gold and only just possible to get Bronze.
I think that this is normal. I assume that you stopped the time in real time (with your smartphone for example). But Age of Empires time is not normal time. The in game time runs with 1.7 speed of real time.
So the 8.00min in game are roughly the 4.51min you measured.
I don’t think that it is impossible to get gold, but it is very hard.
but I’m not playing inside the Game World, I’m playing in the real world. If you say 8 minutes then I expect the timer to run at real world speed.
All times in game are normalized to 1.0 (slow) speed. It would be confusing, if they would be converted to real life speed. For example knight training time of 30 seconds would be displayed as 30/1.7 = 17.647… seconds.
Btw, it is possible to get gold in all challenges. I just achieved that. But it needed some incredible optimizations and almost perfect play. A lot of pausing helped in this 
You can press F11 to bring up the ingame clock.
Age of Empires has always been weird like that, where the “Slow” speed is real time and regular gameplay is faster than normal.
Just play a few thousand games. If you have done that you will be very surprised that all clocks run way to slow.
The pizza says it needs 20min in the oven, but after that it is only half baked. The world gets really confusing, why is the real world only runing at around 60% of the age of empires speed 
iirc
slow = 1.0
casual = 1.5
normal = 1.7 (also the speed pro players play the game)
fast = 2.0
The game world clock and times relayed to humans should bear no resemblance. It doesn’t take 30 seconds to train someone regardless of good a trainer you are or what clock you are running to so the game world clock is already somewhat screwy I’ll take the comment that it’s normal, I haven’t played AoE properly for quite some years so its idiosyncrasies are new again. Still an awesome game and I’m expecting more of my performance as it’s based on having played 1000s of games, solo and group, than is reasonable… given it’s been years, decades, since I last played a lot. Thanks for the input and guidance. Good crowd!
Yes, but if a timer shown onscreen says “Resist 30 minutes”, or “30 minutes before arrival”, minutes should count as minutes, instead of something else. For example, latest Gengis Khan scenario is made harder by this, because, when Subotai arrives, things go harder; but if he arrives after 40 minutes you have 40 minutes to prepare. By setting Slow game speed, which should count as x1, I should have 40x1 = 40 minutes, not less.
OK, I’ve found the solution: by pressing the minus key on the numeric keyboard, speed slows down. It’s very counterintuitive, I’d expect going to Options in game in order to change it.