It takes longer in real life since troops are individuals, who only know what is in front of them or what they have been told. Not Prussian automata run by a God-player with 100% knowledge of the situation.
Consider a SP universe road crossing. A battalion is going north to south, and another one is merrily proceeding east to west. No enemy is about to cause hiccups. It is night time... In the SP universe, the God-player simply individually moves all elements of both and there are absolutely no snarl ups or traffic jams and everything moves at full speed. Piece of cake!. Now consider the real world situation... (There
is a reason for the real world planning rule of thumb that "a column proceeds at an average speed of half the speed of its slowest unit")
There is a
reason there are MPs in real life armies, who prepare movement plans before troop movements, and traffic lights (or at least, give way signs) at crossings in the real world.
Neither are required in the SP-verse. You are in total control. You have a 100% accurate map, and you have 100% accurate knowledge of where all your units actually are, and what they are even doing. Luxuries that even the modern digital command and control systems have not yet delivered.
It is a
game and
not a simulation.
So that is why we say take the number of turns played and multiply by (about) 5 minutes to get a sense of what it would have taken in reality. All the "dead time" that normal human fears and snafus and natural indolence (no slipping off for a crafty smoke for any of your digital squaddies!
) introduce are removed by you the all-seeing, all controlling "Player God" figure.