I agree, there's no point in maintaining interest in Dom3 - at least for you.
Dominions can't - and shouldn't, as it isn't designed in such a way from ground up - be played in 30-second-turns in midgame and later.
If you want a real time strategy game, go and buy such. Dominions started out as (and still mostly is) an email-game. And as it is a "grand strategy"-game, IMNSHO this should change too much.
On the other hand, there
are some MM tasks that could be made easier. Think you didn't mention them, as patrolling and preaching isn't problematic:
patrolling - well, in Dom1 it was feasable to patrol every province to balance out growth, unrest and heavy taxation. You're not meant to do this in Dom2.
preaching - where's the problem with preaching? You set a priest to preach, that's it.
What
would be nice and helpful:
- "move-to" orders
- auto-repeat on production queues
- "produce-to" redirection
- "sitesearching(spell)" and
- maybe"sitesearching(mov)", but the last one could turn ou too dangerous for your mages.
Edited: I forgot: The fastest-playing Dom2 blitz games on earth you'll find on the dominions IRC channel, on Saturday and Sundays. I've seen turn that lasted not more than 5 seconds, in general turn-around-time is 3..10 minutes.