I'm baffled at the essence mechanics. What does accelerate world timer even does? One thing this game could do with is a little context box when you hover over stats and resources to get a better insight if you even expand it.
Accelerate world timer.... accelerates the speed of the world.
its not that complicated :D
basically when the game says a task takes 4 seconds, it speeds up time so it takes say 3.8 seconds. while the countdown till the army/hero arriving is sped up so 4 seconds happened for it while 3.8 seconds happened for you.
Great if you want to do runs faster.