I solved the battle delay issue, the built in "delay" script wouldn't work with my random battle script so I simply put in a "delay frames" script into the random battle script. This should reduce random encounters a little bit overall. This will go up tonight in my next update, which I'm hoping to have a prototype of Chapter 5 done (along with further music fixes).
One other tidbit about the "roads", they also have a lower chance of having 2 enemies spawn at once (33% vs 40%), and there's a higher chance of weaker enemies (the first road for example has a higher slime spawn rate than the fields on both sides, 70% vs 60%). These have been a part of the project for awhile, as I thought the same way you did, roads should be less battles and easier ones.
I really appreciate the detailed feedback, it's helping me to improve areas I haven't put much focus on yet. And as you said, as the developer I know everything and it's VERY hard to have the perspective of a new player (although when I play tested 2 of my caves last night, I forgot where everything was so it was like playing as a new player, was great for testing).