I think is better if, instead of mote regen, you get a mote discount. That is, instead of regaining x motes, you can spend x motes in charms in that round without draining your pool.
I like this and would be able to handle it, but I've found that adding another type of mathematical operation tends to slow down play a lot.
One other method I tried was increasing default regen to 10m, but make all committed costs lower the regen value by 1m per 4m of normal commit cost. This included artifacts.
I think we should also remember that At-Table Exalted is a lot different than IRC or forum-based, so for all we know, combat in-person actually flows better.
Almost all of my experience comes from au the table, in person, Exalted and combat is just as bad as many make it out to be in forums or irc. Though, it will often resolve more quickly because the other players will hassle someone taking a long time.
It tended to become less ccg like in my experience because very few players bother remembering all of the different Charms they could use. So most wound up with 2 or 3 different combo types, and that was for heavy combat characters. The math effort and time costof adding up most costs for different Charms and excellencies made it hard to use too many.
They'd use whatever the dominant combat combo at their current tier was and figure out a new one when it needed to happen.
Combat typically processed along this path. The only way to avoid it was to have everyone purposefully decide to not go into the options that bumped general combat to the next tier.
1 Seeking edges: At this stage, peer opponents would have similar dice polls and equipment dominated a character's combat effectiveness. Combats were normally decided by seeking edges small enough to tip the scales without spending all of their resources or risking too much (coordinated attacks, flurries, terrestrial martial arts, etc).
Combat was incredibly fun and quick to resolve because most edges had counters. Mortal and spirit blooded games spent most of their time here and low essence, low resources DB games could live here as well.
2 Rocket tag: One of the edges from before has become potent enough that instead of giving a bonus, it resolves the combat all by itself. Grand killsticks and extra action Charms were the worst offenders regarding moving to this tier.
Combat is incredibly fast and lethal with initiative and action economy dominating all other options. Whoever gets their kill combo off first wins because offense dominates defense. The tension was fun, in small doses.
Mid essence DBs and low essence celestials lived in this region. A lot of gm fiat was needed for peer level opponents to not splatter characters.
There's still a decent amount of character diversity and charm use because there are a while host of different one shot effects. One character might use a grand killstick, the next an unexpected attack, and a third a crippling charm. You'll die before you run out of motes, so cost is no problem.
3 Perfect or die. Reliable perfect defenses, against each attack tag, enter the picture. Now the main goal is to mote tap your opponent, with extra action Charms being the dominant strategy. You may also find a tag which they have no perfect against, in which case it's back to phase 2.
Starting Adamant and mid essence celestials wind up here. Combat can still be fun, but it's starting to become a drag because only weak attacks that're unlikely to knock someone out of their - 0s will land. Everyone will gravitate to the cheapest one shot ability because your mote pool is now your HP.
4 Paranoia Combat: I think enough has been said about this already. It sucks and I will never again run a high essence celestial or mid essence adamant game in 2.x- that uses the default combat engine -because of it.
) Escorp's 
