Have you ever seen artists impressions of what a full army would look like looking down at them from the sky. It looks incredible.
What I would like to see in hegemony is smaller ant like formations that use real numbers. The whole army being able to choose a custom or traditional formation. Allowing you to move the army in formation or make them travel on roads.

Exactly the same thing for the sea going fleets. Salamis sized any fleets and patrols. Beachings for rest etc.

Make the men look well proportioned at any cost...

Make everything the actual scale of the towns and villages in screenshots.

Here are some examples of what I mean. The landscape is alive with large formations of antlike figures.
It would differentiate the game from all of the other games and breath a nice breathtaking top down view of massive numbers.
It would also fit the scale of the buildings and towns. The figures you would be able to zoom in a little, just enough to see that its humans fighting with whatever weapons they are armed with. Phalanx stabbing back and forth. bits of movement as seen in Battlefield Britain.

Its not like total war as the formations are large, self contained and move about the campaign map. It is possible in this way to setup a real acting battle. Something that looks nice without being a resource hog.
From a programming perspective the formation would be animated as one figure, and would run as a unit. the animation offcourse would lose men and get smaller as it got pounded.
You could be as complex as you liked with the formation being pushed back or infiltrated. To let the player know it may be time to retreat or that re-enforcements are needed.
The marching animation would also be lots of small blocks of men moving. It would look cool and lend the game a more polished look as the graphics for something like that would not have to be many polys?

Is there somewhere in the game that I can turn this feature on?
That screenshot of the small men looks great! You just fix the hard to see bit with a floating icon.
The ant look makes it more epic and less abstract.

I understand the reasons you state, but thats every other game for you aswell. Assume users cannot handle the pace. I fear that this game will be so like most others that it
will fade into obscurity..... not being negative, just one mans opinion ;)

I actually like the game, just having trouble with the suspension of disbelief at the tactical level when zoomed. It could look so epic and in fact you have proved this.
Options like strength and honor 2 have for formations would be nice too... just have not played enough to see how large battles get and how much troop variety there is.
If you go the non collecting units route then you need to have very very interesting gameplay.

I will play some more and grab some screenies when time permits. Glad I can post on other forums to raise general awareness. I just have to be really keen on the game first.
The smaller units option will hopefully just be some sort of switch.