First I almost purchased this game when steam had the sale, but I held out and did not buy it. I just bought the game about a week ago and I have to say I love it and can honestly say that it was the best investment I have made on a game in a long time. The game just draws you in, but that is not to say it has some really annoying flaws.

I was wondering if the gold version was going to fix some of the issues I have a problem with like:

* Continuous enemy reports on the same enemies every couple of secs. This is not an issue at the start of the game, but later on it gets crazy that it is reporting the same enemies over and over especially while you are in the middle of trying to control multiple battles. Need some kind of check off if you want continued warnings on certain units. This gets really annoying with enemy trimeres leaving your coastal waters after defeating the army they dropped off. Every section of the map they go through sets off an alarm and later in the game it gets hard to manage what is important to look at when you have so much going on.

* Need some kind of unit, general, slave, worker and trimere management lists or a city/villa list that shows if it is empty or has one of these units stationed in it. I hate when a general or an army dies / routes and I miss the notification that they are ready and active that I cannot find them again sometimes unless I start looking over every city / villa I own or if i need slaves, workers or trimeres and I have to go hunting again. Once again not a problem at the start of the game, but later on they can be anywhere and this gets very annoying.

* Army units and slaves not staying together when grouped. When I am going to move slave units through areas that could raise the rebel rating on them I group army units with them. The only problem is sometimes they drift apart and if you are not paying attention because of so much crap going on you can have a full blown revolt. I believe this causes to much micromanagement on slave transfers and needs to be fixed. I grouped them together for a reason.

* Food transfer. I cant stand that I can have a town with 20000+ food just stockpiling when I need it up front at my borders. I understand and like the whole idea with the trade lines, but this makes no sense to me. Have any of you tried moving that food with lets say 30 workers grouped. It is a nightmare. They constantly get held up or stalled and this also causes way to much micromanagement. I want to plan the routes and continue on with domination not constantly check on these fools to make sure they are still moving.

* City hubs. I know how many hubs a city has, but for coastal cities I dont know how many are for land and water. It would be nice if we could see individaul hubs for water and land. It would make it easier to set them up if I knew the town had 3 land and 1 water or 4 land and 2 water instead of guessing and finding out the hard way.

* Factions. Is every faction designed to attack you or are they warring with each other also? I dont know, but it seems like they are all attacking me only. If this is the case why have so many factions just make it us against the known world because I get attacked at the very same time but multiple nations liked they planned it out together. This happens to me even when I dont cross enemy borders or even attack them. They just decide to attack me anyways. I know the greeks loved to attack each other, but it just seems they are only attacking me.

* siege. When I am sieging a city I notice that the strength bar will continue to grow sometimes because they will spam the crap out of units when they have no food. If you have no food or not enough food to support the units you currently have how can you continue to spam units?

* Attack of a thousand peltasts. This is so very annoying and it seems to be another micromanagement issue. Peltasts coming in causing havoc every few secs. Once again not an issue at the beginning of the game, but later on it becomes an annoyance and time consuming. They get destroyed every time, but they just keep coming causing me to focus on that area every couple of secs.

* ranged units. I use archers instead of peltasts with my main armies and I have noticed that sometimes I will order them to attack certain targets and they will ignore my orders and attack who they want. I dont know if anyone else has noticed this issue. Example enemy army comes at me with 3 or 4 hoplites followed by 4 to 8 peltasts. I have my archers target the peltasts, but they continue to attack the hoplites, while the enemy peltasts tear up my hoplites. The peltasts are in range of my archers yet they continue to attack the hoplites. This has caused me a couple of very disappointing loses that should have not been happened.

All in all I love the game, but mid to late game as your empire expands more and more of your time is taken away from the focus and enjoyment of the game to micromanagement or trying to find things. I hope some or all of these issues will be addressed in the gold version otherwise I see no reason to purchase it unless it will take away some of these issues mid to late game.

This game was a refreshing change from Elemental: War of Magic which I was looking forward to playing based on it being the next Master of Magic and was nothing like Master of Magic and failed as a game in every direction even with it patched up to 1.19. This game is probably the best I played in the past 5 years and blows the doors off of the Total War series. Congrats to you guys on this wonderful game I just hope you can address or fix the issues listed above because the mid to late game becomes a drag. Right now I would have to guess I am about mid game with all of Mac, all north of Mac, all northwestern of Mac, all west of Mac, in the south 75% of Athens and up to Thebes and the eastern border is up to Cent Ods. It just seems like I am managing borders and looking for units instead of playing and enjoying the game anymore.

If these issues are addressed and makes the game still fun to play mid to late game I am going to sign up for the gold version because it will be worth every penny.

Thanks,

Phauren

Also is there a search function on this forum? I might be blind, but I cannot seem to locate it.

I can't answer to what will or won't be fixed in Gold, but there are a few things you listed that I might be able to help you with in PoM.

*There is a unit management list, you can access it with one of the buttons up along the top right side of the screen. I forget what exactly it's called, but it's up there. The list isn't perfect, in fact it's got issues of its own, but it could help you out some.

*As for city hubs, if you zoom in on the city, you'll be able to see individual markets extending out from it (they look like little booths). Each market you can see represents one trade hub for that city. Coastal cities will have markets and docks, with the docks representing sea trade hubs (each dock = one trade hub). Again, it isn't perfect, but it is a method of knowing how many hubs are sea-based and how many land-based.

*The factions will only primarily attack you in PoM (I don't know if this is changed in Gold), but if they happen to run across one another, they will attack each other. For instance, when I was attacking the Thebans, the Athenians decided to send troops against me through Theban territory. If they happened to go near a Theban city or troop, they would attack it, but otherwise they ignored the Thebans and instead attacked me. But in general, yes all factions only attack you.


I know this doesn't really answer your question regarding Gold, but I hope it's helpful at least with just PoM.

I will look for the list today and thanks for the info on the docks and markets. I always noticed them, but never counted them to see if they add up to the number of nodes shown.

I have seen them attack each other on rare occasions like the one you mentioned. I just feel like it would be more immersive if they started wars with themselves sometimes instead of doing all out attacks on us at the same exact time. Just makes me feel like I am fighting against one faction instead of the 26 or so factions that are in the game.

Is there a search function in this forum? I still cant find it.

First of all id like to agree with you on what an awesome game this is. it sounds as if, like me, you have become increasingly disappointed with the way mainstream gaming has gone over the last 5 years or more. they are so "disposable" now. the gaming equivalent of a plastic carrier bag (or paper sack in the US i think) that u bring groceries home in, designed to do its job perfectly for a very short period of time, after which you need to buy a new one. rather than a beautifuly crafted leather case, as games were in the old days. they still both do the same job, they carry stuff, but there the comparison ends. and the main difference is, the gaming industry is still charging leather case prices for plastic carrier bags, but leather cases are very very difficult to find, hardly any get made any more.

Anyway, enough of extremely dubious analogies. many of the issues you raised are addressed in Gold, but not all. i'll try to deal with each point u made but theres a lot of points. pain in the ass to quote from each, numbering them would have been helpful for future reference.

1)Continuous enemy reports on the same enemies every couple of secs
As the enemy units move and come into view of different own units they get reported. seems very logical and straightforward to me. unless you have the "stop on this event" function on i dont see what the problem is. your main source of info shoud be the minimap. you shouldnt even pay these reports any attention when theres a lot happening, just a quick glance at the minimap to see where the red blotches are tells u all u need to know.
Theres nothing different in regarding this in Gold.

2)Need some kind of unit, general, slave, worker and trimere management lists
As a previous poster stated there is. its called the Assets list. iirc the icon for it is a scroll and its located right at the top of your screen to the right along with the unit upgrades button (a star) etc. it is slow and laggy, but it is much improved in gold with better filters. not sure if original PoM even has filters since its been a while since i played vanilla rather than gold. incidentaly, in Gold villas dont even exist, the generals have cities as their homes, and you can change their home city (changing it to the same home city as the unit its commanding can be very helpful). you can also chage units home cities within certain limitations (the new home city must be able to produce that same unit type).

3) Army units and slaves not staying together when grouped.
I agree on everything u said here and this is not changed in Gold. however i very rarely move slaves around therefore, for me, its not a serious issue. perhaps youre overly relying on slaves? i dont know

4) Food transfer. I cant stand that I can have a town with 20000+ food just stockpiling when I need it up front at my borders.
Why? Why cant you stand this? you think that during the illfated Athenian expedition to Syracuse, when the Athenian forces were starving and dieing of disease they didnt think "omg i cant stand that we dont have all the food in Athens here were we need it?" youre not the only one who has a problem with this but as i stated before, its just unreasonable to expect to have all the spare food from your entire empire available to you on your borders to feed an enormous army. not only is it historically innaccurate, it would affect the game balance. if you cant feed all the troops in any given area then you have too many troops in that area. as a meerkat would say, "simples".
Also, after you capture an area, especially if you sieged a city and starved them out, of course its going to take a long time to recover. surely this is as it should be? the lack of food is the main inhibitor to just cruising along cap cap cap game over. if you change this the entire game would have to be rebalanced to provide a challenge some other way. but then it loses its unique challenge. this is mostly unchanged in Gold although u can upgrade supply routes to transfer food more quickly. it doesnt have a great effect on the overall levels.

5) City hubs. I know how many hubs a city has, but for coastal cities I dont know how many are for land and water
I agree with you here. yes it would be nice for the land and sea supply route nodes to be shown seperatly. also to be able to specify if youre creating a land route or sea route, rather than have to use a sea waypoint or land waypoint to specify it before the final connection. sometimes when trying to create a short sea route you can inadvertently create an enormous long land route that goes around half your empire without noticing immediately. this is unchanged in Gold.

6) 7) and 8) I think one answer can cover these. in Gold theres less quantity and more quality as regards battles. there are limitations on how fast both you and the enemy can replenish routed units. each city has a recruit pool from which both new units and routed units are created/recreated, as well as replacing casualties . this recruitment pool is limited and replenishes slowly. how slowly is actually configurable in the options (u can even turn it off for a "hardcore" game whereas once a units loses men theyre never replaced for either side, and a lost unit is permanently lost). this, to a certain extent, reduces the "whack-a-mole" feel of the game. the idea is to improve the AI and provide the difficulty that way rather than thru sheer numbers. this is ongoing process in the beta.
Also, especially in vanilla, try to site you borders at easily defensable points. for example, when expanding in a certain direction stop at a city thats at your end of a long valley, so enemy units will be out of food by the time they reached it. or a city thats got some kind of natural barrier on as many sides of it as possible so only one enemy unit at a time can actually hammer on the walls. these tactics allow your garrison inside the city to easily repel any attacks without your intervention leaving you free to focus on another front that u wish to expand further.

9) ranged units.
ive never noticed a problem with archers or any other units (ranged or not) not attacking the target i specify. it may be that its occurred and i havent noticed.

Hope this helps :)

oh one final point, please remember that Gold is currently in Beta 13. in my previous reply whenever i refer to how Gold handles a certain issue that means currently. it may or may not change by the final release of Gold.

Is there a search function in this forum? I still cant find it.


the forum seems to be rather basic i'm afraid, no search or even sticky functions. but i dont mind answerign the same questions over and over 5 million times, honest ;)

1)Continuous enemy reports on the same enemies every couple of secs
As the enemy units move and come into view of different own units they get reported. seems very logical and straightforward to me. unless you have the "stop on this event" function on i dont see what the problem is. your main source of info shoud be the minimap. you shouldnt even pay these reports any attention when theres a lot happening, just a quick glance at the minimap to see where the red blotches are tells u all u need to know.
Theres nothing different in regarding this in Gold.
:)

What I am just asking for is something that I can check theses units off not to be reported again. I believe this would be a more useful function to use than the minimap.

4) Food transfer. I cant stand that I can have a town with 20000+ food just stockpiling when I need it up front at my borders.
Why? Why cant you stand this? you think that during the illfated Athenian expedition to Syracuse, when the Athenian forces were starving and dieing of disease they didnt think "omg i cant stand that we dont have all the food in Athens here were we need it?" youre not the only one who has a problem with this but as i stated before, its just unreasonable to expect to have all the spare food from your entire empire available to you on your borders to feed an enormous army. not only is it historically innaccurate, it would affect the game balance. if you cant feed all the troops in any given area then you have too many troops in that area. as a meerkat would say, "simples".
Also, after you capture an area, especially if you sieged a city and starved them out, of course its going to take a long time to recover. surely this is as it should be? the lack of food is the main inhibitor to just cruising along cap cap cap game over. if you change this the entire game would have to be rebalanced to provide a challenge some other way. but then it loses its unique challenge. this is mostly unchanged in Gold although u can upgrade supply routes to transfer food more quickly. it doesnt have a great effect on the overall levels.

I dont think you understood what I was getting at in this comment or read the enitre entry. I like the way the game is when it comes to food. What I dont like is if I create an extreme amount of workers or use an extreme amount of slaves to move food it is horrible how they move. They constantly get hung up or stopped and I need to get involved to help them move along again.

Same goes for army movement. Large group enters a choke point they constantly stop and go or leap frog through the choke point. It should be that when the first unit hits the choke point they continue on not wait for the laggers. I need them to get through the choke points not build up there to cause a logisitics nightmare and I need this more so for my army because I need them to defend the other side of the choke point not let an enemy army get there and block it up.

no i got your point entirely. what i am saying is that youre not supposed to be able to move all that food. ive had this exact same discussion several times before. youre sayign theres a problem moving all that food with 30 units of slaves. last time we had this discussion it was 40 units of slaves.

youre not supposed to be able to therefore the fact that u cant isnt an issue that needs to be dealt with.
http://www.longbowgames.com/forums/topic/?id=2335&start=0

btw, youre welcome for the lengthy reply i took the trouble to post. no need to thank me.

I agree with almost everything Phauren brought up. I give this game a 9/10 but get frustrated after playing awhile because of:

1. Slaves acting funny when grouped - i get this all the time to the point I try and avoid grouping them now and send them on individual journeys which takes me a lot longer but at least I wont be frustrated that they take 10x as long to arrive at a destination.

2. City to City food transfers - just hardly seems to work for me, some cities i pump up the storage level and it maxes out at 720 food total. Other cities I have almost no storage or 0 and they are sitting on 30k food with no troops inside them. It is a very confusing and poorly implemented system, after 150 hours of play I still just rely on hordes of slaves and extremely annoying micromanagement to solve this problem.

3. Archers not attacking target - if you havent noticed this you are not watching closely, it happens often.

It just seems like I am managing borders and looking for units instead of playing and enjoying the game anymore.

That sums up my only concerns/frustrations as well.

BTW Phauren, try the Gold Demo, its a big improvement.

And HUGE THANKS KAMI for your reply. I still dont think you understood what Phauren was getting at though regarding food, your response was in defense of an incredibly annoying or at the very least confusing system which after 150 hours of play I still do not think works. Yes I get it you like the game, we love it too but the only feasible way to move food around is incredibly annoying micromanagement of slaves which makes much of the game start to feel like a chore.

First of all thanks for your input Kami. I did not mean to hurt your feelings I was just going on with the conversation.

I am glad Arcon97 understands what I am talking about when it comes to food transfer. I dont think the game was designed that you should not be able to move any amount of food like Kami states, otherwise why would they give us the means to do it with slaves, workers or trimeres.

I am also glad someone else has noticed the issue with archers not targeting units you have issued specific attack orders on. Like I said I do not know if this happens for peltasts because I dont use them. To actually give a perfect example of what archers do is they attack the closest target no matter what you tell them to do. I tested it out yesterday when I was attacked by 4 hoplites and 7 peltasts. My archers would never attack the peltasts even when ordered to do so, they just kept attacking the hoplites because they were the closest targets. Needless to say I almost lost the battle because of the damn peltasts destroying my front line when it could have been prevented if my archers would have followed the orders I gave.

Arcon97 or anyone has the archer ignoring issued orders been fixed in the gold version or is it still present? Is there some place that this issue can be posted so the developers know about it? This needs to be fixed.

A question for anyone. I thought the gold beta was for people that had purchased the game before a certain time. Are you saying I can download the gold version now and play it?

Thanks to anyone that participates in this conversation in advance.

And HUGE THANKS KAMI for your reply. I still dont think you understood what Phauren was getting at though regarding food, your response was in defense of an incredibly annoying or at the very least confusing system which after 150 hours of play I still do not think works. Yes I get it you like the game, we love it too but the only feasible way to move food around is incredibly annoying micromanagement of slaves which makes much of the game start to feel like a chore.
youre welcome ofc. but i do get the point youre both making.

you both say extreme quantities of slaves causes problems. and i say - yes they cause problems, so dont do it.

you both say its the only way to move a huge stockpile of food. i say - youre not supposed to move huge stockpiles of food. lack of food at your frontline is part of the game mechanics. its what provides much of the challenge of the game.

if you both choose to try and move the huge stockpile of food by using extreme numbers of slave units thats your choice, but dont then complain that its difficult to manage extreme quantities of slaves. its not supposed to happen at all so it certainly shouldnt be made easier to do. if its made easy so everybody does it as a matter of routine then the game balance is destroyed and the supply lines become obsolete, the most innovative part of the game and the aspect of the game that is most singled out for praise.

yes i do love the game. and i love the challenge that limited food supplies present and without that challenge the games nothing. without that its not much different to every other game on the market. being able to have 2K slaves redistributing all the food would destroy it.

maybe the answer is to remove the stockpiles so ppl stop being frustrated when they are unable to make use of them. maybe a cap on stockpile per city based on city population and anything above that is deemd lost to "spoilage" or rats or whatever. but making it possible to move 10k, 20k, or 50k stockpiles of food from the heart of the empire to the front line is not the answer and the game would lose one of the aspects of gameplay that make it great imo.

the way i think of it is that the stockpile isnt all grain or intended foodstuffs. its partly grain yes, but also domestic animals, cats and dogs, dairy cattle and goats, horses, donkeys, citizens private vegetable gardens etc etc etc. all things that if push came to shove and the city was under siege could be eaten by a starving population and army. all these things would build up naturally in times of peace and prosperity, but when times are hard they would be eaten. but they would not all be collected by 2k slaves and carried halfway across the empire to the front line to feed your armies :)

You still dont get it. If this was not intended why would they have the feature, especially with trimeres are able to haul 1000 food per trimere. Has longbow ever came out and said this feature was not intended to be used this way? I just want to know did Longow say this or is this how you think it should be. If Longbow made a post that said that this feature is being abused and was not intended to be used this way I would like a link. If this is your opinion on how the game should be played than that is your right, but dont tell people it was not intended to be used the way we are using it.

They gave us the tools to do this and if we are able to do it and they are not going to remove it, they should fix it so it works correctly. Remember the movement issue happens with large armies also. So you are also saying that if I have to micromanage large army movement than building large armies was also not intended. We could also take it a step further and just say if you have to help anything out in the game it just was not intended to be used that way. Like telling archers to attack certain enemies, but they just attack the closest enemy. At least now I know that Longbow intended the archers to ignore my commands and effectively do what they wanted them to do.

Do you still understand where I am going with this or do you need more? Now that we have had this discussion and you continue to basically tell me I am a fool that is taking away the challenge or abusing some kind of known issue, I would like to know what Longbow's thoughts are on this topic. Are we given these tools to move food for a reason or are we suppose to ignore the ability to do this as Kami states? If I have the money and the slaves, workers or trimeres can I move as much food as I want as a strategy plan or is all the food suppose to sit in a city and I am just suppose to wait for the seasons to change to wait for my current food stores to grow on their own?

Last time I reviewed any kind of army movement involve in a battle or war they provided means for food transportation which this game has given us. So maybe you like to play the game and wait for food, but since the tools are provided I move it and since we can move it I would think it was meant to be that way by Longbow's design. If this is the case they need to fix it so they move properly and this would not just fix the movement of food, but also any large group that is moving across the map.

They also still need to fix the whole archer not following attack orders.

First of all thanks for your input Kami. I did not mean to hurt your feelings I was just going on with the conversation.

I am glad Arcon97 understands what I am talking about when it comes to food transfer. I dont think the game was designed that you should not be able to move any amount of food like Kami states, otherwise why would they give us the means to do it with slaves, workers or trimeres.

Gold seems to have solved this problem, hard to tell from just the very short Demo, but it does seem like the food transfers between cities better. I'm not 100% sure, but seemed that way after playing it twice.

I am also glad someone else has noticed the issue with archers not targeting units you have issued specific attack orders on. Needless to say I almost lost the battle because of the damn peltasts destroying my front line when it could have been prevented if my archers would have followed the orders I gave.
Arcon97 or anyone has the archer ignoring issued orders been fixed in the gold version or is it still present? Is there some place that this issue can be posted so the developers know about it? This needs to be fixed.

OK so from what I can tell, my slave issue and the archer issue are all linked to grouping. If you ungroup archers and manually tell each one what to attack you should find this problem no longer exists. As far as Gold is concerned, I have not tried archers in it as the Demo does not have them.

A question for anyone. I thought the gold beta was for people that had purchased the game before a certain time. Are you saying I can download the gold version now and play it?

You can only download/play the Demo unless you were invited to the Beta.

And Kami,

OK fair enough, maybe the game mechanics dictate you defeat countless units of an enemy city which heal in 30 seconds and come back out to attack you over and over until their food is all used up so when you take the city it has 0 food, but this just seems stupid IMO. This causes us to micromanage our food supplies. EVERY war in history depended on 'Supply Lines' to feed troops which is exactly what we have to micromanage with slave groups contstantly redistrubuting food.

Take a city with 0 food, it starts to rebel, you need 65 troops to quell it and its near 3 enemy cities so you cannot just tear down the walls. You are forced to build 3 spearman brigades and chances are it has only 1 farm or none. So you are contstantly babysitting sending food to it which just drags the pace and fun of the game down considerably for me.

I get it, some people like to pause, go over all their troop positions, food allocations, slave routes(making sure they dont enter fog of war), visible enemies, set attack orders on all active battles, shift troops then unpause for 5 seconds and pause again, repeat. That is not a fun way to play for 99% of the player base, some of the micromanagement needs to go. Granted Gold seems to have solved the endless recruiting problem so hopefully gameplay will be much more fluid and fun soon once they let me get my grubby hands on it.

If this is your opinion on how the game should be played than that is your right, but dont tell people it was not intended to be used the way we are using it

i did clearly state that if we were able to move the quantities of food that youre trying to move it would ruin the game imo, which i'm sure you know means "in my opinion". i did only say that once but i did also say things like "surely thats the way it should be?"

but let me clarify my position further. whether this inability to move huge stockpiles of food is by intent or by accident it is what makes the game challenging and unique. id also point out that i'm not referring to moving food period. i often move food. and yes it is intended that we are able to move food. i'm talking about moving "huge quantities" of food using (in your own words) "extreme" numbers of slaves. if the number of slaves is, in your own opinion,"extreme", then surely that tells you that its probably not really intended to be done.

however, if you had followed the link that i provided you would have seen the official response to the difficulty of moving large units of troops, which is the secondary point you made. i still however stand by my opinion that if it becomes easy to move "extreme" numbers of slaves then the redistribution of food by slaves will have to be inhibited some other way otherwise the game balance will be destroyed.

First of all thanks for your input Kami. I did not mean to hurt your feelings I was just going on with the conversation.
Thanks to anyone that participates in this conversation in advance.

Youre welcome Phauren, and i apologise for being touchy. the comment that i didnt "get it" or "hadnt read it properly" was what got my back up but no hard feelings. i'm glad to help as much as i can even if it gets a little repetative whne the same questions are asked over and over by new ppl. not your fault ofc.

damn - replies and counter-replies coming thick and fast its getting rather messy.

@Arcon97
OK fair enough, maybe the game mechanics dictate you defeat countless units of an enemy city which heal in 30 seconds and come back out to attack you over and over until their food is all used up so when you take the city it has 0 food
in Gold you still often have to starve a city out, especially in the spartan campaign where u have no catapults. this is when they dont recover in 30 seconds and come at u again. siege warfare throughout history has always been mainly about starving an enemy out hasnt it?

Archers not attacking target - if you havent noticed this you are not watching closely, it happens often
i wasnt disputing it happens often. i was simply stating its not an issue i'm aware of and i cant help u with that one. as i said its been a while since i played vanilla and i'm not sure i ever even used archers.

@phauren
on further thought my use of the phrase "youre not supposed to be able to" is misleading and confusing and i apologise for that. it wasnt intentional. the way i should have phrased it is "you shouldnt be able to". its a subtle but very important difference that i think would have saved a lot of confusion.

Youre welcome Phauren, and i apologise for being touchy. the comment that i didnt "get it" or "hadnt read it properly" was what got my back up but no hard feelings. i'm glad to help as much as i can even if it gets a little repetative whne the same questions are asked over and over by new ppl. not your fault ofc.

I am just glad we are all understanding each other now. I did not mean that the way you took it when I said maybe you did not get it. What I meant was maybe I did not type it to reflect what I was trying to say and it was more misleading than clear. I understand it has to be frustrating to answer the same questions over and over again. That is why I asked if there was a search function on this site a couple of times, so I could look up stuff before asking and I do appreciate your help.

OK so from what I can tell, my slave issue and the archer issue are all linked to grouping. If you ungroup archers and manually tell each one what to attack you should find this problem no longer exists. As far as Gold is concerned, I have not tried archers in it as the Demo does not have them.

Yes I also have noticed the root cause is from grouping and that covers anything from slave, worker, trimere or army movements. I should have put that down as the root cause for an issue instead of food transfer which started this entire battle. I have not noticed or I should say try to ungroup my archers to see if they listen to my orders. I am going to have to take your word on this, but even so that seems like a horrible solution and it should be addressed. All that is going to cause is more micromanaging.

My usual army consists of 2 hoplites, 3 archers and 2 catapaults. I have basically been able to defeat any size army and siege every city with this combination minus huge cities, but I take that into account and always add 1 or 2 more hoplites. Against larger armies I use the terrain to my advantage to equal the playing field. The few times I have lost was when enemy armies have large number of peltasts anywhere from 6+ groups. If my archers cannot turn them I lose automatically. This is why I have noticed they dont follow my orders because no matter what they dont target the peltasts and they are grouped together all the time so I only have to issue the order once. It is good to know now that I can get them to target who I want I just think it is half ass I have to ungroup them to do it. The grouping issue needs to be addressed.

however, if you had followed the link that i provided you would have seen the official response to the difficulty of moving large units of troops, which is the secondary point you made. i still however stand by my opinion that if it becomes easy to move "extreme" numbers of slaves then the redistribution of food by slaves will have to be inhibited some other way otherwise the game balance will be destroyed.

I did follow your link after reading your reply, but I will admit I just skimmed over it. I will go back after posting this and read it, but I do not remember seeing anyone on either page that was an official spokesman for Longbow.

Lastly nobody said if there was a place to report actual issues like the above issue with grouping especially armies that are grouped in battles not following orders.

Thanks