Just bought this on Steam and, well....I'm really impressed. The supply system is absolutely fantastic. First time playing an RTS where this issue is even considered, let alone implemented properly (It's also present in some Paradox games but so abstracted that it's difficult to keep it in mind). I also happen to be a Canadian expat living in Thessaloniki, Greece, a few kilometers from the ruins of Pella and it's very, very cool to be conquering towns that I pass by on my way to work every day :) Also, just so you know, the game looks amazing with NVidia's 3D Vision system. I'm pretty sure you didn't optimize that way but it doesn't matter. With 3D Vision and all the graphical bells & whistles enabled from the NVidia console (AA, etc.), H:G is fantastic. Check it out if you can, you'll be impressed, I assure you.

I do have a question or two, however. Here goes:

1) As Macedon, is there any way to recruit more cavalry other than Scouts ? The whole point of the Phalanx was the "hammer & anvil" approach to tactics, and it's hard to do with only Scouts. Shouldn't Macedon be able to have more than one unit of heavy cavalry ?

2) I'm not really sure how the "transport food" order works. If I get my slaves to manually transport food from one city to another, does it deplete the original city's stocks ? Does the farm get emptied and therefore not able to supply the city it's linked to ?

3) Not sure how to organize my army in the field. If I box-select a bunch of units, they seem to automatically place themselves in a disposition that I have not control over. Is there a way to specify a tactical layout for groups of units ?

Anyway, not much to add, just wanted to compliment the devs for a job really well done. I assure you I will buy Rome at full price, directly from this site, when it comes out.

1) Conquer Thessaly. Most if not all of the cities will be friendly once taken over which means you can recruit Thessalonian cavalry (which has 20 units each) for normal price.

2) You can load up food manually with an order and drop it of with the button next to it. If you load up on a farm, that food will not move to the city it is connected to.

I actually find the formations to be a pain to use, especially since there are so few pitched battles anyway. Most of the time you can just click (or was it double click?) the individual units to pull them away from the group and give them separate orders. Since you can conquer the entire world with armies of say, 2 phalanxes 1 cavalry and a single range support its not too hard to manually control everything.