I agree with you on that one. It seems like the less AoE you have, the more you die to the masses. Also there's so much going on in the game that once you get to a certain point, your Demi takes over and it's no longer your ability that determines the outcome. However, there are particular items that prevent the masses from harming your hero. Namely Plate Mail of the Crusader and Groffling Plate.  The only Demi that is "typically" getting these items is The Rook, which is why many people are complaining about the inability to kill him. Any Demi with those items can resist the effect of massive amounts of units and essentially can maneuver about the battlefield at will and even fight multiple Demis at once.

Two things should be done here, or none at all :

Reduce the amount of units onscreen and increase their damage/health to compensate

Reduce the effect of Plate Mail of the Crusader and Groffling Plate.

I think more the good player is going to kill the other hero more often, making more money, thus able to buy better equipment and being more capable of destroying towers/forts and taking the othersides portals.   you can win the game with basic minotaurs if your opponent cant get out of rez timer and you own his portals (this is a bit of an extreme case, but the better skilled player is always going to have more money, because every time they meet the better player will kill the less skilled one)

Less units onscreen also means less problems with computer performance. There was somewhat of a skill element in "sorting out the chaos", however, that some people appreciate while others don't like it.

It's a trade-off, really.

Less units means more Demigod on Demigod action, which is what is preferable, but also certain Demis can't quite function without creep cover, such as Regulus.

Ultimately ,however,  it would leave all of the Demis to need certain stats and abilities to win games, and others would be just plain unused. One example would be in a situation with 2 healer creeps instead of 20 on the battlefield, Sedna's Counter Healing skill would be significantly less useful or plain useless altogether. Rook would only need Boulder/Hammer to win a game (oh wait he already does...) ... etc

Fewer, stronger creeps.  Citadel upgrades give you stronger troops / better troop types, but doesn't give you increased numbers.  The starting amount of creeps is probably okay.  It's as the game goes on that there's more and more that it's a problem. Having the stronger , larger units would help to make it so focus fire (with minions) would actually be a useful tactic, and Demigods focused on doing more single-target damage would not get overwhelmed by creeps / minions so easily.

Also lowering the amount of minions that Generals get and similarly scaling their health / damage would also probably be a good idea.

That's my best solution to the issue, at least initially.

Despite the game settings, Slow, Normal, or Fast - we have Beta Testers do have to provide feedback on how the game plays. Each build we've seen the developers test the limits of just how much crap they can put on the screen at once, and frankly I think they've overstepped their bounds. We certainly need fewer amounts of grunts on the field, no matter what spawn rate we opt for. Each unit is more durable, and becomes more durable as the game progresses. Just because they are fewer shouldn't take away from the game at all.

At present, it's pretty nuts to have so much on the screen. I'd really like to an evolution in the units, a visible evolution. If you upgrade armor, you see them wearing new armor, same for weapons. Since they'll be fewer in number, you can easily see the differences in them.

I'd really love to provide more feedback, but I can't play the present build.

All I can suggest is "Less is More".

The spawn rate being fast is definitely a bug. I've made no intentional large tweaks to the gameplay.

To help us discuss balance related issues, our internal dev team vocabulary is:

Minion - Controlled directly by a General.
Reinforcement - Spawned from a portal. 

It is my belief that the numbers of both of these need to be toned down, especially reinforcements.  Minions, however, even before 2D were too numerous. 

Generals play like "posse leaders" more than anything else.  One moderately strong hero surrounded by a cloud of weaker minions.  It would be much better for gameplay purposes to give players fewer, stronger units so that the degree to which a player is adept at controlling their few units determines how successful they are.

p.s. I'll refer to the units I've previously deemed "creeps" as reinforcements from now on.