The housing is the largest problem imo. Can't get a city to 4 even if I start near 2 fertile lands.

Seems like a challenge. One thing I notice is that I can't recruit groups of troops even though I have researched Team and Army in the Conquest tree.

I don't know about the armor situation for me, I just started and picked up Tools of War so I can get some weapons and have been focusing on trying to get the tech for the resources I ended up near (a forest is near my second city and there's a mineral or something I might make a third city to claim).

Agreed, I have a hard time leveling up my cities with empires. 

Also, I am fairly new to this, is there some screen with a description of the differences in the factions? On the selection screen, it looks like it is just their history. 

 Also I saw a poll on this forum about your favorite, and most people voted for the one they make themselves, is that disabled in this beta? 

Yes. It hopes to return in 3B.

I don't get what you are saying. When I create a new game, at the bottom is a button for "Create Sovereign" and from there, I can do what I want to make my own leader.

I believe he was talking about making your own faction (if I read his post right).

If so, then no, you can't create your own factions in 3A and won't be back for 3B (not until 4)

Right now, we can only create our own sovereign and assign him/her to an existing stock faction.

I had no problems recruiting. At times I wondered why I built units!

One thing I found interesting is there was this one stack that in one play would NOT join me. The dialog cursor didn't show up, just the attack cursor. Their leader even said "Ah, Morrigan (my sovereign's name), Layea (the city) looks ripe for the taking!" Or something to that effect (never did attack though).

I reloaded and then the next time around, they WOULD talk with me. Wanted 375 gold. Okay, fine, I had 700+ and for a stack of equipped fighters, sure (their leader had 7 (!) defense - all my units have 0 defense)

Then - somehow, I was in the red for 220 gildars. WTF. How can I be in the red by paying 375 when I had over 700? Was that 375 PER UNIT? I guess so (should either be some indication of that, or the price quoted should have been 375*number in stack). Also, another question, why was I even able to recruit them? I can understand if they were a "package deal" but then shouldn't I have been told "you don't have enough gildar!" (and then maybe they attack me because they thought I was screwing around with them).