imho generals need quite a bit of workover, otherwise i would feel kind of betrayed by gpg and stardock for not living up to what they promised beforehand.

what i see right now is that there are basicilly no specefic general mechanics at all, they didn't even change how you control your avatar as a general compared to an assassin.

Why don't they take generals and assassins by the name? the general is the guy controlling the minions, the flow of the battle, the strategy, the general fight - and the assassins literally are assassins, powerfull individuals trying to take down (=assassinate) enemy generals and protect their own. Generals shouldn't be bothered too much with taking down other demis, but should focus on the pushing and getting through their main objective, killing enemies headquarter while defending their own.

As sb has already said: general vs assassin - 1vs1 shouldn't be balanced. A generals should be toothless vs an anassin, but not fragile. on the other hand a generals creeps should be strong and plenty enough to stop an assassin from simply wating through them - ignoring them - and running up the general and getting the kill. After all Demigod is designed as a team game so there shouldn't be too much focus on balancing 1v1's

Another thing to keep in mind is that assassins (and sadly generals too) are by them selves powerfull enough to erase an entire portal wave with a single spell. So the only way for generals to go with their minions should be amount. 

Currently u can spawn 12 standard + max another 12 special minions, it takes ages to build up and is destroyed by a single rain of ice (for example). I wouldn't recommend to change the power of aoe spells, but rather make it easy for generals to replace the units they lost. Why not go with mana for this? Give generals 3 spells (instead of idols) allowing them to spawn units, wavelike - 6 or more at a time, low cooldown (none at all?), low to moderate manacost, rather long cast time (4-5 secs...) - they're cannonfodder, only thing theyre good for is to give a basis for battle and give enemies a hard time to maintain their territory. The special minions and the generals buffs etc. should make the real difference.

Most of the units on the field should be spawned by generals, instead of the portals. Portals only support the push.

I would like to see more specialised units on every general plus the standard units. One general could specify on large giant-alike special minions, another one on ranged aoe catapultosaurus (gotta love this name ^^) type and another on masses of hard-hitting low hp creeps etc etc. I don't think this should be a problem to newbies as sb mentioned before - heck of course you have to know the units u are playing with, its an rts-essential to do so, having everything be the same for everyone is just lame ass and half-hearted and thats not quite what im looking for, or are you?

However, to get back on topic, a general should be "forced" not to hang around the heal stone and spam his minions as if he were a portal dude. Do this by giving him strong auras (for minions and friendly demigods) and aoe buffs, useful support spells (oaks shield is a great one) etc. so its essential for him to hang somewhere around the battle as well - just like more the back row.

Another point i want to make, which is more about unit handling than about generals:  Have the creeps walk in formation automatically, after a group of units is spawned they should run towards a "gathering point" (I guess everybody knows this from various rts games) and only attack after they or nearby allied units are attacked themselves (kind of like defensive for your pet as a WoW Hunter, if some of u guys know...). Also when you rightclick a unit/group of units to some location they should run straight through to where u want them. There should be a button like the "attack" button in Warcraft 3 (and other rts) which marks a location and sends your units running there attacking and hopefully killing everything on their way until they reach whereever you have clicked. And current aoutoattack issues should be fixed, oaks spirits for example are kind of useless bc they simply don't autoattack after they spawned.

At last i would like to say something on the item issue. I personally would prefer generals not to be able to wear items but rather buy upgrades for minions. They could simply grow tougher and have improved mana max/reg by levelling. After all the way i picture generals is quite troop centered and buying items for your demi is quite the opposite. However i must say that items surely can be implemented for generals in a reasonable way, so we will just have to see what works out the best for the game in overall.

All in all theres still a lot to work on if the game makers don't want to disappoint people who bought the beta expecting an rts vs rpg in the end. And if they need the time to do a special "Generals beta" then they should do so, even if it means that we'll have to wait longer for the release.

Thanks for reading if you did so, i think i should work on being more concise x), for the lazy, here are my main bullet-points:

• Generals control the main course of the battle, they should be able to spawn more units than a portal.
• Generals < Assassins in 1v1 , its not their job to take out Demis, they take out towers, forts and citadels
• A General should be able to use the standard minions he spawns as cannonfodder, as they are easy to replace, plenty and weak (if you think about it a portal does nothing else, it suicides its minions to give a basis for battle).
• Special minions are those designed to make the difference, wich are worth microing etc.
• More diverse and useful special minions (this is really important...), i mean c'mon the nightcrawlers and spirits are cool eye candy but they don't make a difference at all
• Generals have to be present in a fight to buff - thus to support their allies, much of their strength should come from buffing and supporting minions as well as freindly DG's
• There should be a senseful unit control/autoattack system so generals don't lose the overwiev too easily
• Read the last paragraph for my opinoin on items (and find out that i have none

your goofy go0f

yh you're right about generals taking out DG's, forts and towers etc. all i wanted to say with "taking them by the name" is that really a general leads an army and an assassin... well he assassinates ^^ ofc there can be (and should be, and luckily even exists ^^) siege specialists among the assassins and DG killers as generals. The designers imo should keep in mind that killing other DGs is not what its about in the end, and a general that has no good burst abilities can still be game breaking if he concentrates on strategy rather than taking out enemy dg's.

And what i said about minions beeing cannon fodder that just applied to the standard minion (meaning minotaurs and archer, priests are hardly cannon fodder) and the special minions of a general should be those worth microing. Although minotaurs and archer are rather weak right now a low lvl regulus is simply pushed off bc he cant take the damage they deal for too long. he has to wait until his own units arrive from the portal or a friendly general quickly sends in a few minos and archers, now there is a basis for battle and whoever wins starts pushing towards enemy citadel. A general simply shouldn't care for the death of such low lives as minotaurs are, but they come in handy in many situations...

For special minions there are nearly unlimited ways to make them interesting. Erebus could spawn suicidal ghouls with explosives wich run up to the enemy and explode causing good aoe dmg. and infantry killed by his coven nightcrawlers could be resurrected as an undead version of what they were before, now fighting under erebus' control and taking 300% dmg from light and garlic ...

thanks mooglepies for pointing those things out, i think i didnt make myself clear in my first post

go0f

Once again Mooglepies speaks for me and most of the community I should think, with some well reasoned and practical solutions.

Can't we just fly him to the studio for a sit-down with Tyo?

I mostly agree with mooglepies, also frogboy said they might delay game so they can make bigger changes so I think for now we might want to stick to medium sized changes until the delay is confirmed or not which is when it would be good to tell devs of our big ideas. Goof I do not think grunts are cannon fodder cause I have been several levels lower than my opponet and continue get killed byt him/her/comp when I win because I upped my grunts alot.

I have some ideas to propose later, but I would like to know what the Dev's take is on this. What kind of capability for change in General's gameplay do we have? Small (tweak numbers here and there), Medium (Add, Remove, Modify or Replace abilities with completely new ones, change the items the generals can buy etc) or Large (Change gameplay stuff, like allow the minions to have abilities, set up waypoints etc)?

EDIT: Is what we're seeing even close to what you have in mind for the final result? Or are the things that are missing from Beta2 the part of the puzzle that will transform the generals to what was advertised? There's no point in making major change suggestions if what you have in store already addresses these points.

Having this information would allow us to make suggestions that are actually feasible.

Okay. Some General ideas in Small, Medium and Large The way I have it done is to make it progressively more RTSey the futher I go. It is advised that you implement the previous difficulty levels, which I left out to save on space (so, using Medium changes means you should implement Small ones too)

SMALL: Make generals weaker and minions stronger. They should have to rely on their minions a LOT more they currently do.

MEDIUM: Make items the generals buy add buffs to the army as a whole. The General unit should be a special unit (think Tanya in Red Alert, or something) General's abilities should be less agressive and more defensive, with a few buffing abilities thrown in. -more ideas on they way when blood returns to my brain.

LARGE: This one is the most wildly differing for me. Even for myself, there are different visions of what the Demigod general should do (should I see a shrink?).

VISION ONE: This will be a tactical RTS witout the need for resources and building skills. Your minions spawn from a special building (or portal) in the base, and summoning them will cost gold (make them cheap-ish). Your minions will either run to your general, or to a waypoint on the map. Finally, there should be more than four types of minion, perhaps they can also recruit minions from the other team? Imagine you find your giants turning on you .

VISION TWO: This one doesn't require resources either, but you can make buildings (They'll prolly be abilities or maybe extra buttons on top of the summon minions ones). You make different buildings, which spawn the minions you want. Now you could either make them spawn at a fixed time, or with gold. For the non-gold one, you might want it to happen say, every minute and the power and frequency etc, can be upgraded from either the shop, or from your leveling tree thingy (I can't remember what it's called).

VISION THREE: This one doesn't need you to make resource structres, but it does greatly help. You could make a structure next to the gold mine like an ore processor, that say doubles gold income for the generals. You cannot capture the mine without destroying the processor, so it works as a capture lock as well. The UI will have to be changed for this. Perhaps not quite so drastically, but I was thinking adding an extra "level" to the arch the minions follow (It could be like a minion wheel )

Well, that's my contribution. Thanks db0 for the guidelines

EDIT: I just made it easier to read, removed stupidity, and fixed spelling

well i havent played as a general but i agree on several points (please excuse my vagueness while i try to avoid having a wall of text)

• generals should definitly not be able to hold there own agains an assasin in one on one combat
• generals should get a different armour set focusing on auras and aoe effects
• generals skills should prolly focus more on auras and passive abiltys
• generals should definitly be able to have more control over personal units and maybe control grunts slightly ( like srtting way-point or rally-point flags or something)
• there should be more variation in units ( like generals have specified group upgrades or what not cuz having all the same unit is dull)
• generals should lead there troops in too battle ( mostly for the sake of the raise dead Wards they use)

about how it was mentioned that you dont equip your commader with items in supreme commander you do however upgrade it with different items ( this makes a lot more sense than "equiping" because of the setting however the concept is still the same) such as gun mounts cruse missles and nukes though you have the option to equip it with things like an enhanced assembeler or assembly drones instead depending on style.

erm... about the soul reaper idea i think there might be like... copyright issues or something. its really to much like the "Reapers" from the Vampire Earth novels

well anyways thats some of the point i think are important... i sumed this up from the first page because all the walls of text were giving me a headache so if im just restating (well more than i intended to restate at least) stuff already covered... well then just ignore me

Just a head's up that we are reading through the comments and taking ideas presented here. They may not manifest themselves in the game exactly as mentioned here but I think you'll be able to see how the discussions influenced how generals have been implemented in upcoming builds.

If the stick is wading through 160 odd posts of long eye-bleedingly small text then the carrot is knowing that it makes a difference.  Thanks Frogboy

edit: Firath, Frogboy is Brad Wardell (CEO of Stardock, the company publishing this game)

dodnt wry firath I feel the same thing sometimes cough cough all the time. but yeah ty frogboy i no what your realy thinking when u read this post," just end already. 7 pages isnt enough. Nooooooo not another 5 paragrapgh reply i have to read, will this day ever end."

This is just something that occured to me. Why don't we have the troops buff the general?

Just hear me out. If generals would be made weaker (they should be made weaker imo), and their troops a bit stronger.

They could make it so the two would complement each other. Let's just say that you get the choice of attacking with your troops, attacking with your general or attacking with both together. If a general goes out alone, he would be something like 25% of an assassin. If his troops would go out alone (full complement mind you) they would also be something of 25% strenght of an assassin. Now these on theirselves would already be strong against grunts (or start out weak and level a bit, let's say they have 3 veterancy levels), and they can be bothersome against assassins.

Now, the general would give an aura that buffs his troops, and makes em something like 45% of a assassin (at same level and with an equal amount of investments as an assassin made in his gear)

And make the troops inspire a general. Afterall, a general is also influenced by his troops as vica versa. That way an general would become like 65% of a assassins. The total would actually be a bit (not much mind you) stronger then a assassin. This might seem imbalanced, but a general has a couple of things going against him.

first, he has to be on the field, risking death.

second, the total power of a general goes down the more troops die, which would bring him below assassin's strenght. He could call in reinforcemnts, but that's gonne take time (casting) and mana, which he at that moment is not using for other stuff (like casting slow or feeding off a assassin for example)

Also, for protection of the generals, you can have troops sacrificing themselves for the general (adding to total hp or somesuch thing). This to prevent things like a one hit snipe insta killing a general.

Also to improve intrest in the troops of a general, it would also be interesting to give them certain benefits (like beeing able to capture a flag, but during the time that they are capturing they can't fight, and no opponents may be present in a certain area.

Just thinking out loud here

i think with some number shifting it could be done, and not a lot would have to be changed to animations or things addad (xept for more different units, those really HAVE to be implemented )

irong interesting idea, I think that could work well except make it general is 45% of an assasin. To stop from 1 hit ko's i think as i said earlier generals health should only decrease a little bit but their attack sucks so much. That way assasins cant just pwn then real quick.