You have the best ideas on this forum I hope Gaspowered takes notice to your posts. I am all for adding these changes the depth of gameplay would increase 10 times what is it is now because as someone else said you wouldn't HAVE to have giants to win but could focus on a certain creep and go full minos, archers, priest or whatever. +1 to you sir!

B-E-A-UTIFUL idea!!! Love every bit of it. Ofcourse there would need to be some balancing and/or slight editing, but other than that it's great.

i really like this idea... so much i'm going to add it to the OP.  being able to sell (dimishing return of course) would makes strategy so much more interesting and dynamic.  good job

Nice idea, but this could be easily abused by griefers/lame teammates who wanted "x item" and didn't have the gold for it.  Want that Godplate but don't have the cash?  Quick hit up the citadel, sell off all your unit upgrades that your teammates spent money on, and off to the item shop you go.

Instead of selling maybe the upgrades could just be traded or exchanged?  A little more complicated that way but less abusable.  Although, being able to sell/trade minion upgrades would put a little too much focus on micro managing reinforcements for my liking.

No need for points in my opinion. How about a bank?

Ok, it probably needs more explanation on my part.

So -> The Minion upgrades will have a small text box somewhere, near the war rank or something. A player will not be able to buy an upgrade directly. Instead, he will just type in the text box, the ammount of money he or she is willing to "Bank". All the gold that all the players have banked will also be displayed somewhere on the Minion upgrades tab. Any player can invest the money in the bank into a minion upgrade, but can NEVER subtract from it. Once money is banked it stays in the bank, and can only be assigned to the minion upgrades. That way, the diminishing return will be easy. Selling an upgrade would just put the gold back in the bank, diminished return of course.

Also, this could be used for the other citadel upgrades. Like tower HP + regen, creep armour, Xp rate, etc....just a thought.

i like all these ideas ... but it could get a lil overwhelming. I think to keep it simple but on the same line, would be just to increase how many, of each grunt, that will come out of the portal, Along with some specific grunt buffs.
Adding different types of minions would get a lil too confusing i think.

Suggestion:

Upgrades

Minotaur I - adds 1 more to each wave.
Minotaur II - increase max health by 75.
Minotaur III - Adds 2 more to each wave.
Minotaur IV - they gain +10 dmg and +5% attack speed.
Minotaur V - Adds 3 more to each wave.

Archers I - increases their health by 125.
Archers II - adds 2 more to each wave.
Archers III - Increased range by +2 (enough to be able to avoid tower dmg) and dmg by +6.
Archers IV - Now aim for vital organs. 2% chance of dealing 2.5x dmg critical hit.
Archers V - Adds 2 more to each wave.

Priests I - adds 1 more to each wave.
Priests II - adds 1 more to each wave.
Priests III - increase heal rate (how often they can heal) by 15%.
Priests IV - increase max health by 100. Priests cannot be knocked into the air.

Angels I - Their attacks now cripple, reducing movement speed by 3%.
Angels II - When they die, alllied units within 20 yards are healed for 300 health.
Angels III - +10% attack speed.

Catapaults I - increase dmg by 8 and now do additional dmg in a small radius.
Catapaults II - add 1 more to each portal.

Giants I - Movement speed and attack speed is increased by 10%.

i also see where ur comin from. AND, i think an option for this would be a great idea (Classic citadel, Advanced citadel).

but i have to argue the point you made on generals being the main source of citdel advancement. I play both sides equally, however, even when i play general, chances are i choose the assassin side of it. But when i play, i assist as much as i can with citadel advancement because advancing myself would only benefit me, not the team.
Either way, both the citadel and urself should take equal amounts of focus, regarding equips, upgrades etc.

Even though generals tend to be more on the micro-management side, i dont think making the minion upgrade tree more sophisticated will help in increasing strategy as such. what ive suggested, requires strategy in itself anyway. Its a more viable suggestion anyway since it only requires added properties and not new designed minions and abilities. I could be wrong but thats my take on things. Simplicity can = effectiveness, just depends on how its done.

correct me if ive taken ur point of things the wrong way.

well the ammount of work that this would take is probably slightly more than GPG is willing to put into this game so our hopes and dreams lie with the modders i think.  from what i've gathered this will probably playout with custom matches being set up with diffrent mods to make the matches more or less stratigic.  for this one i can see two seperate mods: Minion Expansion Mod (which would add in the new tab with all the new upgrades) and a Citadel Bank Mod (with a gold pooling system for buying and selling upgrades)

all of this would probably be selected at the game lobby and downloaded through impulse.  all we can do now is polish the idea untill the SDK comes out and allt he talented programmers in the community comeout to better the game.

How about an item you can buy that allows you to take control of a wave of units? So for exaple, you buy this item... let's call it "minion mind totem". When you use it (make it a consumable, or a re-usable with recharge time) all  allied minions surrounding your DG in a certain radius come under your control, like the general's minions. The obvious use of this would be to herd your own bunch of minions, wait for another wave and then folllow for a double hit. Plus you could stop them taking the AI path and make better use of them.

Also I'd like to see another item that works in a similar way... Let's call it the "Horn of Traitors". Similar cast to the above idea, but any Enemy minions within your radius will switch to allied. Then you could cast your Minion mind totem, and take control of them. So imagine trying to capture that portal flag, you make the enemy minon wave turncoat. then it captures. then bam, another allied minion wave rolls out.

Another item I think would be great would be a skill or citadel upgrade (pehaps at level 20 if a skill or war rank 10 for citadel)  that's available to all DG's.
This upgrade will allow a demigod (or all on a team if a citadel upgrade) to carry 1 extra inventory item and 1 extra consumable item.

Now for another idea! New flag types. How about a movement speed flag (+5%) or an item portal flag! This item portal flag will only be activated by standing at it for a time (maybe 15 secs) and then a random item will teleport in for you to pick up. Once you pick it up, the portal beccomes inactive to you for 45 secs before you can activate it again. At any time between this anyone else can stand there and wait for an item. If you walk off the radius it is reset to neutral. If an enemy dg comes within the radius it stops activating to prevent an item appearing. So what items are we talking about.... generally consumables like mana pots or tp scrolls or universal gadgets. Maybe a 1% chance of a 1000 gold hit or something.

Just my ideas for now....

I think these two are great ideas. I do fear a balance issue with the first though, if a general stacks up max minions, and then also mind controls a wave of creeps, they might be unstoppable, especially with priests in the wave.

The extra slots sound like a great idea. I think this would work end game. Not exactly sure when I normally reach Warscore 10, but level 20 should be good. You'd probably get insane stacking of +speed, +health and stuff but that might actually be fun. If you reach those high levels you are pretty equal anyway so one extra chance to get an item that might beat their strategy could be cool.

That, and I think towers would fall like match sticks pretty early on in the game. You'd have plenty of melee creeps to take the tower damage for you while you pummel away at the tower, and even after that you'd have enough priests to keep you up.

I think I'd prefer a major boost of tower strength, even better than the best citadel upgrade for them now, but maybe lower their regen so that you can still get them down in the end, but they would not regen to full strength while you hug the crystal for a minute.

Well imo the whole thing about more expands is a bad idea (we are talking here about upgrades which, at least some of them, you just have to buy).

Even now, I'm spending so much gold on upgrades, it's enought to me to buy five ~1500 items whole game. Giants are much more important than new 10.000 armor (thats just an example). So no, I don't want to play without any item at all. Right now creeps are VERY imortant part of the game (easiest to win by creeps upgrade), and I don't think thats should change to make creeps even better. Better items are just impossible to afford in almost all games (except that really long ones or slaughters, when you have like 10+ kills after 15 minutes of playing). So, imo it's good as it is now with creeps. New options are always nice, but you guys forgetting what this game is all about. I don't want change to "who will upgrade citadel even better". It's too strong right now to make this part of game even stronger.