As said on the tin. You spawn the max number of the toughest minion, and you gangbang your opponent. There's no strategy here. There's no minion economy. You just stay next to the health crystal while it's cooling down and spawn the lot, then, when they're dead, run away. Yes, it's a great feeling to watch your army CHAERG, but there's no intelligence to it.|||Indeed.|||Yes... there is certainly less skill involved without skills than assasins.|||Alright, I think I have some ideas for this but I'll put it here before posting at the Stardock forums.
Right now, I think we can all agree that Generals need some work. Generals typically summon all their units while at the health crystal, then go into battle with one big mass of units, including the General him/herself. This essentially makes them an "Assassin with pets". They play basically the same as an Assassin, except their damage decreases over time as their minions die.
When Demigod was first advertised, it was said that the Assassins were like RPG characters and the Generals were like RTS commanders. Currently, the Assassin Demigods are meeting this goal pretty well, and are generally fun to use if you don't worry about the current balance issues. However, Generals are nowhere near this goal.
I think a major part of the problem is that
there is nothing that minions can do that they can't do greatly better with the General helping out. You can't raid with them because they can't kill many towers and there isn't anything to raid anyway; you can't capture flags without the General; you can't take out enemy Demigods with them; you can't do too much to cripple the enemy creep support since there are so many creeps and the enemy Demigod can come quickly and kill your minions. You basically
need the General nearby to do anything, and there is no reason to split the minions and the General up anyway. This means that you will almost always have the minions and the General together in one big group, as we see occuring now.
So, for this to truely be like an RTS, you need to split your forces up. Being able to attack on mulitple fronts is one of the advantages that should belong to Generals. Currently, however, this is not worthwhile. We need to somehow make it so that units can accomplish stuff on their own.
My idea has several parts. First, we weaken the General substantially. The General himself should
not be able to take on an Assassin in direct combat without creep support. Having significantly less health would solve this problem, and would also help out elsewhere.
Having significantly less health forces the General to be more defensive. His minions all die if he dies, so he needs to be careful. He can't charge with his entire army without being careful, since a smart Assassin or team of Assassins can take him out and thus kill his army. He would need to stick around the towers on his side of the base, where he can take on enemy units and Demigods with the support of the towers. He would be able to venture out occastionally to finish off a weakened Demigod or kill creeps, but he would not be as adventurous as an Assassin.
This would put the emphasis on the minions, since they are the only ones who can do any significant offense for the General. Buffing the units themselves might not be necessary; to be honest, I'm not sure. But if the General is in his base, there needs to be a way to get the units to the battle where they can fight. The answer is: barracks.
I know, there is some question of whether we really want buildings in Demigod. And I agree, I don't want my General to be building an industrial complex with powergens, factories, and mass fabricators either. However, being able to build 2-3 barracks buildings would be great. The Generals can spend some mana or gold to set them up when they can get forward on the map, then retreat to safety if necessary. The barracks then builds units (either at a mana/gold cost or just automatically over time). The units are directly controllable, and are sufficient to make some progress in fighting. The ability to make several barracks would allow the General to fight on several fronts; the enemy Assassin can attack one group of enemy but the other would be able to continue destroying stuff. The Assassin could always destroy the barracks, cutting off the troop supplies and costing money for the General.
What does the General do during this time? Give him the ability to build towers at a somewhat-significant cost of either gold or mana. There would have to be a limit to how many he can have constructed at one time, but this would let him be useful in defence. He could even choose to build the towers near his barracks to establish a forward base of sorts.
All of this would give the General a much more RTS-like feel. He is much like a weakened ACU in Supcom; he can help out his units when necessary, and can build a few buildings to build those units, but the units need to do the dirty work.
I probably forgot something here, and there may be flaws in my idea that I haven't thought of yet, but I think this could be a good direction for Generals. What are your thoughts?|||It sounds like Generals aren't going to be majorly changed anymore though
|||No way. One of the new DG journals says
Beta 1 - engine test
Beta 2 - engine and Internet connectivity test
Beta 3 - gameplay/balance test
Surely Beta 3 can bring signficant changes.
I fully agree with your ideas Gnats3.|||Gnats, your idea is what they intended to do a long time ago. As development progressed, they said in their development diaries that they would make Generals closer to Assassins. The result is what we can see now : assassins with pets.
I think they realized it would be a nightmare to balance and that they had no time to do that, or maybe that Generals would be less popular than Assassins unless they had a real mini game to play (dedicated and varied units and buildings). With so few Demigods, they have to make each choice very popular, and they took the easy way to do so.
Maybe in Demigod 2, or an expansion, they'll come up with something more strategic, yet popular, fun etc. They have no time now I believe.|||DeadMG|||maybe we should get together and mod this in for around release?|||That could be cool
|||So...the whole rts thing is pretty much dead then?
Thank goodness i didn't preorder.|||Well,
technically the RTS is in there, it is just very... diluted.
Though you seem to hate base building (at least I think that was you) so you might not mind so much. It is just that right now you have a mass of units that you run around with instead of the normal RTS gameplay.|||Yeah, I am really not happy. I enjoyed playing the Assassins (Reggy my fav, always) but the Generals have been disappointing. Someone should mention to Frogboy that the game is made for the players, not the developers. In a nice way, of course.|||I have never really play dota much (i think i tried it once a long time ago), is the general in demigod just like dota? Or there was no general in dota? Can someone enlighten me if this game going to be more dota and no supreme commander?|||This situation smells like SupCom all over again; a good solid game with a great concept behind it, but just not pulled off very well.|||Good thing I got a free preorder then >.<|||Really, right now they might as well make the generals more like assasins if they're not going to make them more RTS-like, so that you at least get to use your demigod more.|||It was the MAIN feature of demigod : STR vs Action-RPG. Now it's just a Dota clone with few units. I want my preorder back if they dont change that
|||The problem is that a lot of the non-supcom-fans are fine with it the way it is; it is RTS-y enough for them. Those of us who came from Supcom, on the other hand, expected
real RTS and are disappointed.
Assassins are fine, and Generals
might have been fine, except they promised RTS and aren't delivering. If it had been "Assassins" and "Assassins who can summon a few bodyguards" from the start, it wouldn't be quite as much of a problem.|||And all you idiots chastized me when I posted months ago about no generals they are assassins with pets|||We didn't
have Generals "months ago." If you were chastized before that, well,
good. You shouldn't complain before you get the chance to try them out...|||I hope that they make them more RTS like, whatever they do. At least allow us to properly control our little summoned pets.|||Ze_PilOt|||Lets blame scathis for abandoning us
|||Is this what happens when a games creator leaves mid project?
I find the generals to be fun, but yeah, still way to RTS-lite and too much like assassins. I'm still going to push for the right changes. I don't care how involved Stardock is this is GPG's project first.
But hey if not, I see a very popular mod taking over the custom games :)
|||I tried to find all the info I could about Generals.
...
|||Kyrein|||5 Unclean Beasts versus my Torch Bearer.
|||I wasn't in beta 1 but I'm in beta 2 and I'm loving it already 
|||Sounds like fun. I would definitely play a mod like this.|||So like a Demigod RPG? Sounds good.|||Awesome!|||sounds like a lot of fun (and work for you^^)|||So far I have added an overland screen where you can move your leader unit (currently a Minotaur) around. If you right-click on an allied leader or structure (currently there is a 'Mill' structure), you will go up to your target, and then the conversation menu will open. I don't have it working on enemies right now, but I am going to have to re-work the whole ally/team system eventually >.< I have the callbacks an' such working so that you can get addition units (just stored in your character's data) from the Mill by clicking on a button, so that is working nicely.
|||Techubus
|||Yeah it is pretty awful. Not to mention a little over the top. I mean I get the concept of the story but like there was some line involving fratricide and I was like 
