I second strikersgun's comment.

 Lets see what we can get when following these principles:

1. Player should always remain in complete control of his Demigod (meaning that a rightclick somewhere on the map is always a move/attack order for your Demigod, F1-F3 is always "use item" and 1-4 is always the abilities.)

2. Players should be able to micromanage their own troops if they want to but it should also be possible to just give very general orders to your army for those who don't like micromanaging.

4. It may make use of the fact that you can select/lock on units using the left mouse button

3. It shouldn't need more than 3 Buttons

Solution:

Button 1 :

when pressing it all your troops attack/move to the position of your cursor. If you select a friendly Unit or Demigod they will follow it and priests will focus on healing that Unit; if it is a friendly structure/flag they will gather around it in a logical sense (melee towards enemy direction, ranged behind them).

This should also cause all towers from Rook to target the unit you are hovering over

Button 2 (only works if you have a own unit selected with left mouse button) :

when pressing it all own troops of the same type as the selected move/attack to the position of your cursor (and the other stuff described above).

Button 3 (only works if you have a own unit selected with left mouse button) :

when pressing it the selected unit moves/attacks to position of your cursor.

If you want to make it even simplier I could live without Button 3 I think, however I really want to see squad based control in.

I don't share your view that generals with direct control over creeps versus assassins would be impossible to balance, it would only be impossible  to balance if assassins don't take skill to master and we all do want that assassins do take skill to master. It might be hard to balance but considering that the more generals there are in one Team, the more devastating the AoE effects of enemy Assassins become it might even be necessary to give generals direct control over their troops to balance teams of many generals vs teams of many assassins.

I honestly don't care too much about a perfect 1vs1 Balance , this may sound strange from someone who was #1 in SupCom 1vs1 but Demigod is a mainly a Team Game and should be mainly balanced around 3vs3 and bigger games unlike the usual RTS which is balanced around 1vs1. I mean did Blizzard care about 2vs2 or bigger games in their balance for Starcraft or Warcraft III, did GPG care about 2vs2 balance in supcom so why should Demigod care too much about 1vs1 which won't be very popular.

A few abilities i imagine the genarals could have (most of them are probably unbalancable...)

1) minion indirect control type abilities: Setting a point where all the minions in a certain area converge, "follow me" type ability, teleport all the minions of a given area to another area

2) minion spawning: spawning AI controlled minions, spawning "defensive" creatures that stay in the region where they are spawned (ex: you spawn a dragon tied to a chain and the creature stays in a given radius of its spawn point), spawning a limited amount of more powerful creatures over which the demigod has full control and not indirect control,

3) minion unspawning ability send a mob back from where it came from at a high cost and with a long cooldown

4) abailities to increase the creatures "naturally" spawned through the portals or to make portals spawn an extra wave of minions

5) passive boost to minions aka the fire aura spell of TB but more diversee and effective, active minion boosts abilities ex: for x seconds creeps do massive damage or recieve near to no damage

6) "the more the merrier" type abilities ex: each minion does x more damage where x is the number of minions in the region

7) unit healing

I believe each general demigod should have one spawning type ability and one indirect control type ability over the ai controlled  as well as buff/unbuff creature spells

I prefer the ideas where the guard creeps have only limited commands, such as "guard me" and "attack target".  Basically, your guard creeps should stay with you most of the time.  They'd be stronger than portal creeps and should be upgradeable (or level up on their own) with basic stat increases.

The guard creeps should have also some abilities that can be upgraded (perhaps when the demigod upgrades, they get an extra skill point specifically for their guard creeps' upgrades).  I've always liked the idea of exploding minions, where, when commanded, they'll run up to a target and self destruct.  On such a command you could increase the respawn cooldown time to balance it out.  Also interesting would be a berserk ability, where your guard creeps get a damage boost, but go on a rampage until dead.

Demigod Generals

What would I like to see?

Vast Tech Tree with Several Different sections including Skills, Monsters, Fortifications, and Enhancements. 

Area Effect Control over Naturally Spawning Creeps

Ability to Generate & Summon Beasts in your Area Effect and through Portal at will, but dependant on Cost. 

Generals can not wear or use Armor, Items, or Artifacts.

Generals shouldn't level up. Progression of a Genral's advancement should be tied to three things: A seperate resource pool generated by monsters, gold, and how long the game has progressed.  

Generals can Agment the Elemental Nature of Monsters 

Explaination:

Using a system of points earned from Monsters within an Area Effect, Gold, and the Duration of the game, I'd like to progress my General within tech tree of units, skills, and fortifications that I want to appear and when. This is to say that I feel the ideal General should not be tied to levels, and should not have to gain experience points. Instead, they should be able to gather the "Energy of the Fallen" (those who die within a large AoE which determines a General's Control realm), and use it along with Gold to improve their ability to perform in the game.

For sake of Example and explaination I'll relate to these areas in the following:

"Energy of the Fallen" or, the Energy emitted from fallen dead within a Genral's AoE ring will be called EP.

The sate of progression in the game, the natural upgrade of units and buildings through time, will be called Stages.

Stage 1 - Beginning of Game

Stage 2 - Improved Units

Stage 3 - Seige Upgrade to Buildings

Stage 4 - Final Stage, Access to Everything.

Let's assume such a system was in play. I could desire Winged Angels from the portal, generate plant creatures within my AoE, and I want to create a temperary fortification to distract my enemy's assault on my towers. These facets can be goals of mine, and each have different requirements I have to meet first. In order to bring angels from the portal, I would likely have to spend more gold than EP, not to mention the game would also have to be in the proper Stage. For Angels,  the game would need to currently be in Stage 4 for this to occure.  I feel stages should not be influenced by Generals, as in large games one General can spend their entire time farming resources to invest into  quickly advancing the entire army. Since this is a natural progression in the game, the ability to purchase said units should appear in my Tech Tree, or General's Shop, but has no relation to me having to purchase or invest into unclocking Angels.

Perhaps I'm the Queen of Thorns and I want to summon plant golems around me. Since I feel all Generals should have a  "Command Radious" or Area of Effect ring (similiar to that of the Teleport ring) - this will allow multiple Genrals  in play to have influence over certain creatures without intrupting play of other Generals. This also enforces Generals being on the field instead of sitting pretty in the base. But again, Plant Golems.  After I've accquired considerable amounts of EP and Gold, I should be able to spend points within my Tech Tree on the ability to Summon Plant Golums. Once I purchase the ability, I have it for the remainder of the game. This allows me to invest EP into the ability, instead of Mana, and have creatures appear around me.

Why EP instead of MP?  I feel that when you destroy an enemy, you take their souls and then twist them into your own forces. Simple as that. Energy can not be created nor destroyed, merely manipulated.

What if I want to summon a Fortification? Instead of healing buildings, I should be able to protect them with short-lived forts that only survive for a certain amount of time. To clarify, they naturally decay over a period this ensures people can be out on the field protecting buildings throughout the game. A fortification can increase the HP and Attack power of a tower for instance, and also absord much of the blow from oncoming attacks until it is destroyed. This can allow time for reienforcements to arrive and and also give time for the General to summon more units to protect the location. I feel that fortifications should be very costly, high cost in both EP and Gold which makes them hard to maintain over a duration of the game. 

  The more I play the game, the more units I have access to, including spells, armors, fortifications, etc. The more Rare and the more powerful, the more limited you are in bringing that unit, and the more costly it is! I could decide to have an entire army of small, whimpy cannon fodder soldiers that I could just keep throwing at the enemy's Demigods over and over and over. This would allow me time to act as I keep them busy stuck in the swarm of endless masses. But this could be countered by powerful AoE abilities that the player may have brought along, which opens up another can of worms.

  This system will eventually require good players to bring various things to counter other players, allowing them to plan ahead and keep things 'just in case' another player decides to go one way, they can act enough. But it's all based on how much they've pre-planned their tactics well before the game has even begun. I could utilize spells which make my units immune to damage for a limited time, and my enemy has utilized a large force of creatures which specialize in dealing damage. In order to counter me, the enemy could have something up their pocket that cancels all immunities; furthermore, I could cancel their ability to cancel my ability by using a dispel or addition 'anti-magic' protection which wards off enemy spells for a limited time.

In short, being able to buff, guard, heal, and de-buff monsters within my AoE for a cost of EP and Gold. 

I think what would be awesome would be to have the Queen of Thorns cavort about in a lewd fashion.

I think each general should have multiple unique creep types, for example, the QoT could have ent things and also dryads .. lithe creeps not unlike the QoT herself.

Generals should be able to compete equally with Assassins, or there is not much point in the class.

One way to do this might be to have the General able to spawn a small group of 'super creeps'. These could either be assigned to protecting the General or sent to some other point on the map. The General should have lots of buffing powers affecting creeps, both their sides normal creeps and the 'super creeps'.

Well most of what I think have been said - own creep control, buffs and such but I haven't seen this:

Giving the generals units a special ability which only they can cast. you can implent this by giving a special key to that ability which when you press it, all your nearby units or the one you selected (metter on how you control them) cast that spell or even more keys to more then one ability.

the main point is to let them be more than just normal creeps that attack but making them special.

with all that, thanks for sharing us and let us the ability to suggest ideas.

In my opinion, Generals should not have control over the portal creeps.   If they did, the game would be impossible to manage as an assassin opponent as the general could focus the creeps on specific building or hold them off and attack "en masse".   Generals would be majorly overpowered if this happened. 

However, I see the generals having a small retinue of unique troops that are specific to their style/character.   These troops should by default protect the general and attack enemies/buildings that are in range.  They should have powers that can be "purchased" by leveling up the general and then access using the skill buttons (we'll need more than 4 I think).    The troops should have to stay close to the general to benefit from buffs, but if the general wants to risk his troops by sending them far away, that should be an option (attack here command, defend here command, assist this target, attack this target).

I don't think base building really fits with the overall feeling of the game.   I would vote to leave buildings out of the game, at least as troop producers.

Generals should have skills that buff their retinue and other surrounding creeps, provide new more powerful types of troops (for the retinue), increase the # of retinue troops, and a few offensive skills/debuffs to provide some protection in 1vs1 battle.   

Generals need to be strong enough to take a few hits from an assassin, but should not be able to kill a fully healthy assassin without the help of his retinue.

Generals should feel like assassins but instead of direct damage skills, they should have support (buff / debuff) and troop producing skills.

First Thank you I am glad to finally see that the game devolvement if focusing on the RTS Side.

1.)    Generals should have a barracks.

They get to choose which creep is being built based of the level of the Hero.

They get to update the creep for example for Tech 1-3

They should also get to update armor and attack (IE it should cost gold)

They get to build a unique Guard.

2.)    Creep Micro is needed but in groups for example a typical creep wave is seven Creeps you should get to move each creep wave for example u click one creep and the group move with him with wave points.

3.)    The General should have team damage and health that not only bust the creeps but    

All allies creeps and DG’s

4.)    The unique guard should be a controllable mini DG that would set off DG mines. The guard should also be able to capture flags.

5.)    The General should have a spell to open a brief portal of one creep wave as reinforcements with a 60 sec cool down.

6.)    The general should be able to build defense structures and have the skill to bust damage and amour.

1. I think Generals should have no control over their portal spawned army because that is what gives experience how is anyone going to get experience to level if their is no one to fight. (ie general just builds and army and holds them back for one big mass wave)

2. Generals should be able to create an unique unit out of a barracks that it can control via a Supcom or RTS style. (1 unique creep per portal wave of creeps) can build more at a huge cost of gold.

3. Generals should have skills or use gold that buff the hitpoints, armour, attack of it's army both unique and portal.

4. Generals should have the ability to build base defenses and have skills or use gold that increase buildings attack, hitpoints.

5. Generals should give a rally cry (boost of attack and hitpoints) to creeps when it ventures out of base to frontline attack the little folk like it when a big wig sticks his neck out.

Supreme Commander style RTS might sound good, that would be impossible to balance

I agree this is just not logical the way this game is being played out.

Per above - any RTS that appears is likely to be fairly stripped down and streamlined; RTS only in the sense that you will have some degree of unit control over a squad.  Even that isn't certain, at the moment. I'd be surprised if Generals had the ability to create defensive/offensive buildings or generate creeps from a barracks.  IMO it would work better with current gameplay mechanics to generate guard creeps on the fly, spell or channeled structure-based generation (i.e. lay an egg, plant a seed, etc.).

I love this idea.  It gives the general an automatic balance and if careful with his units, it gives him a way to dominate opponents after a certain number of waves.  The problem with this to me is, what if I like to throw my unit against impossible odds.  I may have just killed 2 demigods, but I am now crippled much more than the demigods who are back to full strength after ~30 respawn time.

who says creeps can't go back to the health crystal?