Generals should:

1) Be able to build a few (identical) barracks buildings.

2) Be able to create units (Ents, Yeti's, etc, not portal ones) from these barracks at the cost of gold.

3) Have DIRECT, INDIVIDUAL CONTROL of the barracks' units.

4) Have indirect (move in this general direction, guard me, etc) controls for portal creeps.

5) Be about half as strong (or slightly weaker) as an Assassin when on their own, and have passive abilities that buff their units and creeps (maybe a few cool activateable ones too).

Generals would get gold and XP from both their own kills and a little less when units kill stuff.  This and the passive auras would make it worthwhile to keep them on the field.  When I heard about this game, it sounded great because I could choose between Action/RPG and RTS depending on the Demigod I chose.  Having direct control of units makes it more like an RTS instead of just an Assassin who occasionally loses parts of his attack power incrementally.  If you don't want any micro, don't play as a General .  Having direct control would let you attack multiple fronts at once, which is definitely part of strategy!

Note: I didn't read most of the other posts in this topic, so someone could have said the same as me.

Even if most generals are going to be getting units from a barracks, I want one demigod who vomits up new units. For the animation if nothing else.

This one, only multiple squads possible and the general is it's own separate unit.  Upgrades, units and skills can be added to squads through level-ups, like how the archer, light tower, trebuchet adds to the Rook.

Generals themselves should probably focus on auras, indirect spells, and auto-attack.

Being able to send squads a distance away from the General would be beneficial, but probably broken as a lack of a tether and powerful squads would mean the general could squat in base.  Maybe use skills to lengthen the tether for the distance the squads can go though.

Has I imagine the generals.  I think the player playing a General, shouldn't control, himself/directly, the minions. Thats because the game is leaded towards the Demigods, and that would cut the feel. Instead he uses his Demigod to give orders, which means there isn't such a thing has cliking the minions. You select only places and objectives instead. Some points:

There could be a range, demarking how much far away can minions go away from the general. Thats because there is a necessity from a RPG opponent to have enemies to kill to evolve, and the RTS players couldn't split everything making it impossible for RPG to defend multiple places.

Then I would guess its important to think first and before, what tactics or strategies would be avaliable for a General player to peform. Respecting the area to where the minions are bound to the General, a squad could try get past the opponent front line from another side, to atack important structures.

The General should have sightly more minions. Form squads should be easy enough but not diretcly like selecting them. I see it like, you click a form squad button, then you click a couple of points on the map showing the squad the way to go accomplish objetive. There could be atack structure etc. Maybe generals could also indirectly lead minion to atack rear or back of enemies for surprise bonuses, so a RPG player should also tkeep this in mind, with his Demigod ready to act, when playing against a General. Maybe Generals could also have the ability to peform formations more accurately to protect ranged minions. Just really that they have some tactical choices, tactical bonuses when doing it correctly with the ability to indirectly control the minions.

[Player shouldn't feel they are more than the Demigod, he is the Demigod trying to ascend only. The others are companions of the same cause. If you could control minions directly it would be like the Demigod is just the leader of the group, not the player and the player must be the Demigod. Thats what the game is about]

random ideas how I imagine it but I didn't played yet.

Why not both?

I meant that each individual Demigod only had one type of barracks. It is fine with me if one Demigod vomits them up .

I really don't like squads; you usually end up with individual units doing things that you don't want them to do.

Some already implemented systems that prevent micromanagement:

1) Flags to control general interests for the AI. Examples: Majesty.

2) Flags and special areas to control interests and production rates of units. Examples: Globulation.

3) Squads in which composition is more important than micromanagement. Examples: Kohan.

I'd personally go for a mix of all 3. Get abstract sliders to control squads composition (or maybe a "squad designer", if you want a little more control), and then assign flags/areas for attack/defend/explore/support, assigning a desired number and type of squads to it.

Of course, they can also go for squadron or unit-level micromanagement, of course, but I'd rather think more "macro".

I know this may be blasphemy, but couldn't generals drop out 2 consumables and that be replaced with a move and attack button which commands their creep.  If not, Why not give them only 2 active abilities and the other two are attach here and move for the creep.  Their other abilities would be area effect abilities.  This gives a nice compromise, though minions are not selectables, they are under your direct control.

The more I think about it, the more it makes sense.  If we don't get direct contorl by selecting and ordering individual units, I would to have generals have only 2 active abilities and the othr two slots be filled with the move and attack button.  It makes a lot of sense and requires little change to the ui or programming.  Thoughts?

Some prety interesting ideas here.

Here's my 2 cents:

1) I don't want generals building barracks and such. Besides how hard that would be to balance, I don't think of generals as builders but rather people leading units in some way.

2) I do like the idea of being able to control or at least tell my units what to do as a general. But I also agree that the units should be intelligent enough to be very helpful to the general without having to micro-manage them.

3) I like the idea of letting units of generals be able to go capture things. That would make the general quite powerful right there and make it easy to justify having assassins be a LOT tougher than generals in 1 on 1 combat.

Sure there is.  A tether-based general is still going to have some tactical flexibility that assassins don't have, i.e. staying out of sightlines, firing range, etc.  Allowing strong buffs on minions within a short distance of the general makes sense, because if your minions are close enough get a proximity buff then you are in trouble.

i think it would be cool to have the creeps of the general be promoted like c&c did, but less units that way if you were a good general you could build powerful creeps, and the creeps would be as strong as your commanding ablity. but also think a general should have at least minimal control personally maximum would be better but balancing does come in greatly.