I think "unit control" needs to be handled carefully.  What happens if you're on a 2v2 map with one portal and two generals on one side?

I think the General should get his own dudes spawn from the portal that he can control, in addition to the regular dudes the assassins normally get.  Their abilities would then be aura specific and unit altering (upgrading units around them, and all units on their side).

Keep it simple, and it'll work well, IMO.

Well, i rekon control is good, but i would have opted for partial control, like banner carriers that you move and groups of your minions huddle around. It would lesen the uber micro balance issues but still allows for control.

I've seen several people mention the game SACRIFICE in other posts, but no one has bothered to explain why it is so cool and why it is such a good metophor that can work in Demigod.  First off, at least a couple devs need to spend some serious time on the game.  It's a genre bender where the player controls a wizard in third person, yet also summons a decent army of incredibly unique and diverse units.  Souls limited your army (certain units took multiple souls), and mana limited your spell output and the actual summoning of the minions.  There were powerful spells like summoning death itself, or massive tornadoes that literally sucked up units in a wild spiral and then threw them across the map (a fun camera ride if you got sucked up).

W,A,S,D keys controlled the wizard in third person.  The mouse controlled your minions.  Your camera was always stuck to the wizard.  If the player did nothing, his minions would simply follow him around and engage in combat enthusiastically whenever they could.  There were commands to bring them to heel if you needed to get through an infested area with your army.  You could also put them into formations, group them, and hotkey them.  One of the nicest parts, and the most appropriate for the generals discussions here, is that you could command them explicitly with the mouse.  This was great for running around with your wizard, but then being able to tell a certain grouping to focus fire on an enemy or veer off to attack a nearby target.  Other tactics included sending a group over a hill, suckering an opponent to a certain location, then simply commanding the hotkeyed group to attack from behind.  The only defensive tactic the player could use was to permanently attach a unit to a mana fountain - giving them fantastic regen rate, but tethering them permanently to that structure.  This was the only defense.

GPG would do well to take as much awesomeness from Sacrifice as possible.  Although they'll never be able to match the variety and uniqueness of the units - 9 levels of units and spells, each capable of being mixed and matched from about five different gods.  Each fantastically different from the next.  With only three different minion types, and maybe one unique per demigod, it seems a little pale, but I'm willing to give it a chance.  With just a couple of minion managing adjustments, a system similar to Sacrifice could work very well.

You don't control the reinforcements. Generals control THEIR own personal army that they can purchase from the shop (3 types there) as well as their own unique minions that they can summon.

Why do you have to bring up Sacrifice: now i am going to cry because they don´t make games like this anymore

Thanks for the info.  Can't wait for the next beta.

Sacrifice was one of the greatest games ever made.  I loved it and actually was unable to play until a few years after I purchased the game because my video card at the time couldn't render the terrain.  Even today the graphics aren't terribly dated and still looks decent.  Play it if you haven't the story arc is vast, and the options seemingly limitless.  On the other hand, however, I disagree with the assessment that Sacrifice gameplay should be put into Demigod.  The tenant of Sacrifice wasn't placed on mutiplayer.  I found the single player game to be much more fulfulling then the multiplayer experience.  The current control scheme of Demigod forces you to realize that it is a team game.  Furthermore I would find the forced thrid person viewpoint a problem in Demigod because it plays so much like Dota.  Map awareness is prominent factor and a third person view would entice singularity.  Even controlling multiple creatures became a hastle in Sacrifice.  If a minion went rogue, it basically died. Also, fighting outside your view and even commanding accurately was difficult.  The game became dependent on maintaining your minions to defend you, so number one they couldn't run off and number 2 you could control their abilities much more easily.  I would agree that they may want to give the game a once through to see what they might add to Demigod's current state, but as a whole putting sacrifice into Demigod would be like Blizzard's attempt to make generals your line of sight in War III.  If the developers haven't which I am sure they have, they should study what makes DoTA such an addicting and popular mod considering Warcraft III is such an old game.  Sacrifice is great, but not for Demigod.  Balance and cooperative play is what will break or make Demigod along with gameplay and map terrain, which will force players to win through advanced tactics and maximize their hero's strengths while minimizing their weaknesses.