Where'd you get 'I blame Stardock' from this? If anything, I blame myself. I looked it up, heard nice things from those places(Gas Powered wasn't mentioned), thought about it(I OWN Supreme Commander, bought it based on things I'd heard and read, tried to like it, disliked it. Another bad purchase. Gotta wonder why it was talked up.), then thought; "It might be OK, even if the multiplayer doesn't appeal. At least I can try it and find out."
Single-player's locked, recent efforts to join multiplayer games that are not self-created and vs non-AI have all ended in failure(The game does NOT like multi-tasking, and it seems to random-crash when I do so-can't explain why as I can't even see the FATAL ERROR; then there's the fact that cancelling a join attempt to a passworded game gets you trapped in a Join screen. I said CANCEL, NOT JOIN!), and the game itself feels dull, same as DOTA, which there have been comparisms to.
I can like what they've done here, and I do-for what it is. Make no mistake. It looks like a decent time-waster for the multiplayer-lover(Though I fear the hell a team of Rooks would inflict-they could push a lane, rip up a tower or two from the very start, all by themselves, and there wouldn't be a thing you could do to stop it, given the heal mechanic. It'd just go on and on from there. High risk, certainly. But big rewards to pushing that hard on a reinforcement route). Of course, I'm not a multiplayer-lover, so...maybe I'll learn to love it, someday.
I guess this is all a big 'buyer's remorse' thing.
But regardless, there needs to be something....more to this. Maybe 'world events' or something; Towers being rebuilt...or sabotaged. A sudden or buyable rally(Attack, defence boost) for a side. Things to really shake things up as time goes on, or allow a losing team to rally, or a winning team to ensure victory. Since we've no idea what's in the fututre, we don't know if such is planned, so all that can be done is throw it out there.
And why do the general's totem soldiers(and even the general's unique soldiers) have no abilities? If the generals are supposed to be RTS, then the troops need to provide more than just meat/damage-we can provide plenty of that ourselves, and can upgrade far more than them. Oak's on the right track-his allies supply him attack power, and he heals them for killing; there's a synergy there. None of the others really help-it's just more meat for the grinder.
I hope there are more choices in terms of troops at some point.
It's similar to what is in Sins of a Solar Empire except it also has a tournament mode where you play against the AI.
That's interesting, because I liked Sins quite a bit.