In my previous post I was talking about how the minions in the current build are next to useless and I made the suggestion that perhaps they can be improved with some passive or auto-cast abilities. I'd like to expand on this concept a little bit more as I think that this idea has merit and others seem to like it.

The idea to give minions abilities is not simply something that will make them more useful but also something that will greatly increase the variety and tactics that the generals can offer. I've been thinking that perhaps the best way to add such abilities would be in a way that woud allow a player to choose between them. Instead of simply having more expensive minion = better, we could have them with a selection of skills that the generals could pick and choose from according to his opponent's tactics.

The idea I have then is to have all minions of the same type at similar stats but each one would have a different ability. The cost should vary depending on how good overall each ability is, but ultimately it should not quadruple from the lowest to the highest minion.

To give you an example, lets see how the minotaur minion selection would be

• Berserker:
  
  • Ability: Berserk: When General dies, minion stays alive until the DG respawns and receives +100% Attack speed,  Damage and Movement speed.
    
  • Cost: 500
  • High Damage, Low Defense, Medium HP
• Elite Guard
  • Ability: Block: Enemy DGs either can't bypass the minion to reach the General or alternatively their speed is reduced by 50% when passing over the minion
  • Cost 700
  • Low Damage, High Defense, Medium HP
• Marauder:
  
  • Ability: Charge: When target (minion or DG) is not in melee range, the marauder can activate this ability and receive +100% movement speed for reaching the target. If he gets into melee, the target is stunned for 1 sec. (This should help Generals who would like to try to kill opposing DGs)
  • Cost 800
  • High Damage, Medium Defense, Low HP
• Martyr
  • Ability: Sacrifice: Minotaur receives 10% of all the damage dealt to the DG (so 20% for two of them alive)
  • Cost 1200
  • Low Damage, Low Defense, High HP

As you can see, this would give the General choices on which minion to take depending on if they want offense, defense or whatever. All Minotauts focus on some way protecting or assisting the DG directly. So this can be the concept for all minotaur minions (even ones that may be conceived in the future). Also, having a low enough cost even at the "best" level allows the General to buy one without suffering adverse consequences of spending so much money.

Now Generals can select a Minotaur minion who can fit their tactic or can assist them against opponent tactics. Do you have for example an opposing UCB who simply goes for the general, ignoring everything else? Then Elite Guards to stop him in his tracks might help. Do you have a Regulus who likes to snipe you from afar? Then some Martyrs can keep you going etc.

In a similar vain, here are my ideas for Archers and Priests. I will only list abilities for now as cost and stats can be provided by playtesting.

Archers

• Siege Archer
  • Ability: Explosive Bolts: High Damage to buildings
• Incinerator
  • Ability: Flaming Arrows: Target starts burning, suffering X damage for Y secnods
• Freezer
  • Ability: Freezing Arrows: Target's attack speed and movement are reduced by 5%
• Savage
  • Ability: Serated Arrows: High Damage to minions and creeps

So the archers are basically about passive abilties and you choose them depending on your purposes. Against Assasins you might go for Freezers for example, while against Generals you might want to take Savages.

Clerics

• Priest
  • Ability: Heal: As is now, an auto-casting healing.
• Cleric
  • Ability: Bless: Auto-cast skill which gives friendly minions and creeps +25% attack and movement speed
    
• Warlock
  • Ability: Curse: Auto-cast skill which gives enemy minions and creeps -25% armor and damage
• High Priest
  • Ability: Ressurect: Auto-cast skill which raises dead minions and creeps from the dead

So the Clerics generally focus on auto-casting items. As such they would benefit from abilities such as mana regeneration auras, reduced skill countdown bonuses (such as the citadel's) etc.

So whatdayathink? There's hopefully enough time to implement something like this before DG goes live or for the first patch