i think this would make generals too dynamic

I like a lot of these ideas, although I have a few questions:

How far should the increase spawn rate go? Currently the spawn rate is 30 seconds a wave. I think each spawn upgrade should take off 5 seconds and all the upgrades at once should make the spawn rate go no lower than 15-20 seconds a wave.

For the one time unit increase should it be something simple like increased health,damage, and numbers? Or something more complicated, like spawning a special creep that causes a lot of damage?

I think it would be better if the upgraded creeps replaced the lower ranked ones. Otherwise you'd have too many creeps on the screen at once and seeing certain DG would be difficult(*cough*Regulus*cough*). The same thing could occur with the "increase unit per wave upgrade."

Finally, I'm on the fence about whether the creep armor and weapon upgrades should effect DG. The effects should be small so people don't opt for getting Citadel upgrades to increase their stats instead of items.

It's very important for there not to be a spawn rate upgrade. Spawns are in sync. They're supposed to be.

ok, so spawn time seem out of the bag.... but what about a one time wave... so an upgrade that sends one wave of grunts upon purchase.  this way the normal spawn times still apply and syncing isn't messed up.  however you can still cause a good push for a tower or citadel is you time an extra wave propably.  and thought?

I think it would need some testing but it sounds like it would work. It might need a recharge or something similar so it couldn't be saved up and spammed near the end of the game.

agreed, to solve this (since having 3 sorcerers all with the same aura is pointless) it would probably make more sense to simply replace one of the 3 priests with the sorcerer... this way you still get the heals, but with a nice aura as well.  also enemies can pick off the sorcerer is the aura is bugging them

I don't really think that the solution needs to be so complicated, though perhaps you don't view it as a solution so much as an additional feature.  Personally I don't think new units are necessary, though I'm not opposed to them per se.  Your post is quite long so please pardon my picking and choosing a few points that are easiest to give feedback on:

First off my problem with a lot of your unit suggestions is that ultimately it just increases the total number of units present.  I find that inherently unfair to DGs like Erebus and Sedna, I think it would limit Regulus's and UB's build options, and it would be extremely beneficial to guys like QoT and TB.

Second some unit ideas are a bit redundant, siege archers and catapultasauri, for example.  

Third, some of the ideas could easily be tacked onto existing units without increasing the total number of units on the field.  Adding your sorceror aura to priests would have nearly the same effect as adding the sorcerors, especially if it had an amplified effect on the priests' damage.  The bombs for gargoyles could just be given to angels, because currently angels are an extremely low profile unit which seems best suited for interrupting HoL.  Perhaps some kind of AoE attack would make them seem more... angelic.

Fourth, the name of the game is still DG management and control, and this would shift the game's focus.  For example some items would see dramatically decreased usage with the presence of more meaningful unit upgrades.  Most of the more expensive items have diminishing returns on price/value, and their usage is linked to the usefulness of citadel upgrades.  Personally I would react negatively if I were riddled with doubt every time I got an item any fancier than Nimoth's.

Fifth, not all the units seem to serve a specific purpose.  Take trolls, what's the real goal there?  Personally I'd like to see more upgrades, even if they were temporary upgrades (btw I think temp upgrades could be really neat) which countered certain playstyles.  So say you're fighting a fire TB who's mowing down wave after wave, an upgrade which could reduce AoE damage taken by reinforcements by 50% for a while would be neat.  Say you have an UB who's inescapable, perhaps temporarily coating your troops' weapons with a crippling poison or adding a frost aura would be an interim solution?  I just feel that some of these unit ideas wouldn't really enable players to counter specific tactics, which to me would be the only incentive to increase unit spawn control.

Sixth, on your idea of increasing spawn waves, why not just have it increase both yours and your enemies' spawn rates so they remain synched?  Say you have way more unit upgrades than them, then logically both sides' waves popping out faster would benefit you, and it would also add some risk to the game, as you wouldn't know what upgrades they were sitting on.  You could even allow players to purchase negative spawn speed upgrades.  

I love the idea of buying an instant wave of units for only one side, though its price would probably need to scale with your war score and have a minute or two cooldown.

Lastly this post doesn't explicitly address the biggest problem with unit upgrades; upgrading units gives the opposing team far too much XP and gold.  That's gotta change before any new units are added to the field.

so all of these i can answer with one point.  the idea i had was not to increase the number of units that spawn... but to increase the variety of those spawning.  at the momment with full upgrades there are 16 grunts running out of that portal.  this means even if you bought all of the unit upgrades there would still be around 16 units.  my ultimate goal was to allow customization within the army so an army of full upgrades Minotaur Kings and Priests would be going toe to to with an army of normal minotauyrs and giants.  see where i'm coming from?  this way DG's lacking in AoE don't have to worry too much and can pick off the heavy hitters and healers still.

agreed some of the units need a bit of tweaking so any suggestions are apreciated... however here is my notepad doodles on what the functions of them were so far:

• Minotaur/Minotaur King
  • Cannon-Fodder/Anti-Grunt     ...    so basicly early game they don't do anything by fodder however after upgrades they do serious damge and can quickly overwelm non babysat enemy grunts
• Archers
  • Support DPS      ...    assist other grunts in taking out other grunts/DG's
• Priest/Sorcerrer
  • Support/DPS      ...    supports DG's and do lots of damamge
• Angles
  • Chase/Harasment       ...    basicly stop you from using attack interupt items and sometime kill you as you go back for crystal.
• Gargoyle
  • AoE Splash          ...     does damamge to lots of units close together
• Kamikazes/Catapultasaurus/Seige Archers
  
  • Seige/High Damage        ...      good for taking out towers and building... 
• Troll/Giants
  • Tank/High Damage         ...      trolls specificly can take a lot of damage, and when upgraded to giants can deal lots too.

however i'm always looking suggestions on other units that might be needed.  t here was a really good post thta i was looking for that listed a bunch of diffrent units but again can't find it.

yes that might work... however only problem i can see if that the game might crash if there are twice as many waves coming in a game... thinking big 5V5 games where there is already 80+ units on the map.

that said thou... what do u think?

Wouldnt it make more sense to give less of an incentive to buy unit upgrades?  If your problem is that the game becomes a race to see who can get giants first, rather than make it more complicated, make it so whoever has more minions less of an issue.  What you made here would create the same problem, just take it longer to show up, people would be rushing to get all those minion upgrades now, instead of just giants.  just my two cents.

Well first off, pretty good idea. But making the armor/ damage upgrade effect demigods probably wouldn't do much excpet make it a serious rush for those upgrades.

As for the units, I would nerph the seige archers range so that you dont end up with a massive amount of babysitting with tons of units being able to outdistance towers. And i would compleatly do away with the kamakazie idea, seeing as there would actually be a reason to leave them as they are.

The spawn rate idea would be cool, excpet you would have to make it multiple small upgrades (like 5, 1 seconed decreases.) As for increased units per spawn, i would make that per unit, except give it its own progress bar (you have to upgrade spawn rate of minotaurs, then archers, then priests, etc)

Other than that the rest of the ideas are great, and it would be really nice to do away with the race for giants

Interesting possibilities.  With that many options though, perhaps cost could become an issue.  For instance, you may need to make the whole tree for that creature type a similar price all together as buying the creature up front currently is, to encourage people to actually use all these options instead of getting more bang for buck from personal items.

thats actually pretty close to what i had in mind.  after a bit of searching i found the notes i did on the idea in my notebook.  here is what i had:

so you can see the idea was that each one can take out 2 others in a big circle. (i think Demigods would kind of count as Giants in the circle?)  what do u think?

You really put a lot of effort in these ideas to improve this game, I really like this idea! It would let you set a focus on what you want your troops to be good at.