The first would be cool, the others, I'm not sure about. 2 and 3 would be more liable to piss people off than to make them go "omg that was awesome when we randomly got sacked by a monster that was supposed to be on our side", and if it's weak enough to be killed easily by the towers, what's the point other than a bit of visual confusion? 4 I like, that's cool, but keep the rewards relatively small so that tacticians who spend more time flanking and stuff can still fight effectively, instead of eventually having no prayer. 5 WTF!? Wrong game, and if that's supposed to be witty, it just flew so far over my head it hit mars.

The only deciding factor in a competitive team game like this should be the players' ability, not random events.

i like #3.

I like having fun - I`m not looking to Demigod as the next candidate for Olympic sport in 2010. My suggestion for randomness is for subtle randomness: I am not at all suggesting that the premise of the game be betrayed, or that its tight flow be fundamentally destroyed. And since this is a skirmish game, I want to see stuff that will help provide a fresh experience after the umpteenth time playing it, just as I`d *still* like to see in Sins Of A Solar Empire; the more elements that do that, the longer I will be playing the game.

Unique units to each Demigod? Sounds interesting. I`d still like to see tailored unit graphics/animations though.

Btw, part of playing well is dealing with random events... the random events your opponent puts before you. What I propose therefore is nothing beyond the ken of any serious player to deal with.

actually in sins of a solar empire all the competitive players played with random resources and random planets..

It forced you to adapt your strategy to your starting location instead of using the same build orders every time.

But a big powerful monster randomly spawning and attack people? No.

It might be cool, however, if you had a flag at the middle of the map and after capturing it, 60 seconds latter a powerful monster would spawn and killig it is worht a good deal of xp/gold for your team.

But you'd have to be highish levels and work together to kill it, and both teams would be wanting to kill it.  If you sspawned it in the begining of the game then the center would basically become off limits.

something like on the lava map would be good place, that nook to the side.

no. 3 is interesting.

But I agree that it should spawn at center or in other neutral place. Price for it should be some cash/xp/items or maybe some efect which will last some time.

But it would be awesome. ;[

I'll just happy to have an option to play with totally symmetrical maps (Beta1 map) or play a non-symmetrical randomly generated map with features 1-5 in play. Then I can have fun with the random map, and if someone wants to prove to me that they got robbed, we can start up a symmetrical one and show them who's boss (probably them).

Yes, but that doesn't mean squat when due to random chance your opposition doesn't get judged that way. The unforeseen threat should be your opps fault.

Obviously I disagree with those who believe that more varying elements would be unacceptable in multiplayer. To the developers I say this: I hope that you will consider things such as these for at least single-player. Its going to be fairly easy to exhaust a static & wholly predictable array of game elements in single-player, and I hope a nod will be given to those who will be playing this game primarily in that mode if nowhere else (all due respect to onliners...).

I don't like any of these ideas except #4. 

#1 is the general's ability.

#2 and #3 take away a key compnent of the game, that is eveything is supposed to be constant except you, so that you may be judged worthy of becoming the new god.

#4 cool, no level cap.  I like it for personal pride.  I also think that the bottom player stats upgrade should have more lvls.

#5 huh?

Lots of games have elements of chance to them, I don't see why that would imply less skill.  It just means obsessive people can't figure out a precise optimal sequence that works every time.

I suppose one thing to do might be to assign each creep a points value and have both portals spawn random creeps adding up to a similar value each wave, but honestly individual creeps are fairly insignificant so it's just fiddling around the edges.

In Counterstrike, sometimes you flick your wrist in response to a sound behind you and get a lucky head-shot.  That's part of the game, it doesn't take out skill, people with good reflexes, good aims and good tactics are still score significantly better.  Ok, so when you do get that lucky head-shot then people call you "lucker", accuse you of cheating, and probably kick-ban you, but that's because the game is full of rude idiots, not because the randomness is bad.