I think you might have a little misconception of what generals are supposed to be.  Erebus and Oak, at least, can use their minions much like Rook uses his towers.  They're there, they're a considerable extra passive DPS boost, but they're not really focused on.  I suspect that's working as intended.

Sedna is far more minion focused, and hence requires a lot more awareness.  This might account for her holding the lowest win % in the pantheon.

The 3k gold figure is adjusted for that.  It's still very expensive if you get all 24.  Not so much if you go for fewer though.

Minions don't die/disappear when the corresponding idol is sold. This is the crux of the exploit.

Buy the three lvl1 idols, and summon your minions. You now have 6 lvl1 minions.

Sell the idols back. You still have 6 lvl1 minions.

Buy the lvl2 idols, and summon your minions. You now have 6 lvl2 minions, plust 6 lvl1 minions.

Rinse and repeat your way up the chain.

Note that if a minion is killed, you will be unable to resummon it if you do not have the corresponding idol.

Note again that the only limitation to this exploit is money. With enough gold, this can be repeated ad infinitum.

With the right skillset and items, a savvy player can build a virtually unstoppable army; one that can buzzsaw through even the most buffed UB or Rook as easily a plucking a flower.

The reason that players are doing this is primarily because they can; or rather that they feel that they have to, in order to be competitive in the rankings. 

As things stand now, for the honest player, sending one's minions into battle is like tossing puppies onto the interstate. Sure, you can always buy more puppies, but the whole thing gets pretty distasteful after awhile. 

IMO, the minion count should be doubled. Four of each instead of two. That would be a good start. In addition, all of the skillsets regarding minions need to be buffed a bit (+minionHP, +minion armor, +minion attack speed) etc,  as well as any and all items that give this type of bonus. Not a huge bump, mind you, but a bit. Minion damage now is still less than ideal, even with skills and items.

The bottom line is this: When I am playing as a true general, and I am fighting a pitched battle for posession of a flag, and I see the UB charging out of the fog of war towards me, my first thought is RUN AWAY! It shouldn't be this way. The generals still aren't on even ground. This is why so many use this exploit.

The game won't be truly balanced until this cuts both ways. When a buffed out Rook is sucking the last life out of a structure, and looks up and sees my army coming out of the mist, I want that player to have to stop and prioritize.

@Asyrin: Yes, I do not cheat with Generals.

I wont bother reselling to stack them but I always wind up with too many minions because I rarely lose them and I upgrade my totems throughout the match.

I play my General (Sedna) like an Assassin because her own summons sucks and her other skills support the team and the road to winning far better then her yetis.

To be able to summon yetis I must sacrifice something of following: 2 interupts, a nuke heal, good passive healing.
And to buff them further I need to sacrifice an additional skill.

I've gone into a Skirmish match, offline and tried this and I couldn't get it to work.  User error I'm sure, but I'm happy I have legitimate success with the Generals.

this does give generals another tactic to use that probably wasnt intended but if you use it wrongly you end up losing time and money. currently its part of the games so people need adapt their tactics, its hardly a win button lots of ways to counter.

buying all idols cost 16800 total if player saves the highest lvl idols he only loses money 25% of all other idols (10200) when they die so they lose 2550 gold.

if they had sold the highest lvl idols they lose the 25% of the extra 6600 those cost 1600 extra for a total of 4100 gold lost from them being killing or your own demigod being killed.

summoning all idols will land you on a timer 3 timesx30sec=90secs 3x the death penalty time.

is killing AI enmies over and over a exploit? most would probably not call this a exploit but is the AI demigods suppose to be the weak link in the chain. this is a tactic with no risk whatsoever except your giving other real player enemie DGs time to do the same.

if you see a path to victory seems silly to me not to take it, i just dont think the idol trick is always a good thing should be used only the right times against right enemie DGs. knowing when to use the trick can be a benefit but done wrongly it will end in a serious mistke.

I play lord erebus for his minions. I max out the nighwalkers, and usual end up as bite as my only skill, sometimes mist depending on who else is in the game. late game I go for that bat rush move. even playing this way its hard to not play like an assassin, sure I have 10 op minions running around causing havoc, but through gear choice and bite i can always take out enemy demigods. bat swarm-bite just screams anti demigod to me, and its hard to imagine staying back and letting minions have all the fun.

So I just finished a match as Oak.  Turns out people are extremely hostile to this sort of behavior, if you do it intentionally or not. 

As I had been out in the field for quite some time, I noticed I had a huge amount of gold and thought I'd better head back to base and upgrade from my level 1 units to whatever I could afford next.  So here I am, selling my level 1 idols and buying whatever is next and then promptly summoning those.  Well... my level 1 buggers didn't die out in battle, and there's no way for me to unsummon them, so there they are standing next to my more powerful units.  I don't think much of it; it's not like I have 24 base units trailing me, so I head back out into battle.  My few guys along with this massive army of spirits I've collected come in and destroy this one fellow, and shortly there after one of his teammates (I had help on the second guy from a teammate).  The next thing I know, the chat is getting flooded with expletives about how cheap it is, that I'm exploiting and judgments about my character through the use of colorful words.  I try to explain to the guy that I agree, and that the head honcho is aware of the issue (via this thread) and that it will probably be addressed.  Well this guy isn't interested in that.  He closes with a few more choice words and leaves his two other teams with a bot.

Good times, but what was I to do?  It wasn't intentional.  [e digicons]:S[/e]

The exploit is ineffective in the long run, especially if you play against demigods such as torch bearers, regulus with mines, basically anything with a halfway decent AoE.

With my Oak the only bought minions I ever use are healers. And I usually end up maxing out spirits because of all the increased damage and end up hitting very hard by endgame.

Fair point Doggiedoodle  [e digicons][/e] I feel like it is splitting hairs a little but fair point all the same.

I agree calling it cheating is too strong a word - particularily in the scenario number 9 outlined. I like Sedna so I'm speaking from a position of General favouritism - but I still don't like the way this mechanic works. I like the unsummon on different tier summon option that some people have suggested.

I maintain my earlier point that I don't want to stuff about playing musical Idols to get the most out of my DG.

Also calling this "Idolatry" is epic win [e digicons]|-)[/e]

This is a pretty BS thing to do.  We had an Erebus in a game that was spec'd for Nightcrawlers (if thats what they are called).  Anyway, I'd swear he must've had about 30-40 minions under his control at one point.  He was pretty much soloing everything, just patrolling up and down the map slaughtering everything without lifting a finger.  To be fair it was Prison and not much movement is required to get across, but the fact he could do it by himself is retarded.  There is no way that is meant to be in the game WAI.

The difference between "creative use of mechanics" and "exploit" is entirely dependent on what the developers do about it. If they say "cool", then its fine. If it's a bug and they squash it, then its an exploit.

It looks like a bug to me, like they intended the caps to be per minion group rather then individual type and just put the "IF" in the wrong spot. Any programmer has done that more then a few times (speaking from experience ). But until they say what they think, we'll never really know.