So Frogboy brought up the idea of having fewer, tougher minions here and Random_Guy pointed out that idol minions cost nothing but easily-replenished mana (once you have idols) and that a player is actually rewarded for sending minions out to die instead of protecting them here. 

I think we can combine these ideas in a way that hopefully doesn't consume too many of the developer resources heading into Beta 3 to be viable, while keeping current Generals gameplay, which we have been told is close to final. 

Minion Merging -

1.  A general can only buy idols for the baseline minions, and they are fairly cheap and have low mana cost to summon

2.  A general can have a limited number of baseline minions

3.  Baseline minions of the same type can be ordered to merge to create 1st tier minions.  1st tier can be merged to create 2 tier, etc.  Merges are limited by a long cooldown and maybe a mana cost

4.  A general can have a limited number of minions of each tier, and each tier becomes available at a given level for the Demigod (so a level 5 General can get 1st tier minions but not 2nd tier, etc)

Example: Sedna buys base Monk idol for 1500 gold.  She starts producing monks, 2 at a time, with a cap of 8.  The monks can heal a bit and do a bit of damage, but as she levels Sedna wants more effective back up so she tells the monks to merge to form 1st tier healing units.  8 baseline monks will give her 4 1st tier units.  Each pair of 1st tiers can merge to form a 2nd tier unit, and when she has two of those at level 15 she can make a bishop.  If she is careful with her units Sedna can end up with 4 bishops, which are the equivalent of 32 baseline monks in damage and healing.  She is doing this with siege archers and minotaurs too, and when opposition is weak Sedna has all tiers maxed and 12 units that together are the equivalent of any 2 demigods....

This model has a couple of advantages over the current one - but they can all be summed up in the idea that minions have value 

- you have to be careful with your units.  If you throw all your base units away on a rash offensive you have nothing to build your upgraded units on.  The flipside is that your units are far more effective at high tiers than in 2D, to the point where a General who is allowed to build complete sets of top-tier units will be ridiculously powerful.  (This should be balanced so that in most games the player has to make choices and compromises - you shouldn't see full-army generals unless one side is really good and the other terrible, in which case the game should end first)

- in 2D you never kill minions if you can help it (unless you are Oak and health-surfing) because they provide you no xp or gold and can be rebuilt with little or no cost.  In the new model, regardless of what the minion provides in xp or gold, killing it has a definate advantage because it deprives the General of the basic building blocks of what eventually will be a close-to-unstoppable army.. 

- in this model generals are going to be far weaker as individuals, but their minions will depend on them for buffs and auras, so the effective general will have to leave his base to gain xp to get the levels necesasary to build more effective tiers, and he will have to bring his minions with him.

Anyway, all of this is rough and would need a great deal of balancing and tweaking work, but it introduces a conception of minion value which we frankly don't have in 2D.  Thoughts, comments?