As far as I can tell alot of the problems from generals is the fact that their minions are too weak and a minion build of a general is inferior to one that plays like an assassin. I think theres a few simple ways to solve this.

1: Change generals skills so that they affect their minions. Each general should have at least 2 minion specific skills.Maybe something so simple as some kind of "frenzy" ability where all the minions hit harder or something. More complex ones would be a plus.

2: Give each different minion type a skill. Not something gamebreaking, maybe it would only be useful in certain situations. It should vary across types.

3: Drop Idols, These just hurt generals as they have to spend their money on these, Alot of people dont even use idols with their generals. To replace these, give each general a total of 2-3 unique minion types that have distinct differences. It would also be cool if they were attained if different ways (E.G-One type is just summoned like yetis and bramblers and another type might appear like Oaks spirits)

Now obviously this would be alot of work so I wouldnt be expecting anything like this for a while, But I think this would be a much better alternative to dropping generals alltogether (as frogboy has hinted at might be the solution). Also this would make generals harder to play as you would have to manage all the abilitys of your units and think more tactically, but generals are there for those who wanted to play an rts