Assuming you mean never in one game as opposed to never period, it looks like a good idea. Except for the last one.

As long as acheivements are an option to go for, and not forced on a player, they're good.  especially if creative.

Valve's acheivements in TF2- mostly good

Valve requiring acheivements to unlock stuff (until recently)- not good

Artwork is a good idea. That, and special units that are analogous (stat-wise) to existing units (i.e. if you can keep up an army made entirely of undeads, you get the Gold Zombie). That, and pieces of the backstory.

Am I the only person who has never liked achievements?  I thought they were a dumb idea when they first started appearing.  I always felt the goals of a game should be part of the game, not some artificial list of tasks..

Other than the fun kind like in Golden Eye and Smash brothers where they don't really mean anything, they're just statements about how you did.

I'm with you.

I particularly dislike achievements that give in-game rewards (unless achievements are on a per-game basis and accomplishing gives you some little reward for that game). I don't like being forced to try to achieve some random task or another just to get access to content that's already there. Now, if it's something minor like a new skin for something, sure - otherwise, plegh. Some people love getting these achievements, but many don't care about them at all - thus effectively giving extra content to one group of players, while forcing others to literally work for it - to do something they don't want to in order to get access to it.

So I'd vote for achievements that don't give any meaningful in-game rewards, or per-game achievements that give little rewards in the game that you achieved it. I actually think the latter could be a lot of fun - it'd sort of act as a secondary quest system - it could even be tied directly into quests.

Not if their requirements are drastic enough and rewards small enough. In such a case, only people who want to play that way, or close to it anyway would get the little bonus.

As long as they don't give you viable ingame bonuses like the achievements for Mass Effect on Xbox360 do.  Otherwise I see great potential for whoever writes the excellent unintentional comedy bits at Stardock.  The miniturization tech description talking about lawsuits on galciv2 had me laughing for several minutes straight.

The Munchies: You've defeated an entire army with a single otherwordly creature.

I sorta like the forum medals in GC2. They're Metaverse-dependent, so I don't know if Elemental will be able to do something similar. They have no direct effect on game play at all, but once you get familiar with them they can give you a loose impression of an individual's play style(s) and how 'good' they are from a scoremonster POV.

For in-game stuff, I just want a quest system that blows my mind and maybe some neat naming thing(s) that can put lables on the map and on units based on finishing quests, winning great battles, losing great battles, etc.

Just my little take on achievments. They do add value to a game, after all they give you something to strive for, but a bucketful of silly achievments just tends to make the game experience suffer for me. For instance, having an achievment to play/win an online game is nice, I could even appreciate one for playing/winning some absurd number as well. If, on the other hand, there is one for 1 game, another for 5, then 10 etc it tends to be meaningless.

That said, I dislike having achievments be anything but "cool to have". Getting some visual rewards are nice, be that fancier uniforms for your troops or unlocking some artwork or somesuch. Needing to finish the "Slay 10000 footmen" achievment to train knights on the other hand is silly.

Fun, interesting and challenging achievments get a thumbs up from me. Dull, repetitive and unimaginative ones get a thumbs down

I have to disagree with you there: if there is any bonus, me and a lot of other people will still feel that they are being "forced".

I said limited to single player, not limited to a single game. In other words, bonuses (if any) should not carry over into multi-player.

Scoutdog, you don't know the meaning of the word forced.   Your OCD is not my problem.