A ton of questions regarding strategy and stats

Armor has diminishing returns, so a bit early on can be nice. Especially against DPS builds like some UB and Reg.

Depends on play style. Some get heal pots, others get armor, I get speed boots.

Get gold from gold mines (Some can be captured, upgraded via citadel), killing enemy structures and Demigods.

I believe that singleplayer and multi have seperate Favor Points. There's three sets of Favor items, one general that all can access, one for the Assassins, one for the Generals. Once bought, all Demis of that type can get the item.

Archers have decent range and do lots of little pricks, tower of light chains with other towers, and trebuchet has long range.

It does a bit. I get it sometimes if nothing else will complement my build.

Judging by the last time I checked the file, I think only the direct bonus.

Yes, yes, no.

Not a lot except priest minions. Though most games tend to be over by then.

1) HP or Armor?  HP!  Armor is only good when you have alot of HP.  25 armor = 1% HP against non-ability damage.  So at 2000 HP, 25 armor = ~20 HP.  At 4000 HP, 25 armor = ~40 HP.  Since ability damage goes right through it I don't suggest focusing on armor, ever.

2) Gear at the start?  I get the +10 HP/sec for towers upgrade (Since they don't naturally regen) and a rejuv pot.  Usually I only get the 500-600 gold item in each category (and boots of speed +10% movemenet).  HP items first.  Survival is always important.

3) You earn 4 gold per second base.  Upgrade your citadel to get 8 gold per second for 1800 gold (Totally worth it even in 2v2).  Creeps give 4/8 gold in the beginning for a kill, so its not that important.  Once priests start rolling around, be sure to take out priests first to get the gold from 'em.  Best way to get gold is to kill the enemy demigods.  Use teamwork and gank, it's alot of gold especially in the early game.

4) Go into the achievements menu to see what gives favor points.  Play a little of each class to get a nice boost in favor points to buy an item or 2.  Personally, I live by the teleportation orb as it gives a free teleport every 60 seconds, and you don't have to buy scrolls (more money for pots).  You have access to it from then on out from any demigod.

5) Shoulder upgrades for rook?  Sorry, haven't looked into this one.

5)  Are the shoulder upgrades worth it for the rook? What kind of damage do they really do?

6) Enhanced attributes:  Hardlly worth it IMO.  It's a little weak.  I don't see it as tide-turning.  I was a huge fan of early stats in DOTA though, but in this game I just see the skills as being far too good compared to the enhanced attributes for assassins.  For generals though, I think sedna with 10 minions and full Morale is pretty hard to kill.  Kite to your heart's desire and let your minions do their stuff.

7) I don't know

8) I don't believe you receive damage from rook's slam while in mist form.  I know that it cancels the damage from Unclean Beast's DOT, and is extremely useful as a defensive measure to prevent against big attacks.  You're essentially invincible in this mode.

9) Minions are not just for vs demigods, they can also help take down towers, farm other lanes while you're capping flags, etc.  Last night the game I was in I was level 20 and my minions were astounding.  The enemies could probably kill the minions but I can just resummon them.  I always kept myself way back and ran away from any enemy while my minions beat the snot out of them.  10 guys all doing 70 dmg a hit adds up even against level 20 unclean beasts.  As long as they can't get to you, you're pretty much golden.

As for your comment about gear.

I've found that the cheaper items are worth it, but once you get to the more expensive items they are not enough bang for your buck.  Typically I stick to items that are 1.5k or less gold that is it.  The rest of my money goes to pots, scrolls, and citadel upgrades.  As soon as you can get catapultasauruses, you dump 10 grand on the citadel and push hard to end the game.  Shortly after, get giants.  Pots change the tide of a battle significantly more than any piece of equipment that isn't 20 grand.

Whoa, thanks a ton! This will all help me out quite a bit, and thank both of you for elaborating, it really is helpful.

Though I have another questions, sadly enough:

 - Does the exp gain from killing creeps make a difference once you're level 5+? I ask because I usually fail to notice my creeps really accomplishing anything, they die pretty fast and hardly do any damage, and sometimes do more bad than good on my side depending on what abilities my enemy has. I want to upgrade and get monks, angels and the dino catapults, but I don't want to be giving my enemy a huge experience boost either.

I disagree on one point.  All Father's Ring is a game ender.  Sure, its 25K in gold, so you won't get it unless its a large, long-duration game, but the first Demigod to get that in the match pretty much has the game won.

It's a good question.  Grunts higher than archers give a bunch of xp and decent gold. 

Unless you are winning by a bunch or playing a single lane 1 v 1 game on Crucible - I would advise strongly against upgrading grunt type until you can either upgrade to catas in one spawn or have at least level 2 grunt armor.  Even if you can get giants in one spawn it's very important to support them as much as possible, because if your opponent has good AoE he will go up a level with every wave, so you need to end the game quickly to negate the xp advantage you are giving him. 

On the flip side, if your opponent upgrades grunt types and you are able to hold them off without upgrading yourself do it - you will gain levels very quickly relative to your enemy. 

All of this depends upon flag control.  Don't let your enemy control all the flags all the time or it won't matter how much gold you've saved - you won't have access to the stronger grunts when you need them

edit: @ chaos - anything you spend 25k on should be a game ender, no?    Never seen All Father's Ring in a tight game, but some relatively expensive items like Heart of Life and Parasite Egg can be useful.

Haha, so I should pretty much avoid getting reinforcements? I really only see them as ways to help the enemy teams Oak or Vamp lord, and the only enemy reinforcements I ever had trouble killing were the giant titans. I seriously think they should give more incentive to upgrade your reinforcements. I mean, giving them +%10 health only works out to being 39 HP for the minotaur grunts, and vamp lord with 220 armor only prevents 8.1% of damage done to him... so giving a grunt +100 armor is only going to prevent about 20 damage before he dies, most grunt kills are beyond overkill anyways so I doubt it'd make any difference at all.

Also, do general summons, including spirits and night walkers give any exp or gold to enemies when they're killed? I don't want to be facing a player of perfectly equal skill, and only loose because he leveled faster than me by killing my basic reinforcements and my own summons, especially when I had to pay good gold for some of the summons. And do spirits or night walkers have any unmentioned effects? Or is it only what's listed in the skill tree?

And another question... is there some sort of stat cap that increases as you level-up? I bought the all-fathers ring along with the mage slayer... but my attack speed still seemed a little slower than it should have been, but once I hit level 7 I noticed that my attack speed visibly went up quite a bit, even though my stat screen still only said 49% increase in attack speed. I also noticed that at level 2 when I bought the ring, my stat screen said I only had a 24% increase in attack speed rather than 30% like the ring says.

Thanks a ton for the answers so far, and I'm really sorry that more questions keep popping up, I've had alot in my head and can't recall all the questions I had while playing the game when typing a post. I should probably start writing things down =P

Would have to disagree to, pieces that upgrade your army and giants seem to be the battle changer in my opinion.

I think its important to note that with your big horde of minions while they are also a nonstop source of lesser damage, they are also damage shields. Watch what you can do to enemy towers while the minions are soaking up the damage. When they all die, back off, rinse, repeat. A constant flood of them at the enemy means you can use them as cover to push hard.

Creeps almost always win games, not Demigods. It's the cluster fack of them at end that usually topples cits. rather than Demigods. Demigods typically help push tower but more than not keep enemy Demigods from defending against the creeps. Demigod without aoe can kill creeps fairly fast, but only one at a time normally. Basically, they're wasting time and are usually better off kililng demigods if at all possible.

Some, however, like Frost TB, plague/ooze UB, and thorn QoT are able to quickly and easily kill a mass of creeps and even general minions without trouble. Unless they get ganked, they can farm far faster than most Demigod if no one lets themselves be fed on. End game, you need to put pressure on them or else your creep upgrades will be pointless. A single frost TB can easily destroy swarms of creeps to the point that they will never make it to the cit. A thorns QoT can do it even better. The reverse happens with attacking, not's more annoying than seeing QoT walk in and use her aoe to completly kill your built up creep swarm and do quite some damage to a ton of towers at once.

Minions at end game are more or less useless, but even generals are pretty darn powerful by then so they really don't need them. Priests are the best to get (in my humble opinion) and are the only minions I really focus on as their healing is wonderful. I'd even go out and say minions are really powerful at the start and weaken as the game progresses. I really wish they would give an auto idol minion bonus every 5 levels for generals or else have them benifit from cit. upgrades. (They don't get benifit from cit. upgrades, do they?)

I have to agree on this one!

I played with my brother last night. I was Ereb and he was Rook. I had some big trouble for some time, but then i got the All Father's Ring. 15 minutes later, he lost his Citadel. That ring really turns the match! You get all kinds of boosts, and you're minions get alot of HP, armor and wep dmg!

BTW, the match lasted for one and a half hour. And as I said, it took about 15 minutes after getting the ring befor Rook lost his Citadel