How automated building would work: I imagine as it did in Dawn of War/ Supreme Commander. Which was great. I like it because you're still making the same decisions, but you can have the ai handle the apm so you don't have to worry about building a new soldier every 4 second to make the most effectve use of your resources.

Accidentally spending all your resources on the wrong unit is better than failing your apm so you wind up with no units and a ton of resources banked imo.

Dragon penalty sounds fine, I guess I just didn't notice.

It's not asking too much obviously, anyone can read the manual. But isn't it better if the game can be picked up and played(although not as well for obvious reasons) and has reminders? Also, I'm not sure I agree that the skirmish mode is all that complex, there's only 12 units after all. Then you have the people who abhor manuals(plus manual is sort of hard to find if you use steam), and very few people start by looking for a manual, so there's also the issue with first impressions.