[alexti]

My thought on "power of magic" by Twan and Zen's response.

The size of armies increased, but not because of units being cheaper, but because of more gold in the world. That means number of mages increases proportionally as well. And due to large armies, penalty for low precision is somewhat reduced.

The less effect of magic in early-mid game is more related to slower research, I think (in early game it's also related to the cost of setting up extra forts and labs).

In the late game more mage means more equipment for them (considering that you can't siege anything without being flamed/frozen/rain-of-stoned or lightning bombed and few mages can survive those without protection). However, amount of magic gems has not been increased, so it makes harder to use battlefield mages in the later game. Those are my projections, I haven't yet played late game vs human opponent.