[K]

And Kris O. is also famous for saying that he doesn't know every feature of the game unless he goes back and looks at the source code.... and thats not surprising, considering that he's the content developer and the other guy does most or all of the programming.

But back to the discussion:

Killing one mage is really easy in the late game. You send in a few high HP mages to cast battle field-destroying magics, and the anyone with merely human mages loses (which is the vast majority of nations).

At least if the spells don't leave the battlefield, then everyone tends to die (meaning that its a costly tactic for attacker and defender).