[JimMorrison]

Basically 2 things could reduce the dependence on SCs in the late game:

First, even stronger battlefield buffs. If there were huge effect or battlefield wide buffs that gave enhanced protection against mass damage spells, and/or made those mass damage spells uncastable for some reason, and/or simply made normal troops much more effective against SCs, then conventional armies would retain usefulness.

Second, incredibly powerful single target spells. I know there are some, but adding more, so there are more paths that have things that can disable or kill of targets of singular power, would make it harder to rely on a small handful of units to wreak havoc.

Personally though, I am against a prevalence of spells that can instantly kill such an investment of time and effort, so I am more in favor of the route of horribly powerful debuffs (having an SC pretender Soul Slain is just sad), but at the same time, I am very much in favor of more variety and availability of the type of singularly powerful endgame summons that are already available. I mean, if you aren't going to take out Seraphim et al, then there need to be more options, IMO. Especially for casters, if things like Rain of Stones are going to be considered to make human sized mages obsolete, then we should have more plentiful late game caster summons. If it costs less gems to summon a 30hp+ caster that is as powerful or more powerful than your capitol only mages and then give them some gear that -might- help them survive, then why not?

I mean, we are playing at gods. It only makes sense that once the little mortals have played out their ultimate usefulness in the war, it's because the gods are bringing beasts and beings of legend into the fray, it only makes sense that it would be so. What this just means, is that currently the range of options in the end game narrows, because of the limited number, so we add a slew of new ones to broaden those options again, and make different magic paths viable to compete at the top of the pyramid.