Re: End Game Summons
SCs aren't particularly unbalanced in terms of power, there are other distinct reasons for them being so dominant late game:
1. No upkeep. The upkeep on a viable late game army is significant, especially on top of paying for researchers. This limits nations to a small number of them at a time, whereas SCs accumulate for free until they are killed.
2. Mobility. Pretty simple. Flight and teleport/cloud trapeze are pretty much SC staples, armies are generally stuck plodding along one province at a time.
3. Non-divisibility. Aside from a couple of really bad afflictions SCs don't suffer from attrition like armies can. They generally either win or die, with an occasional retreat thrown in for flavor. Armies can get picked apart, especially with spells like rain of stones and the like.
4. Lack of logistics/not having to deal with the poop-for-brains AI gem use. Nothing beat watching my mages burn 20 gems in each of two battles in which the opposing "army" of a few leaders was killed or routed by soul slays before they even got to move. Having to supply an army is a pain even when they're not doing stupid stuff like that. SCs are pretty much fire and forget...soul vortex is usually the only buff that occasionally takes a gem for me, and that's not nearly so annoying to deal with.
In a toe-to-toe fight a well-designed army with mage support should have little trouble taking down a few SCs, they're just more expensive to maintain and harder to utilize...I don't think any nerfing really needs to be done to SCs, they're actually pretty fragile to a lot of reasonable counter strategies as it is. Mind hunt/magic duel being the most common.
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