I hate to disappoint you, but the increase in army graph strength from the moment I went to war with Ermor until now is almost entirely due to remote summoned imps. Last turn I simply had enough imps on the map within range of all provinces I wanted to attack not to have to summon too many new ones. It is true I also lost a fair number of imp to heavy PD and your global, but it's just imps. They're meant to die.
Loosing the SC's is worse of course. When I first saw that battle where my tartarian was soundly trounced by eagle warriors I just didn't get what was different. In previous teleporting attacks my tarts remained at max hp's throughout the fight, and now this time you managed to kill him in just a couple of turns. The mind boggled... until I realised that the previous tartarians came from deep inside my own dominion, and thus had twice the hp's as the one that died, and that they did actually loose quite a lot of hitpoints, but that it didn't show because they remained (just) above their normal maximum.
Talk about Doh!
As I said before, I'm happy to play on as long as you want. I know I've allways had great fun when trying to use all the resources at my disposal in an attempt to harm a superior foe as much as possible, and as you say, end game experience will help you a lot in future games. I've also started some experimenting of my own. I just wished up my first ever Mandaha. And of course forgot to have a nature mage present for the gift of reason, so it's now just sitting prettily in my garrison...
