[Trumanator]

It depends on how weak/strong your nation is starting off. Some nations gain a great deal of benefit from having an early game SC to help out their pathetic starting army, or to help fend off an early rush. It seems though that a lot of the use of almost purely SC pretenders is when the alternatives require a lot of micromanagement and general skill. Not to bash the users of said SCs, especially as I have absolutely no claim to skill. I do tend to notice that a lot of Baalz's guides for instance are for nations that people think need an SC, but he shows that given the right spells and the right scripting you can overcome problems without it while retaining late game power.