[JimMorrison]

Well, that's kind of silly then.

There are significant drawbacks to just placing all of your units on Guard Commander.

Not the least of those drawbacks being that any foe with sufficient ranged power will be targeting your mages, since they will be at the center of your massed troops.

In the late game there are ways to help with that, somewhat, but if someone is using those tools to great effect - either their opponent has researched their own tools to deal with that - or they have been outplayed.

Different nations have different capabilities at various stages of the game. Caelum is relatively fragile in the early game, and they must push hard to develop tools to gain the upper hand. Using Abysia as the counter example isn't exactly fair, as Caelum does tend to eat Abysia - but also because Abysia starts out VERY strong - especially in the EA when all of their infantry have Heat auras.

Believe me, I have had a good rush ruined by Thunder Strikes. After the first horribly failed assault, I never quite reached the critical mass that I needed, to finish off my foe, since he managed to almost never lose a single mage. Some matchups are just bad, and will usually not turn out well for the same nation - that's not cheesy, it's just Dominions-realism.