[Valerius]

Originally Posted by MaxWilson

Why? In an ideal world, you merely want some type of endgame strategy potentially available to anyone, but it doesn't have to be SCs. In my limited experience, SCs tend to dominate the endgame mostly because they're more mobile than armies or summons (slap on a pair of boots and/or cast Teleport) and because they're good at taking out PD and unsupported armies--but serious battles always come down to the mages anyway. National summons along the lines of Iron Dragons/Ophanim/storm demons would be an acceptable substitute for SC access in my opinion, provided you had enough possibilities to make it nontrivial to counter (i.e. preserve flexibility). Either you send them out raiding or you use them as blockers while your mages rain down evocations--the same as you would do with SCs.

-Max

SCs have one more important attribute: they're tough. In my experience you don't see many human mages out in the field during the late game. They're simply too fragile. If you run into a couple of castings of rain of stones or earthquake before you can buff there go your mages.

Demons make good late game troops because they've got the HP to take a hit and good enough MR that being hit with master enslave before you buff won't result in losing your army. But your opponent will have those, or a comparable unit, in addition to his SCs so it seems to me you'll come up short if you don't have SCs of your own.