Curious :Lategame questions. I never was so far :(

[Boron]

Unfortunately though i now play i guess about 2-3 months mp i still have only finished 2-3 games and the others are still ongoing because they run at slower pace and are not very lategame . I am not sure when i really experience these situations in a game because they are probably not very common .

So once lategame is reached and the game is still not decided though gemincome is huge and everything is researched do battlemages then keep their value or loose it ?

First a question about targeting ai for magic spells :
If i use spells like charm / soul slay are the biggies ( the SCs ) are more likely targeted or not ?
If i use 50 devils and 5 SCs e.g. do i have a chance to hit a SC with a soul slay of 1/11 because each target is as likely to get hit or is it higher for the SCs because they are more often targeted ?

The disadvantages which i see with Mages are the following : The best devastating massdamage spells are Fire and Air . These 2 are resisted though by every SC with better equipment and fire is resisted by devils / lightning by storm demons .

So you have to use rather weak single or few target spells . Gifts from heaven and Banefire are 2 exeptions because they can't be resisted and do huge damage .
Any SCs with air though ( lategame wished airqueens ) can cast mirror image against banefire as Cohen said today on the board . So they survive normally quite a few and are likely to survive the first 5 scripted spells . Then the mages start to mix in lots of stupid spells and are less of a danger .

Gifts from heaven with EEES is not that easy to get too . Ok lategame you could empower your earthmages to S . But this leads to the danger of magic duel .
If you empower the other way round good astral mages to earth 1-3 this is even more expensive and doesn't fully save you too .
The opponent can empower an immortal then to good astral magic and teleport him in when you attack on friendly territory . This way you have always losses without doing much damage .
If you play pangenea cw or ermor you will give your vq/lich anyways something like astral 3-5 first for sitesearch and later with wish in mind .
So in lategame you have an almost unbeatable magic dueller when attacked .


So i ask if one player focuses more on mages and the other one more on SCs and if both meet in a key battle .
One has lots of battlemages with backup and perhaps a few SCs but not as good equipped / as numerous because he spent lots of his resources in his mages .
The other one has lots of good equipped SCs but very few mages . The SCs are backed up by an army too to soak up lots of nasty 1 target spells .

Who is more likely to win ?
I guess it will be the SC user because after the first 5 scripts the mages already lose some of their power and after a few more rounds they often fatigue out anyways if you don't have lots of possible reliefcasters i think .


So please tell me from practical experience what happened in your games there . My own practical experience there is unfortunately still a bit limited and since most of my current games are still in an early stage i think it will be perhaps on x-mas when i see that hopefully .