Transition to the end game.....
 

So, I've reached the point where I'm not totally lost in a MP game.

I'm reasonably competitive over the first half - 2/3 of the game, but there are things I just don't do well at all. I can get out to a good (sometimes even great) start. I play competently as thugs and SC's start to dominate the battlefield.

And then the wheels fall off. Somebody has wish, or more than half the elemental royalty and I fall out of the pack to obscurity.
I don't have the national mages to counter the big stuff and my pretender was designed to get me to a bit start.

How do YOU handle the transition from mid game to late game? How do you PLAN for that?

Re: Transition to the end game.....
 

Make anti-SCs, get your own SCs. I guess it depends on what nation you're playing.

Re: Transition to the end game.....
 

One of the first things you need to do when you're planning your pretender for a game, is figure out what you want your end game to look like. What paths does your nation have? Can it forge all the boosters you need to make full use of those paths? What paths don't you have? How badly do you need them? Do you need to take certain paths on your pretender to open up better late game magic, or can you justify trading/empowering/looking for indies to do the job for you? It's basically imperative to be able to acquire at least one RoW or another +1 to all booster at some point in your game to open up better forging/summoning access. Don't be afraid to pass out boosters, extra gems, or whatever else is necessary to give your mages access to the spells that will allow you to win battles. And make sure your logistics chain is up to the challenge of supporting your gem expenses. Communions are also extremely helpful for opening up more powerful magic.

Re: Transition to the end game.....
 

I think you have it here: you address the issue by planning ahead, as early as pretender design.

A basic recipe could be as such:
- based on your pretender / nation, identify strong magic
- find 1-2 SC chassis that correspond to that magic (if you play with the Endgame Diversity Mod, integrated in CBM, it is much easier than in Vanilla)
- now check that your national mages, or you pretender, can have access to the paths required
- if not, adapt your pretender's magic to either summon the SC or forge required boosters for mages to be able to do so, as SC build up is too important to rely on sheer luck (heroes/indy mages)
- during the game, adapt your research priorities and site search to your SC target(s) to get it(them) as soon as possible

While SCs are important, they can be countered. So ideally, you also need some of the complementary tools to be competitive in the SC war:
- cost-efficient thugs;
- mobile raiders/distant attacks who can take provinces without fearing average provincial defenses;
- spells that can damage/kill enemy SCs, and which can be cast by most of your battle mages;
- battle-wide spells to turn all standard units into small thugs (100 good national units with a bless, a defense buff and weapon sharpness can still be interesting assets in SC-dominated battlefields);
- battlefield-cleaning spells to get rid of magically strong, physically weak mages (astral communions...) and hordes of units who could harm your SCs.

Maybe not all of he above, but they all help. If you don't have SCs of your own, you can even try to remain competitive with them (I say "try to" - SCs seem to be almost necessary). So your initial strategy should also identify what spells/units/items you can mobilize for those too, and how you can access them. When you do so, don't rely too heavily on the same magic path, even if it is your "main one".

Practical exercise with EA Caelum: let's assume you have a good Earth, Air and Water gem income. You can use Air gems to summon shishis (cost-efficient raiders/thugs), your Earth income to summon Cyclops (more full-fledged SCs), and Water to forge items (boots of quickness...) but then don't plan to use Air gems for Asynjas, or you will be sub-otimal in the cost-efficient thug/raider category. Both shishis and cyclops are in conjuration so you know where to focus research (possibly after the obvious evocation for early-mid game).

Alternatively, you may decide to allocate your Earth income to mostly forging, and plan to summon grendelkins with water gems: then you need probably an adaptation of your pretender to be sure to have the boosters you need early enough, and to focus research on enchantment rather than conjuration. So the decision to go for this option will not only depend on whether you prefer grendelkins over cyclops... but also on whether enchantment is a better school for the rest of your strategy than conjuration? It will affect how you will use your mages in battles while you go up in the research scale: with the cyclop strategy, they will get strong battlefield elemental summons earlier; with the grendelkin strategy, while you research to reach them, maybe you can beef up you battle magic with Grip of Winter (with boosters!) and/or Mass Flight on Mammoths - which by the way has implications over recruitment choices to have cold resistant armies/mammoths, so again: planning ahead.

You should ask yourself these questions and determine answers at the stage of the pretender design. There is probably no "perfect set up", but it is important to plan one.