What is the path of blood for?

[Executor]

Originally Posted by Question

Why do national troops become obsolete? Right now im playing Niefelheim, and the best demon summon i can do en-masse are frost fiends.

National troops effectively get obsolete because at a certain point various thugs and super combatians that are capable of destroying large armies became available to everyone (Tartarians, Golems, Air Queens...). This usually happens around turn 40+. Protecting all those armies isn't really an option since you cannot possibly know what will get thrown at you and you might end up losing even more stuff.
So fielding and spending gold on various troop types becomes a disadvantage since they became all too counterable with every passing turn.
Certain troop types are always good of course, Mictlans jaguars, or Kailasa Yavanas and such, but that is usually limited to some gold effective (as in cheap) sacreds.

At a certain point troops are used mostly as chaff, something for the enemy mages to kill while you try and kill the enemy, and as siege weapons, breaking down fort walls of course. But keeping in mind that chaff still costs money and upkeep you don't want to have too much of them, which is why summons are often used to replaced recruitable troops, every gold piece you spend on troops is one less you have for mages and forts and that's what wins the game in the end.

Most common end game strategies consist of using various SCs and remote spells to raid and capture enemy provinces to weaken their infrastructure, and fielding a few large armies backed up by quite a few mages. But even when armies are used in the later stages of the game, they are always protected by various buffs that, and this is crucial, are always cast in the very first round to prevent tragedies like getting anhiliated by rain of stones (which is usually countedred by a mass protection or army of gold), or by master enslave (anti-magic) and so on.