I recently got Magnar to surrender to me on a medium map on hard difficulty. Looking through his items it became apparent one of the reasons that I beat him was because  he spent all his money on leather pants and horses. He had 4 horses he wasn't riding  + 5 pairs of leather pants. 

Oh, also he was a Lv10 Assassin with Zero assassin traits. In fact at lv 10 he only seemed to have 7 traits (including tinker, probably in some vain attempt to equip as many pants as possible).

It seemed also that even into the late game Magnar was building worthless slave units. My chainmailed horsemen crushed his nearly naked slaves by the hundreds. He didn't seem to build any Elite troops.

A lot of champions running around without armies still. Even when armies were running around without champions. That spider riding mage must have suicide rushed me like a dozen times.