This is exactly why you need a/t/m power. Because you hemorrhage your valuable military, you can't rely on having it, and need to look for gaining advantages from your tpa and wpa. And since with science, you become an effective a/t/m very quickly, there is limited reason not to. The exact numbers you run are obviously situational -- if your opponent is running a solid 4, then running 6 only costs you 2 rel mpa, not 5 rel mpa. If they're running 1 tpa, then you can get by on 3-3.5 quite easily.
Going from, say, 20 EPA to 15 EPA vs going from 18 to 13.5 (a 25% military loss for both) means you've lost less 'raw' military but maintained your twpa advantage over your opponent, factoring for growth/chains/blabla.
I suspect, being that you don't play in a top kingdom and haven't warred one, you probably are in a worse position to know what they are using compared to me :p
ZZ (do they count as a top kd?) is the only one running non-WH, and they have something like 4 rogues and 4 mystics in their humans. AMA ran theirs as a/t last age, and haven't had a war this age. I don't recall how they prepped for RBL/Pew2. Pyro ran theirs as a/t.