Nah. Nothing similar with sp. No matter how big is your army, no matter how well its equiped, you will lose only because enemy will have full roster of nerd players. I talking about clanless player or small faction. In single player you grow you army, equip it, train troops, upgrade them, their lvl rises with experience.
I would suggest to add such feature in strategus to train your troops and lvl up them. First you get 100 troops with low stats and in time they become more skilled. And those players who applied for you should play not their main charachters but for thos "bots" u hAve in your army. So then army managment will have some sense.