Generally I agree.

Elites are useful when money is not an issue, but your cities lack sufficient population to recruit a large, cheap army which will suffer heavy losses in tough battles - or if you simply prefer having your citizens making money and paying taxes rather than fighting. Under such circumstances a small army of elites bulked out with mercenaries might be best for the long-term growth of your economy.

Otherwise I only start recruiting lots of elites when the AI does so, and their armies become too tough to beat for my more historical army composition.

Hopefully in EB2 elites will be rare by limited recruitment, rather than overpriced to discourage the AI from spamming them.

My favourite elite unit are Kretan archers - they are awesome and worth every penny. For me, KH can't survive without them.