[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Boron:

question according to skull mentors :
they increase research by 9 points . do they got a bonus through magic scale 3 as well ?

No - the research items add their value to the researcher. The magic scale also adds to the researcher separately. A research 4 mage with a skull mentor in magic 3 scale gets 4+9+3 = 16.

i myself love magic 3 and so i prefer spectres than using the skull mentors. iirc spectres have 7 rp but with magic 3 10 and i think magic 3 doesn't add rp's to research items so you get 1 more per spectre for the same 10 gold cost .
and i prefer stockpiling my clams on the spectres

is there somewhere a list which are most cost effective researchers ?

Well - those Skull Mentors only cost 7 death gems if you're using a Dwarven Hammer; it's much harder to find a reduction on the cost of summoning spectres.

Also, Skull Mentors tend to be available to most nations long before spectres (Const 4 vice Conj 6). The main thing about spectres is that they give random magic, very important for a nation that doesn't have it.

And most nations have a hard time taking Magic 3 - AE and SG Ermor, and CW Pangaea can do it easily, but few others. Then again - I don't think the spectre is mindless, so it can gain experience and get better at researching.

As far as the list of researchers - there's a web site that will show you the most efficient recruitable researchers for various conditions (drain/magic scale and # of turns). The url is Researchers/GP