[Yvelina]

Speaking for myself, I consider magic 3 a no-brainer. Dominions II is won through magic, and research is vital to the war effort. While it is true that you can buy more research with more gold, it is hard to do so in the beginning, and your maintainance cost shoots through the roof. Maybe it could work for some nations. For my favorite nation, Vanheim, it would be insanity.

Vanheim has four mages that can be used for research. In Magic 3 the research per maintainance cost is 1.2, .8, .83, .75. Note that I start by buying the worst researchers (dwarves), at least until I get enough random picks for my casting and forging needs.

Now, lets consider Drain 3. The points/gold become .2, .2, .33, .16, We are talking an average of six TIMES less research per mage. Even the best researcher is a full four TIMES worse. Yes, if you have four times as much gold, this may make sense, but you will not.

The mathematics may be different for independants and other nations, but I doubt they are that much different. Drain for anyone but base Ulm is suicide, unless you intend to somehow win the game without magic.