I've just finished another two-vs-two game,
"starts with C vs. ends with heim", and I am now convinced that most of the alleged "balance issues" and "micromanagement problems" in Dominions 2 do not occur in formats where there is proper incentive to make war.
In an "all vs. all" format, if you make war on a neighbor before you have gained a substantial strategic advantage, you will almost certainly lose the game. You might succeed at conquering your neighbor, but even if you do the other players who spent their resources conquering independents, researching, hoaring, and summoning will easily conquer you since you spent some of your resources making war.
So in an "all vs. all" game, most good players will wisely spend 50 or 100 turns making Non-Aggression Pacts with their immediate neighbors, conquering independents, researching, and so forth. This leads directly to the alleged "balance" and "micromanagement" issues, because in those games the number of provinces, armies, clams, and research levels becomes high.
I'm not sure, but I believe that in a typical "all vs. all" game with good players, by the end-game everyone has achieved research level 9 in some or all of the schools that they care about. Is that true?
In a "proper incentive for war" format, such as a format with exactly two teams (one vs. one, two vs. two, etc.), then this is just not an issue. The Ascension War is a hot war from the beginning, and the game is over long before the micromanagement becomes boring or the spell casting becomes unbalanced.
This theory of mine is consistent with Kristoffer's comment on this bulletin board to the effect that he has never played a game that went as long as the games that are discussed in the "balance" threads.
My theory is that Kristoffer and Johan have already made Dominions 2 well-balanced for games that don't go too long.
The way to play games that don't go too long is to play a format in which there is proper incentive to make war.