Actually, I am a huge fan of Very Hard Research. It forces everyone to make tough decisions. It makes you think hard about what is REALLY important to you. It makes you truly consider depending on many of the lower level spells far more than usual. The normal research games where you simply complete everything by turn 50 is not near as challenging, imho.
It even makes a nice current (and future) topic for my yarns.
This game is not about winning anyway, but about writing.
As for Pythium, he would be leading in research no matter the settings. That is simply a huge advantage for the nation of Pythium (as if they do not already have enough advantages anyway).