[magnate]

Indy strength depends a lot on whether the AI is important to you or not. If we're talking purely MP, the indy strength can be anything because it's the same for all races - lower means quicker player contact, higher makes it slower.

I'd agree that Normal research in the unmodded game makes it all about magic, and I now use Difficult or Very Difficult to make troops more important for longer. But as Cainehill says, this distorts the value of starting spells and cheap researchers - it makes Libraries very important for a number of races. I don't really see any way round this, and I think it's the lesser of the two problems.

If you're playing SP or using AI nations to fill out a small MP game, I find indy str 5 or 6 to be optimal. It's not too hard for the AI to expand, and not too easy for the human player. The other possibility is indy str 0 ...

I think the default setting of 40 for magic sites is too high for anything other than a small (<100 prov) map, and it baffles me why people play MP games with it cranked up to 50 or higher and then complain that magic plays such a big part of the endgame. I would set it at 30 or lower for a large map, so that Acashic Record is not such a no-brainer. (With default setting of 40 the chances of an AR finding no sites in any province other than farm lands is less than 13%)

CC