[curtadams]

When people talk about what's happened to battlemages you can't neglect the improved AI. All ranged units target noticeably better than they used to, and cause much less friendly fire damage, so you get more "bang for your buck" for battlemages. The flip is that most of the gain comes when battlemages combine with a meaningful groundpounder army. That encourages combined arms - which I think was a goal of the redesign. But, boy, even a little artillery makes quite the difference.

I doubt the aging system can be modded. Starting ages probably will be moddable and that obviously can fix most problems. If you can mod the mechanism, a good calc for deterioration chance which is based on how organisms age in the real world is 100/years to get old)*2^(age-(years to get old) (possibly with a scaling factor - I can't test). It captures the exponential harm from aging and the slower exponential growth for long-lived species.

IMO workhorse mages - researchers, some forgers, and artillery mages - shouldn't start old unless there's an important game balance or thematic reason. It's just too much of a micro hassle - I was going bonkers with my Witch Hunters in MA Marignon and I understand Pythium and Arco at least are similar and Abyssia worse. IMO if LA mages are supposed to be really weak it's better to nerf workhorse mages rather than make them old. I'm OK with top rank mages being old - I can stand having to pay attention to each one of them.