[MaxWilson]

It depends partly on your magic dominion, and on whether you have access to air/fire/death magic on your national mages. For a nation like Marverni, with no A/F/D and thus no research-boosters possible, I can see indie mages as being cost-effective, especially with Magic-1 or better. As Helheim I'll make a few Academy wizards, but not a ton, because while they're most cost-effective at researching they're not usually as good at being battle-mages as my Svartalfs. I'm still branching out into other nations, but as Agartha I doubt I'd use regular indie mages for researching because earth readers are so cheap, but I'd jump all over Academy mages if I found them.

-Max