[MaxWilson]

I really like the idea of making mage power level more important than research level, to make the game more RPG-ish. One thing I've considered along those lines is to make all spells pre-researched (fairly easy to do) but with increased path requirements, or else to eliminate all non-hero spellcasters from the game. You'd probably want to reduce the power of summonable mages (demilich, Tartarian, etc.) so that they can't easily replicate themselves. The goal would be to make mages few, mysterious and important. The research system runs counter to that goal because it requires you to pump out lots of mages to do research. And oh, I'd probably give individual mages a hefty maintenance cost, like around 100 gp per turn each, even the summonables and heroes.

Fortunately the Dominions modding system is powerful enough to handle this. Yay, Illwinter!

-Max