For a five-tier system, I suggest "weak, normal, good" with possibility of in-betweens. Example:
MA ULM, FORGES OF ULM
Early Game Strength: normal
Infantry of Ulm crushes independents, but mages/pretender are needed to stop rushes.
Mid Game Strength: weak
Magma evocations, Troll Kings, Black Lord thugs. Perhaps a Forge of the Ancients for a turn or two.
Late Game Strength: weak/normal
With Earth Boots, Earth Power and a third boost (few smiths innately, Blood Stones, empowerment,elemental staves) MA Ulm can Petrify, cast Army of X spells, Earthquake, Magma Eruption and has few casters for Rain of Stones. Mechanical Men, Enlivened Statues, Iron Dragons, Golems and Iron Angels are everywhere.
Ease of Learning (SP): normal
Ulmish troops are cheap and you'll have abundant gold. This means that you'll have to build more labs, forts, and temples (in that order) until you can spend everything you have. Recruit mages everywhere, and learn to use independent units (prot 15 heavy infantry, archers, mages). Rely on your 10gp infantry, at least early on. Use Black Knights and Black Lords as shock force. Recruit an army of arbalests before something impervious to melee appears.
Overall Ease of Use (MP): weak
To succeed, you need diplomacy and long-term strategy. To survive, you need to counter middle-game enemies with just Black Lord thugs and magma spells. You have to choose between middle/late game effectiveness (rainbow) and early/middle survivability (combat pretender). And you should start a blood economy for the Blood Stones. At least your PD is decent and all your smiths can use the same script.
I'd like to see something like this. Of course, first we have to define Early Game, Mid Game, Late Game, what "learning a nation" means and what Overall Ease of Use means.
I don't know what the early, middle and late game actually mean, but my educated guess divides them up like this:
Early: You fight against independents and perhaps national armies. There might be combat pretenders or recruitable thugs with few items or buffs.
Middle: You fight national armies and summoned units with powerful spells or thugs. First good thug/SC chassises are summoned and perhaps equipped.
Late: Thugs are everywhere. SCs are common. Uniques have been summoned, Tartarians are massed, armies of mages fight each other. Immunities are common. Teleportation is important.
For lategame, what's the baseline? Perhaps
strong astral and death: good
strong astral or death: normal/good
no astral or death: normal at best
That's the impression I have from reading the strategy threads.
Overall ease of use would need some guideline like this:
Good mages everywhere: +
recruitables for early expansion: +
good researchers: +
can innately forge important boosters: +
your mages are good in battle, whatever their randoms: +
... and a single script works for all of them: +
bloodhunting: -
needs blood sacrifice: -
reanimating priests: -
malign dominion, freespawn or pop-eating: -
weak PD: -
must sitesearch manually with several different mages: -