Indeed, there's always the "can" and "potential" factors. It's interesting when you isolate them down to their core, the "ease of play" takes a severe hit when you start to see that pretender choice is severely limited based on the needs of the stock nation, and that not taking the right pretender, will ultimately leave you noncompetitive. By the same token, all of the severely path limited nations can benefit greatly from various mage recruitment sites, but you never know what you're going to find, and for example I find it disheartening and almost insulting (in a lighthearted way) when every game I play an aquatic race, I find one of the sites (or 2, or 3) that let you train water mages.
And by the same token, while you can assume that you will find at least ONE special site of some kind, maybe it's a Conj bonus site but you're a blood nation, or it just lets you train mages of a path you already have, there's so many variables.
Hopefully in the next few days, more people feel emboldened to post their ratings here. Remember there are no wrong answers, just maybe some that aren't thought all the way through, no one will hate for those, though they may ask you why you think that way.
