[MaxWilson]

Or else Sloth is like admitting that you'll need to build 50% more forts to have the same-sized army. Since you want to build forts anyway for researchers this isn't always so bad--you're trading gold for design points and getting more mage-factories as a bonus.

About endgames: if you have enough gems, you can bootstrap to almost anything. D5 is plenty to make D4 demiliches who can cast Darkness, Rigor Mortis, Stygian Paths (with a couple of boosters), that Army of Wraiths spell or whatever, etc. E5 will get you Troll Kings and Earth Kings, who can do any battle-casting you want. Pretender aside, Bogarus has enough communion power (via Communion/Sabbath Master/Slave) to leverage research power into powerful spells. That said, I personally don't like having weak recruitable-anywhere mages, but in the endgame individual (unboosted, uncommunioned) mages become less of a factor because Battlefield Enchantments start taking over.

-Max