[JimMorrison]

Well, dipping into your pre-forging income, to keep the Mentors rolling, makes a lot of sense, I wasn't really thinking about the amount of momentum those initial gems would add.

Mentors are really quite powerful, if you can spare the gems. The difference from Drain2 to Magic1 is 2RP, making each Mentor make up the difference of 4.5 mages. Or looked at another way, even only forging 2 Mentors a turn, is 18RP, so if you and an opponent train 2 identical mages that turn, he still has 14RP to make up somewhere. At a certain point when you stop forging Mentors, that opponent can then more realistically begin to "catch up", but the disparity will be huge if you really focus on the strategy. Of course, if that opponent went Magic3 it changes the math a bit, but that's a lot of design points. There's only a couple of nations that I have built strats for involving Magic3, but it's not for "OMG these mages are such horrible researchers, I need to improve them", it's always "wow these researchers are SO cheap, I want to superpower them".

It just makes me wonder what Vanheim can do to bolster their similarly sad research prospects (other than train expensive indies). IMO forging Quills is like wearing a skirt in a prison.....