[Mardagg]

Seriously,in Dom2 u couldnt afford to buy a mage every turn.
Thus the research was much slower AND i liked it.
By making Dom 3 larger scale battles and not increasing the research cost for standard games,Illwinter did increase the pace of the game by making the earlier game and mid game shorter,since the high level spells are reached easier,which i dont like.

Sure,it wasnt possible to imprison/sleep the pretender to gain easier access to bless strategies...but common,if you invest in bless strat u wont have awake SC pretender.I cant see the problem here.
People playing with good scales+ imprisoned rainbow site search pretender are the only ones having problems vs bless rushes imo,since every one else either has good combat pretender or bless strat ,too.If you go for good scales and bad combat pretender you simply are advised to do it with a nation only,that has strong initial troops.Otherwise u are making a big mistake in MP games anyways be it Normal research or difficult research.
There always have been enough counters vs early rushes in DOM 2 and there always will be enough counters in DOM 3 .

By "rebalancing" the spells for difficult research games other things become unbalanced.Leave it as it is,there is no need to change anything imo.
Yes to difficult research,No to mod.