Librarys and sages

[Peter Ebbesen]

Early Age is more powerful in magic than later ages, but in some ways less powerful than Dominions II. There are more powerful mages in Early Age than in Dominions II, but research is harder.

I've seen that statement crop up several times, but what is it based on?

Certainly, early game where research is limited by "I can only recruit one mage per turn in my capital" research is slower, certain research strategies are weaker (such as those based on finding cheap indy mages or based on skull mentors), which means that for short games, research is harder for many of the most popular strategies, but research being harder in general I disagree with, or, to be more precise, haven't seen convincing arguments for.

An example: the abundance of money means that, for most nations, long-term, money based strategies actually allow you to spend a higher fraction of your income on researchers and since the benefits from magic-scale and experience scale just as well in Dominions 3 as in 2, you actually end up researching faster in 3 than in 2 from a certain point in time all other things being equal, since you'll be getting more than 2 research mages for each 1 you had in Dom 2.

So, what have I missed? I quite agree that in some situations, research is harder in Dominions 3 but I don't see how it is true in general, which is generally asserted.