Back again after absence, polling interest for a MA (learning) game

Originally Posted by Torgon

Basically everything comes down to forge a boat load of gem gens, forge a bunch of hammers, get GoH or chalice, summon Tarts, win.

You have the settings ingame to limit all of the above, if they are a problem in your games:
Play games with harder research, or 8 provinces/player with 6 player max, lower magic sites...and you will not see a single Tartarian. Or play against more agresive players.

I played many games of Dom PPP and we hardly ever got to lv9 spells. Pretty much the same with Dom2. Dom3 I have played little in MP, but I know it is even more customizable that those were.

I would also like to add that endgame strategies need some kind of imbalance (from a game design perspective) in order to avoid stalemates and draw games to a conclusion. With this I do not mean that "I win" buttons are fine, just that lv9 spells being slightly over is not bad per se.