Guide: Some basic notes on expansion

[John_Madlock]

Originally Posted by Admiral_Aorta

others have already covered it but this is a bad post. national commanders are never worth getting, you should always get mages. spys can be useful but you should never be getting them if you can get a mage instead. Magic becomes immportant almost immediately, and if you fall behind in research you have little chance of doing well later, even if you have extra provinces because you focused on expansion over research.

I agreed it's true when you have couple of castles already. But I think best for research is build these castles ASAP. This is a snowball effect - number of castles where you can buy mages - not a few additional researcher that you were buying in your capital in the first several turns. Same about magic sites, search for them ASAP.
I was talking about resercher mages, not about site finder or mages for lab building.