Message from Abysia

[Archonsod]

PrinzMegaherz said:
The old age itself isn't that bad, but it's one rather unbalanced factor in the game. Best solution to solve the problem is to take a nation with long living mages like Yomi. It's just a shame that my favorite nation (which was never one of the top dogs) has been degraded this badly.

It's the best solution if you don't want to or can't deal with old age. To be honest, I wouldn't agree that it's a disadvantage, apart from in the early game. For any blood nation, research construction and a relatively cheap (10 blood slaves) item is available which negates ageing alltogether. Given that old age is payment for increased abilities or lower than normal value, this is going to give you a cheap, powerful or otherwise advantaged mage which you can ignore the downside of. In other words, you just became slightly more powerful than everyone else.
You could even build a strategy around this. Consider the crone or other pretenders who get a points or abilities break because of old age. Select imprisoned for maximum goodness, and bank on getting one of the age negating spells or items before your pretender breaks free. You can then prevent old age from ever affecting your pretender, thus effectively giving you free points.
It's down to playing style really. Some people are going to rule out nations with older mages because it doesn't suit their style. Others will embrace them and find ways to deal with the ageing problem or even turn it to their advantage.