Indep. Mages

[Wyehl]

I am surprised that noone has done the math on the start up cost for national mages vs. the start up cost for indie mages.

Sure, if you are short on gold, you are going to build a mage in your capital first, usually. For many nations, their best mages will be cap only.

After that, however, you have to choose between building a fortress, lab and maybe temple to produce your national mages or just a lab for most indie mages. Obviously, it's a bit more complicated than that since, on one hand, fortresses have other good uses but on the other hand, they also take time to build and have a large enough start up cost that you often can't always afford them as early as you would like.