Some questions on LA Ermor

[ese-aSH]

thanks Jim, I guess I'll have to train for a while just on the first 2 years to improve that.

I had a serious issue in my test game : the indep mages always costed 3 up to 5 resources each (the game is to be played with CBM, I dont know if it changes something there), and I did not have that many resources in the provinces they were found. Therefore I was unable to recruit any of them :'(

In my test game I'm now around the end of year 4, I've cast burden of times quite early (I had a magic site that gives +20 to enchantments, so I decided to use this strong bonus) and it seems it was worth the cost. I've launch a serious assault on one of the AI, but this had terrible consequences on my research (I did take 1/3 of my mages to support the army, and since i'm very limited in researchers...).
Theres a skull that boost research (+9 ?) for 10 gems, I should use it more (by far the best gems/rp turn ratio I can get). Does it have any drawbacks ? (in a nother game with marignon I use to build lots of fire research boost +6 but it horror marked all my mages)