Hi! Have you ever wondered the best way to beat out your friends in Magical Research? Are you playing with that obscure victory condition where you need a certain amount of Research Points to win? Do you simply wish to know how to budget your gold so you can find that spell you need sooner versus later, while also having enough non-Researchers to keep your libraries from being torched by those uncivilized brutes around you?

← This is the Research ability icon. There will be a number to the right of it; that number is how many Research Points (RP) the guy generates each turn, while conducting Research in a Laboratory. Research happens before battles and recruitment, and has your guy sitting around and doing nothing after he's finished for the turn, unless his Lab gets attacked by those uncivilized brutes.

Only some Commanders (those guys on the top row of your recruitment options) have Research ability, and only they can Research; if you want anyone else to Research, simply have them Defend, and they'll probably doodle on a page somewhere while wondering why you didn't give them a productive order.

Because everyone else is doing it!

Most Researchers that are worth anything are in your nation's recruitment roster, and the vast majority of them require a Fort to be available. For most nations, one of these costs 600 Gold.

Unfortunately, you can only recruit so many Commanders (and therefore only so many Researchers) at a time from your provinces, thanks to something called Commander Points, and the fact that virtually everyone who can research requires at least two of these Points. Your recruitment places have only one Commander Point per turn at base, so it'll take you two turns to get one Researcher. You need a level two fort, typically called a Fortress, to get two Commander Points per turn; upgrading a fort into a Fortress typically costs 300 Gold. Some primitive nations don't even get this opportunity. You need a level four fort, typically called a Citadel, to get three Commander Points per turn; only a few nations get those before the Late Ages, however, and upgrading a Fortress into a Citadel costs 750 Gold. Unspent Commander Points are wasted, by the way!

I need the pic for the Laboratory
All but a few Researchers have guaranteed Arcane Magic levels, so they need a Laboratory to be recruited, even if they appear in recruitment rosters without a fort. Labs cost 500 Gold, for most places. The upside of building a Lab is that you then don't have to move your Researcher to your capital for Research purposes; that's nice. The downside, of course, is that uncivilized brutes will take them for themselves and use them for dastardly non-Research purposes.

An annoying amount of Researchers are Sacred, and therefore require a Temple to be recruited. Now, Temples have their other uses, and Sacred Researchers don't expect much of a salary after their sign-on bonus, but a Temple still costs 400 Gold to set up. This is lower for some places, but it's higher for others. Uncivilized brutes will set fire to it if they touch it, too, but at least they won't use it for non-Research purposes.

Here's an example of the dilemma posed by infrastructure: ignoring Scales and pre-existing architecture, who is the most cost-effective Researcher for Gath?

Note that, when you divide their hiring cost by their average Research ability, the Sybil is more cost-effective (7.22 Gold-per-point, vs. 7.26), but not by a lot. If you absolutely need the Research at any cost, the Sage is your way to go, since you can get two of them per turn. On the other hand, the Sibyl is the better option if you're worried about saving money currently; it'll take about nineteen turns for the extra salary to offset the 25 Gold saved over hiring two Sages, and a lot longer to offset the 300 Gold in infrastructure savings.

Magic is the reason you Research to begin with, but it has a way of making Research less… efficient. Yes, powerful Mages have a high Research ability, but:

• They're expensive,
• They're slow/rare, and
• They're better off not Researching.

If your Mage can help in any way other than through Research, it should probably be doing that instead of Researching. They could be using Spells you already know, or searching for Sites that give you Gems that you can convert into Items that boost your Research. Most Research Monkeys have Magic levels as a formality, to explain why they can Research Magic in the first place.

As for how Magic can boost your Research:

• Adding a Magic level to a Mage, as long as it's not a Priest level, increases their Research ability by 2. The cheapest way to do this is through Magic Boosters researched in the Construction school; Empowerment is certainly not meant for speeding up Research, though it gives a Research ability of 7 to those without Magic.
• You can convert 5 into an Owl Quill for a +6 bonus to Research ability, if you have an 1 Mage lying around. This requires Construction 2, or up to 150 Research Points (depending on what you started with).
• You can convert 5 into an Imp Familiar for a +3 bonus to Research ability, if you have a 1 Mage lying around. This also requires Construction 2. It has other problems aside from doing less Research, such as sticking to the Research Monkey you give it to and eventually killing them, but it's rather cheap due to how Blood Slaves work.
• You can convert 10 into a Skull Mentor for a +14 bonus to Research ability, if you have a 2 Mage for the job. This requires Construction 4, or up to 750 Research Points (depending on what you started with).
• You can convert 5 into a Lightless Lantern for a +12 bonus to Research ability, if you have a 1 Mage lying around. This requires Construction 6, or up to 2750 Research Points (depending on what you started with). Unfortunately, it's a bit quicker about getting the bearer killed than the Imp Familiar is, but you can trade it around if you're worried.
• If you don't feel like messing around with Items, you can convert 9 into a Revenant that has a Research ability of 7. You'll still need that 2 Mage, but Revenants are available at Enchantment 3, so they need only 350 Research Points at most. Unfortunately, other generic Summons have far-less-generous exchange rates, since they were intended to be used in battle.

← This is a point of Magic on a province's Scales. Researchers who are Mages get +1 to their Research ability for each of these in the province they're Researching in, making quantity of Researchers over quality favorable. Picking Magic when creating your Pretender also gives you 50 extra Research Points, per Magic point. You can have up to 3 when building your own scales.

← This is a point of Drain; Researchers who are Mages get -1 to their Research ability for each of these in the province they're Researching in, making quality of Researchers over quantity favorable. Picking Drain when creating your Pretender also subtracts 50 Research Points from what you start with, per point of Drain, but it also gives you Design points that let you do more with other Scales. You can have up to 3 when building your scales.

If you care about Research, you probably shouldn't take Drain, with three exceptions:

• If you have nonmagical researchers, such as the Iassacharite Sage or the Mundane Researchers found in some human nations,
• If your Research goal is far down the line, and you think you can get enough Research ability to offset that initial hit, and
• If you're sure you don't need decent Spells early.

← This is an Experience level. Your Researchers get a +1 bonus to their Research ability for each of these that they have. Experience is typically accrued through doing stuff, but it's also accrued through simply being alive; with that in mind, your Research Monkeys will get Experience levels eventually. These things are another point in favor of quantity over quality.

Who has the best Research payout for their dollar? The results may surprise you. They probably won't, though. These lists are better-used as guides for comparison. They list the best Gold-per-Research-ability (GPR) value for each nation, the best Research-ability-per-Commander-point (RPC) value for each nation (in case you're in a rush), and some notes. Values are averaged with Random paths in mind; the given values are under the best possible scales (e.g. 3), neutral scales, and the worst possible scales (e.g. 3) respectively.

GPR and RPC are calculated the opposite way! I flipped them to avoid decimals.