[Micah]

I have to mostly disagree with Evil Dave...you should pretty much always be building mages at every fort you've got, making any sort of national leader is a pretty bad use of your fort. Once in a while buying a leader for a specific reason (mostly stealth) is permissible, but normal troop movement should always be handled by indies, losing mage-turns is a bad plan. Cost effectiveness of researchers should also be balanced against speed...generally a 210g mage with 10RP is gonna be a much better buy than a 100g mage with 5RP (counting magic scale and the same sacred status) since you're basically saving the cost of a second fort + lab by building the spendier mages. And yes, you should pretty much always be building your cap-only mages at your cap, if you've got them. Some nations' cap units suck though (LA marignon) so don't always worry about it.