[AreaOfEffect]

I'm personally in favor of Hard.

I do however understand the concern people have for late game strategies arriving in the middle of the game's run. AdmiralZhao's "ideal world" does sound appealing, but isn't possible as far as I know in the way he would want it.

My best suggestion would actually be to make an additional mod. It wouldn't be hard at all to take all the lower level spells and move them even lower by one rank and then set the research to very hard.