[Micah]

It's not faulty logic at all. Having higher proportional upkeep does, in fact, mean that them dying is less worrisome.

To take the extreme cases, if a unit's upkeep were equal to its purchase cost I think it's pretty obvious that if you have free resources (fort-commander slots, in this case) to re-recruit a unit it really doesn't matter much if they die. Likewise, a 0-upkeep unit is not replaceable once dead over any length of time. Obviously 15 turns is not instant, but it's a lot closer than 30.

Because MA Caelum doesn't have any sacreds they are likely to have those fort slots available before too long, since they get hit with much higher upkeep than nations with sacred researchers, so their forts are likely to become idle before too long.

That being said I suppose you could try for the low-end mages for research instead, since they're much more efficient than the high seraphs, but I don't much like that idea for Caelum. They have mobility, mammoths, and blstering evocation ability out of the gate, and I think that should be leveraged early, not traded in for a bean-counting strategy of minimized upkeep by using spire horns for research. Those can be added in later on once the upkeep starts stinging and you've got a solid corps of battle mages.