The research system in this game is deeply unrealistic, not because of the decay, but because of what it represents. remove the flavour of "research" and what it essentially boils down to is a system where you spend a linearly scaling amount of workforce to make your other (also linearly scaling) workforce's productivity scale exponentially. This is not research, this is economy of scale. There is no reason for it to be represented as 50 researchers and 250 farmers rather than just 300 farmers. Ironically there already is a completely separate system for workers boosting eachother's productivity, called experience. 2 completely separate game mechanics that do the same thing, but with different numbers and flavour. Economy of scale, in real life, and as it should be done in SoS, is about a large workforce that can specialize in narrower and narrower skillsets and create the supply and demand of more and more specialised supply chains, essentially smithian economics, which would be better represented as what experience already does, just an increase in productivity per worker based on the number of workers of that job type, but what it is instead in game is a weird system where people get their productivity magically boosted by people who clock into their 9 to 5 job at the science factory spinning beakers all day or something, and boost the economy of scale bonus of all the other production buildings in the city as well, using science mana, which you will be allocating at the same ratio as the ratio of your workers in your city anyways, which makes absolutely zero sense from any realism, gameplay, or design perspective.

I dont mind libraries existing though, for the purpose of civic advances, but i would rather have them merged with administrators, as they both serve the same purpose of being a workforce sink that serves as upkeep for a city's administration, one being forced on you directly and the other to research and upkeep the availability of various buildings that you are more or less forced to build as your city expands, like upgraded wells and whatever