ECP – a simplified way to reach the center perks.

Mages need to acquire two full skill branches (mentorship, magic attraction, spell reward, secret knowledge, counterspell, secret advantage), which is practically impossible if the hero doesn't have a mentor near the town and lacks hundreds of thousands of gold.

I completely disagree. You need to know how to level up. The sequence is simple:
Basic skill -> first ability -> Advanced skill -> Second ability -> Expert skill -> Third ability
You can say that it's easy in theory, but difficult in practice, but to make it work, you need to start by taking the racial skill and all the abilities related to it. Then, when there are no other open skills, you will have 2 abilities of the desired skill to choose from, one of which will be the one you need.