>What annoys me about n-tier development is the fact that you can spend nearly 3 times the amount of development time, first time through.

Usually we spend 50% more time in advance, but 5 years TCO of application for the client is less.

>How much time would you say you saved by going the n-tier route, if you spend 2-3 years to develop what would have been a 1 year project, do you ever get that back? Have you ever got that time back?

If you like the same data and bussiness logic to work in LAN and web environment you have not other choice. Usually you save at least half of the costs of your client. Usualy we develop one application for 3-6 months cutting it into pieces between programmers.
If we develop application for a year it will be obsole at the moment of its first running.