Re: Acashic records vs. separate spells
 

It becomes much more attractive if you can stumble across a conj bonus site.

Re: Acashic records vs. separate spells
 

If you play R'lyeh, it might worth it to start clamming soon and then go straight for Akashic instead of VoT.

Re: Acashic records vs. separate spells
 

I find astral gems too important to waste on AR, 25 is absurdly too much especially in LA games, might be worthwhile with a conj. site doe, or to use in games with spec. site provinces for example.

Re: Acashic records vs. separate spells
 

Baalz: it's somewhat nation specific, but I tend to manual search with at least the "big gun" mage of whatever nation I'm playing, and then fill in the gaps with remote spells when I get access to a new path, or if there's a path that the big mage misses (like for Bogarus: starets don't have E access, but the alchemists do, so if I have an E booster I'd probably opt to cast gnome lore after manually searching with the starets), especially since I'll usually have a limited mage supply of whatever type it is, or they'll be far away from some portion of my empire, so it'll make sense to remote the far away bits. This approach means that you're not getting a very good return from acashic, since provinces are manually searched in 3-4 paths before I'd really think to remote search them at all. It's pretty rare that I'll be without path access long enough to consider blowing 20-25S on an acashic though, since my normal priority would be saving my pearls for the booster rings and then diversifying with their help.

I've done remotes from the get-go with, say, mictlan, since they're very scattered in terms of paths per mage, but that's very much in the minority for me.

Re: Acashic records vs. separate spells
 

One other factor figures into the equation:

Research.

Acashic is conj 5, as I recall. So nations that are on a research fast track, and for whom the conjuration tree is advantageous, (like Ryalleh) not having to sidestep research is advantageous.

So, making a few assumptions:
If gems are set at 60%, and average gem density is 1.5 per site.
thats roughly 1.8 gems per province.

Site searching could take up to 8 searches to find them all. If your only mages available are 8rp mages - thats costing you 64 rp and 16 gems... vs 20 gems and 8 rp.

However you recover the gems faster as well. During those 8 turn of site searching you will recover on average 11 gems due to faster discovery by acashic record.

Cost of acashic should scale with gem frequency = )

Re: Acashic records vs. separate spells
 

Must confess to being a fan of getting a mage out searching very early on. As long as he's got two paths on him he gets booted out the door. Sooner you find the sites, the sooner you profit from them. (Cue Max Wilson and one of his South Park Gnomes analogies :)). He can even lead an expansion party, and have an Indy commander meet him to take over expansion duties while he gets to work.

And this counts double for me with Earth mages, since hitting a gold mine or two within the first 10 turns can do wonders for your economy.

Re: Acashic records vs. separate spells
 

I'm the same - manual and early. The only consideration is if graphs are on, i take into account what my neighbors might be thinking and whether i can defend what i find.

Re: Acashic records vs. separate spells
 

Can you elaborate? I've never watched South Park and I'm trying hard but failing to think of how gnomes relate to gem investment. Maybe there's another Max Wilson...?

-Max

Re: Acashic records vs. separate spells
 

its simple you see.

1. collect gems
2. ???
3. profit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pe6kG...eature=related

Re: Acashic records vs. separate spells
 

Hehe, aint nothing sweeter than a weak neighbor with gem income climbing from an obvious rainbow pretender searching. ;)