Re: The value of site searching rainbow pretenders
 

Just a quick note on site levels: Of the 563 sites in the game, roughly 120 are national sites or reserved empty slots. Of the remaining 400-odd sites, there are maybe 50 sites above lv 2 and that's with lv 3 and 4 sites put together. Perhaps a bit more than that, but I'm at work right now and can't access the site DB.

So using a rainbow pretender with values over 2 across the board for site searching is a complete waste of time. It's much better to research Thaumaturgy 2, Evo 2 and Conjuration 4 to get access to all the radar spells.

Edi

Re: The value of site searching rainbow pretenders
 

Hmm, 50 out of 400 is about 12.5% and they tend to be the richest of the bunch. While I agree that the radar spells are great, I do find hitting level four for the bless and a chunk of the gem sites useful. Level 3 is what I find questionable.

Re: The value of site searching rainbow pretenders
 

Some of them are the richest, but a lot of them are either rare or unique or both. That means that betting on finding them is uncertain at best and results in lots of idling for a powerful researcher/forger.

I do have a good handle on which sites are unique based on both the Dom2 Site DB and names, but the problem is that uniqueness is also tied to the location masks (it's one more value for the mask).

I can divine most of the masks and frequencies from the old DB, but I need either the source code or somebody reverse engineering the masks out of the game somehow for the rest of them.

Edi

Re: The value of site searching rainbow pretenders
 

One of the ways to make rainbow pretender search more efficient in the early game is to take an indy province with him, search, take another province, search, etc... Something like Ghost King is a good candidate for this role. There's a synergy because the most magic-site-promising provinces are usually weaker defended,