Re: Acashic records vs. separate spells
 

Max, if you have never seen that episode of South Park (kindly provided by Omnirizon :)) then I can only conclude that....

1. You are actually an underpants gnome, so are just acting on your instincts.
2. You are not an underpants gnome, but should consider a career in comedy writing.
3. ???
4. Profit!

Hey, get your damn hands off my new gem pile you big bully! :D

Re: Acashic records vs. separate spells
 

It's a tough choice when you see a rainbow pretender walking around early in the game.. do you go for the kill or let him search for a bit longer first?

For the main topic, I hadn't notice the cost drop in CBM 1.5, very interesting. It is still a pretty niche use though, worthwhile occasionally but generally not. Excluding conjuration bonus sites, I'd say the main driver to use it would have to be good astral income combined with other strong reasons to charge up the conjuration path before getting level 2 in thaum and evoc.

Certainly I'd say the main reason to use AR would be diversification, in particular if your nation is very limited in path selection and you aren't using your pretender to diversify.

Re: Acashic records vs. separate spells
 

I prefer to snipe them with some well-aimed Seeking Arrows while they are in a low-dom province, alone, site searching.

Since seeking arrow is nameless, it can cause quite a uproar on the diplomacy front :D.

Re: Acashic records vs. separate spells
 

Hey! I don't take kindly to your kind 'round here. Neither does Max.

Re: Acashic records vs. separate spells
 

If your weak rainbow pretender is out alone when decent assassination spells can start flying, you can have few complaints if it gets killed.

I don't like acashic record for the most part because of the gem cost. Astral gems are incredibly useful, and I'm uncomfortable spending 25 that could be going to so many useful other ends, but I guess if you've got a wasteland or other likely province apparently gemless, go for it.

Re: Acashic records vs. separate spells
 

My personal preference is to site search every province with every path I have access to via remote searching spells. I only do manual site searching if I need to bootstrap into that gem type, or I have good mages.

If I have good (3+ path) site searching mages, I'll send out a few to look around for sites. Even after doing that, I'll still site search those provinces with remote searching rituals to make sure I haven't missed anything.

Right now in Legends of Faerun I think my method speaks for itself. I sent out mages to search at the very beginning so that I could build up my gem stores, and now I've switched over to automatic site searching which covers every path of gem besides blood.

In Lapis, however, the 500 GP Tomb Kings are such amazing site searchers (ASEFD paths, high death and fire), that I haven't bothered to do ANY non-manual site searching, and I'm easily leading the charts in gem income there.

Jazzepi

Re: Acashic records vs. separate spells
 

Oh. I had no idea that old joke originated on South Park. I can't remember where I picked it up, probably from one of my labmates in school.

-Max

Re: Acashic records vs. separate spells
 

I rarely use manual searching, normally i use all remote searching spells i have in a province and only use AR if, after the remote searching, the province has less than 2 sites found...

Re: Acashic records vs. separate spells
 

Manually site searching depends on the mage. As a general rule, I'd suggest any mage with 6 magic levels total (not including blood or holy) would make a decent manual site searcher. Ideally those six or more would concentrate in two paths (e.g. x3+y3+) as you only risk missing extremely rare level 4 sites in those two paths, they should take about the same amount of mage time, and save plenty of gems. A bigger spread like w2x2y1z1 will miss quite a few sites so that you'll need to go back and check with spells later anyway, but generally will quickly get incomes flowing if you want them early. Quite often, you might want to send out mages with just 1 in a path just because you can't cast some site search spells.

Re: Acashic records vs. separate spells
 

If you have diversified magic, Arco's mystics, Bakemono sorcerer or TC's imperial alchem. for eg, than you manually site search from the start.
After that you take those provinces that are still empty and remote site search.