Researching vs Site Searching
 

I was just wondering what most people's priorities are in this regard, and why?

Does every mage you buy, barring an immediate war calling them to duty, go straight to research, or do once you pop Thaumaturgy 2/Evocation 2/Construction 3 (or 4 if you've got underwater access for Tiamat), you have every available and capable mage looking for magic sites (especially since the 3.08 patch has made that easier)?

I mean, if you rely on your mages heavily for battle assistance in all phases of the game, I guess research with your non combatant mages is a no-brainer.

But if you think you can get by in the early to mid game without them in the field, what's more useful? Race up to Conjuration/Construction 8 for the uniques, or find every last gem producing site in your empire right away, and get that gem income rolling in ASAP, even if you lag in the research department?

I'm interested to hear your opinions. Thanks!

Re: Researching vs Site Searching
 

Oops, I should have prefaced that - I'm mostly interested in how people would play this out in MP. Thanks.

Re: Researching vs Site Searching
 

I tend to make site search spells a high priority, but I'm fairly new to MP. It may be an error.

It's a tradeoff. If your mages/strategy is more evocation, battlefield damage based, you may want to push the combat spells first. If you want early SCs/thugs, you're going to need the gems to get them.

If you've got access to the research booster items, finding the gems to start producing them early may actually speed up the research by the midgame.

Re: Researching vs Site Searching
 

Generally speaking in mp you want those gem sites ASAP. So researching site searching spells and starting to gem search is a high priority. However there are of course exceptions, you might want to go with alternation/construction to give your awake pretender buff spells/items, or to go with defence in the form of evocation/conjuration if you expect to be rushed early.

Re: Researching vs Site Searching
 

Depends on what nation you play, but getting Thaumaturgy 2, Evo 2 and Conjuration 2 are always pretty high priorities for me, especially Thaumaturgy and Evo.

Re: Researching vs Site Searching
 

I still like manual searching, but I think I'm the only person that does.

Re: Researching vs Site Searching
 

Agree on high priority searching, quicker they're searched quicker you know what you have to work with.

If you end up getting the 50% discount conj site, you'll be wanting to move all your summoning there. Finding it early allows you to plan a bit better. Plus unit production sites, other magic paths, etc.

And the most compelling reason...the earlier they're searched, the quicker you accumulate gems for use later.

Re: Researching vs Site Searching
 

I do alot of manual searching too, especially when I have mages with 2 or more high levels of magic (EA Niefelheim) or mages with many varied paths (EA Tien Chi).

I think its a good idea to put alot of effort into searching every province you own for every single gem you can squeeze out of them. Later in the game you will always face a gem shortage.

Research is very important too, typically by turn 10, I will have at least 8 mage researchers and 2 manual site searchers.

Btw in a MP I am in at the moment I have completed all research, every path to lvl 9 complete. Now I have 200+ battlemages which is really fun and wierd... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Researching vs Site Searching
 

I have that happen alot in SP games, unfortunately i'm too lazy to individually script them so i just toss em in the back of a mess of troops and let em go to work.

I usually only manual search until I get lucky with enough income to get 2-3/turn for site spells. Even if I have a heavy research pretender I'll jump him around if he has multiple paths for a few turns.

Re: Researching vs Site Searching
 

Yeh, in that particular MP game, I only have time to give orders to 1/2 or 2/3 of my nation, so I have put them into 40 mage death squads. 10 spam a army, 10 buff everything and 20 blast the hell out of anything. Not the best of tactics perhaps but good enough when you are not bothered about them dieing...

Re: Researching vs Site Searching
 

I tend to do manual site searching as well, but sometimes I'll throw in a site-search spell or two if I have them. I don't make those a priority to research, though.

Researching, for me at least, is sort of what I do with a mage when I have absolutely nothing else useful left for him to do. That being said, researching is what most of my mages do most of the time. It's just I'd rather be site searching or forging items or summoning monsters.

Re: Researching vs Site Searching
 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Just to push things a little further, here's a scenario to consider:

You have 10 mages with N2 and 20 nature gems in your inventory (or 10 mages with D1 and 30 death gems, etc.).

What do you do? Set one mage to casting a monthly site searching ritual, and the other 9 to research? Or set all 10 to search 10 different sites, and keep them searching as long as you have gems to cast the spells, and un-searched provinces? Or something in between? And why?

Thanks

Re: Researching vs Site Searching
 

I search with all mages in 99 of 100 scenarios. The exception is if im in a war and thers a certain spell i need to win.

Re: Researching vs Site Searching
 

yeah, long term you gain by getting the sites asap, if you're going to spend say 20 mage turns searching anyways, doing it as fast as possible is alot better than slow and steady.

You loose the same amount of research but gain more gems.

Re: Researching vs Site Searching
 

If at peace, with no immediate threat, I site search 10 provinces.

If at peace but some of my border provinces could be at risk in the short term, I site search all my provinces but not the border ones.

If at war I summon/forge/research depending whats best to win the war and do no site searching.

Re: Researching vs Site Searching
 

Plus site searching can reveal sites with other recruitables, giving you units, and even paths, that you did not have access to.

Re: Researching vs Site Searching
 

Fully agree with megabob

Re: Researching vs Site Searching
 

If I'm lazy, I set two of them to site search monthly because then I only have to look up 2 unsearched provinces. If I'm trying to optimize I have all 10 cast site-searching spells immediately. The gem cost is the same, but I get 2-3 extra turns of income (on average) out of any sites I do happen to find.

Since 3.08 came out I'm usually lazy.

-Max

Re: Researching vs Site Searching
 

I missed the addition of automatic site searching until I read the posts, so I still search manually. Will try it tonight.

I have a question. If I have searched a province manually with typical mages, levels 1 to 4, what are the chances I will find additional sites with the level 9 searches performed by spells? I have manually searched provinces with the level 9 searches about 2 dozen times in previous games following a manual search and I've never once found an additional site.

Re: Researching vs Site Searching
 

If you've searched manually with a level 4 mage, you've found everything that's there.

I don't know about actual chances. The higher level sites tend to be rarer, but better so I think it's worth casting, even if you've already searched to level 3.

You'll find by far the majority of sites with level 2 searches though.

Re: Researching vs Site Searching
 

I really don't know the answer to that question. You could get a start on it by downloading Edi's database and looking at the proportion of level 4 sites, but you'd have to scale it by site frequency and the rules for that are funny. Something about rare sites get rerolled the first time they come up, and only stay rare if a rare site is rolled the second time, but I don't know the probabilities for much of anything. In practice, the way to bet is probably that level 3 searches can be considered to have found everything interesting, and only use a site-seaching spell on top of that if you're 1.) looking hard for some specific level 4 site, or 2.) out of provinces to search manually and have no important research to conduct, and no urgent need for new games.

Oh, I know how to be more precise. Look at a saved game where you have lots of auto site-searching done already; cross-reference the sites found with Edi's database and count up how many of them are of each difficulty level. That will tell you how many sites you'll miss through manual searching. If I get time I'll do this tonight, but I'm away from my computer so...

-Max