Acashic records vs. separate spells
 

When playing a nation that gets reliable S3, do you rush Acashic Record, or rely on the separate searching spells?

Has anybody worked out which is actually optimised?

Re: Acashic records vs. separate spells
 

I believe Acashic Record is quite useful in SP, because you can simply build your defence and play the game beyond 100+ turns without feeling pressure.

In MP I always ignore it.
Maybe under the new cost introduced by CBM it deserves respect.

Re: Acashic records vs. separate spells
 

Akashic Record is much less than optimal, gem-wise. It's quite good in terms of mage time, though.

Separate search spells (or manual searching) are preferred as a rule, because 4xAkashic Record=1xWish later in the game.

Ooh, I missed the new cost in CBM... 20 pearls is definitely better, but still a lot.

Re: Acashic records vs. separate spells
 

The other consideration to is that AR gives you magic diversity. It allows you to search in paths you otherwise couldn't, which will often yield indie mages with those paths. AR is an important way for ie EA R'yleh to get diversity both in terms of magic paths and in terms of land mages. It can also be quite useful when you have mages who can use the gems but not remotely site search - ie F1 mages who could crank out lightless lanterns. The economics also are quite different if you have, say, a completely unsearched wasteland/swamp with no magic sites showing vs a farmland with a farm of plenty. Not economical if you want to blanket all your provinces and just plan alchemizing random gemtypes, but with a bit of leverage it can be quite useful. All in all, AR is not a default "goto" spell, but there are plenty of cases where it's the spell you want.

Re: Acashic records vs. separate spells
 

Hmm, at 20 gems (unless you're counting pearls as two gems :) ) I'd say it is feasible on high gem settings.
Remote searching every path = 14 gems, so you pay 6 gems more. If you find a site earlier than with normal site searching it can pay off.
In high settings you are bound to find good indie mages/discount sites that way.

Re: Acashic records vs. separate spells
 

I'm still a die-hard manual search fan myself. *shrug*

Re: Acashic records vs. separate spells
 

pro
-increase magic diversity
-requires pearl and not specif gem
-requires only 1 mage

con
-high cost
-doesn't work for holy site( not sure here)
-require astral-2 mages

go for it in my opinon,especially if you are an astral nation.

Re: Acashic records vs. separate spells
 

That's curious, even when you don't have mages well suited for it? I find some nations/strategies lend themselves much more to either manual or remote site searching for specific paths. D1/S1 mages are not very good manual site searchers, but can pop off the remote spells just fine, while some national mages have two strong magic paths and another one or two weak ones and maybe even holy, making great manual site searchers. Water is a bit of a special case because it's an inconvenient research placement unless you were already headed there, and of course you have to consider voice of tiamat and the over representation of W gems from random events. I find the choice varies greatly depending on the circumstances.

Re: Acashic records vs. separate spells
 

Akashic Record is a gamble.... much like all site searching. It's stupidly expensive, but when you are looking at a Mountain/Forest province that has been searched by the four paths you can scrape together you know there must be something there. Now, that may be a few supply sites or something even more lame like Arenas, but it can also be something awesome like a site making Wizards.

At the end of the day, you need to choose when the gamble is worth it and when is is not. Some sites produce signs that they are there like unrest, heat, cold, order, turmoil, etc..... and those are places you might want to search.

So use it to search key provinces..... or search when you have provinces that should have sites but don't.

Re: Acashic records vs. separate spells
 

I agree that in MP I rarely use it. The smaller maps puts a rush on you that makes extensive searches of every province a luxury I cant afford.

But there are times I consider it. Besides those mentioned, if a lab randomly pops up in a province where Ive found no magic sites then Im eager to see if there might randomly be a good use of it. It might not be smart use of gems but its far too tempting to quickly see how lucky I might be.

Or if Im about to build a castle in an important strategic location. I particularly love having a search give me a castle there. Sometimes I do acashic on two provinces next to each other where I want to build a castle but cant decide which to build on.

But the size of the game will often decide how many acashics Im willing to do.

Gandalf Parker
--
Due to strong suggestions by the Budget Manager
I am trying very hard to focus my work into areas where I receive compensation.

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. ;)

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.

Re: Acashic records vs. separate spells
 

If you run into indie sorceresses, they are great manual site searchers. They usually have three to four paths, but rarely have more than 1 in any one path. So they are not much good for casting searches.

Re: Acashic records vs. separate spells
 

Do you mean enchantresses? Sorceresses are 2S2A, with some small chance of an extra path IIRC. They can remote search S or A just fine.

-Max