Site Searching: What do you use?
 

What is your preferred method of site searching in the early to middle game?

Obviously a lot depends on the nation, the pretender, and the other strategies you are implementing. Post notes about what your vote means and when you would do something different. Observations about site searching methods that are very good or very poor in most situations are welcome.

Re: Site Searching: What do you use?
 

I like to use my pretender and prophet together in the early game. Especially if my pretender has different paths than the rest of my nation, and my prophet is a powerful mage (Vanheim, Pythium, Abysia, Mictlan, etc) this searches many paths and holy at once, and doesn't really slow me down since the searchers were already in that province anyway (having just conquered it) and it gives me a chance to shuttle in fresh reinforcements from the capitol.

As soon as I get indy mages or random picks in death or astral I use search spells, since they only require level-1. I don't find level-2 search spells to be all that great at default magic site abundance... and I tend to cast them only at terrains most likely to have magic sites.

Re: Site Searching: What do you use?
 

I do maybe 80% of my searching with site search spells cast by national, summoned or independent mages. In the early game I use my pretender and mages to search manually just enough to get a trickle of all the gems I can cast search spells for. I can almost always count on nature, death and astral searching regardless of nation, and the other paths are not too hard to open up once you get rolling. I don't normally pay much attention to blood, holy or unholy sites. Blood sites are too rare and very often non-useful and holy/unholy are usually not worth the effort to systematically search for.

Re: Site Searching: What do you use?
 

I agree... I rarely find any blood sites other than the Villians Lair, which I would pay to have removed=) Searching to level-2 holy is so cheap with indy priests (or holy mages that can already search other paths) that I can't imagine NOT doing it, but there is rarely any reward. I only cast Bowl of Blood in single-player games when I have nothing to fear, or if there is unexplained unrest in a province.

Re: Site Searching: What do you use?
 

I start by searching with either my pretender or my national mages untill I get a high enough gem income to cast the apropriate spell at least once a day and then I start mass spell searching.
I do it because it requires less MM than moving your mages around and remembering to order a search and when you use it you know for a fact that there are no more sites of X kind left in the province.

Re: Site Searching: What do you use?
 

I use the site-searchers for much the same reasons Agrajag gave.

Regarding blood sites... heh. It's really nice to see a 40% or 60% province... Devil's Den! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Site Searching: What do you use?
 

Or The Demon Gate.

I tend to rely greatly on the various radar spells, usually to the exclusion of all else if it is an option. However, after I made the magic site DB (available at Arryn's site), I've drastically changed strategy. 70% of sites or thereabouts are lv 1, and a surprising number of the very good ones fall also into this category (they just tend to be rare). Lv 2 mages can find around 85 to 90% of any existing sites, so using mages with greater path levels is a complete and utter waste of a resource that could be spending its time in far better pursuits.

Furthermore, of the lv 3 sites, only Cave of Clouds, Crystal Garden, Grove of Evergreens, Iron Cliff, Weeping Stone and Well of Pestilence are common, and even of those Cave of Clouds has terrain restrictions.

ALL other non-rare lv 3 sites except the Hidden Monastry are unique, regardless of rarity. Well, except for a couple of underwater sites, but there are so few of those anyway that it is not a big deal and basically only affects Atlantis and R'lyeh anyway. Of the rare ones, there are about ten non-unique sites, but the odds of finding any rare site are pretty low compared to the common and uncommon ones, so it is foolish to count on them, and there are more rare lv 1 and lv 2 sites anyway.

Searching for Lv 4 with expectation to find is stupid. All of those sites are rare, all except the Temple of Time are unique and half of them are restricted to a single terrain type.

By far the best type of site searchers are rainbow mages like the Tien Chi Celestial Master, the independent Enchantresses and others that have multiple randoms. Using anything above lv 2 (except for the holy path) is outright stupid unless you know for a fact that there is a specific site in a province (the only lv 3 or above that can be detected by unrest is The Demon Gate, and there are several that modify scales, but they are harder to see, especially if you have points in that scale to the same direction).

There is a very, very good reason why all the radar spells (except death and astral, which require just one path level) are lv 2 spells. Use them, people, or you will be wasting your more significant mages (path lv 3 or above) idling half the time (moving from one place to another) and not doing much useful with them the other half.

Edi

Re: Site Searching: What do you use?
 

I always try to get a province site searched by at least lvl 2 mages using indi and national mages.
After that I use the searching spells on those provinces who still have a good chance of having sites.(for example mountains/swamps where my mages found only 0-1 sites.)

An exception are underwater provinces, those always get the voice of tiamat + haruspex treatment, without having mages search first. And provinces with odd scales and/or unrest get searched remotely too.

Re: Site Searching: What do you use?
 

I agree. It all depends on my nation/setup/independants I find what to use for searching.

Re: Site Searching: What do you use?
 

WRT blood sites:

Yes there are very few blood sites that are worth anything. However the two that are worth some are so insanely powerful that you really have to search for them ( Mount Chaining and Summoning Circle ). Both of these sites can easily change a game even in the last stages.