[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:

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Originally posted by tinkthank:
I have never used these spells. It just seems I never have the gems for them, I use them for forging and whatnot.

Voice of Tiamat is very cheap, and very useful, since it gives you all elemental sites in a province.

I should say: I have NEVER used a gem-search-spell, ever, with any race, because I usually search. (I play quite a bit of Tien S&A, which has natural searchers.) Is this newbie-ness from me?

Given standard game settings, your mages can search about twice as effectively by using the searching spells as by moving to a province, then searching.

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It depends very much on what mages you have. A mage who has most of his power in one path (like Anathemant Salamanders) is better off casting search spells, if you can afford the gem cost; it really does double his effectiveness. A Master of Five Elements searches five paths at once if he goes and searches on the ground, but only one per search spell. The M5E won't find high level sites; but high level sites are rare (but also more powerful). A Celestial Master will find some high level sites and a lot of low level sites, but his time may be too valuable to spend on searching. Other mages fall somewhere in between. A Mystic will find most astral sites and some elemental sites if he goes and looks, but will find all astral sites and no elemental sites if he casts Arcane Probing; but you can Probe twice as many provinces per 2 months, if you can spare the gems for it.

It's very much a tradeoff, especially if you get few other benefits from the Thaumaturgy research required for most search spells. I tend to favor ground searching until I have a pretty healthy gem income to support a "divination squad" while still doing other things. But since the original poster specified he played Spring & Autumn T'ien Ch'i - I'm not sure it's ever worthwhile for them to switch to search spells (except the Masters of the Dead and possibly of the Way). Their magical breadth makes searching on the ground more efficient - at least for the low level sites that you can actually find that way.

Also, don't search (by *any* means) provinces that you don't think you can hold. It just gives more gem income and possibly recruitment options to whoever takes it away from you, unless you get really lucky and get a free fortress.