I focus on getting one or two mages to the 3 astral required to start using akashic record. I find that spell the most time efficient although there is a thread talking about it using too many gems.
Gems- if you are number crunching than I guess Akashic record costs too much to be worth it. But I end up with gems coming out of my ears and if not astral than something else which I can convert to astral so really it's a matter of budgeting your resources and deciding what is important to you. Once I actually have someone who can cast it, the whole game changes because it opens up all these new resources.
I no longer use the search command for my commanders. I don't like how long it takes and that combat can interrupt the search.
my $0.10
