[Baalz]

Well, these types of questions are very situational. I agree that path specific radar spells are the better choice in most situations, but certainly not all. Basically, you've got 3 choices 1) Manual search 2) Search each path remotely 3) Acashic record. Here are some factors which have a significant impact on what you do.

1) Do you have strong astral with not much diversity, while also having conjuration as one of your first research goals? Bandar Log comes to mind, using acashic record sparingly when you first get it will give you a good multi-path gem income that your nice summons can use. Not a bad idea to go for arcane probing, then straight into conjuration.

2) Is the research required for radar spells at cross purpose to other research you need done early on? Mictlan comes to mind. With astral, fire, nature, & water mages all of path two, I often end up manually searching because I'm focused on researching construction and blood.

3) Do you really want gem incomes for paths you've only got first level mages in, or no mages yet (perhaps you're expecting to summon something to take advantage of them)? Expecting to need to bring a fight underwater and need water gems? etc.

4) Site frequency (including era, LA has less sites I think) absolutely effects the choice because the payout is higher so the more important factor is mage-turns. Conversely if you've got low sites, and consequently a low gem income then even the path specific radar spells may have a low ROI and it makes more sense to manually search.

5) Are there some higher level sites that would have a huge impact? For example there is a level 3 blood site which gives you a 60% blood magic discount, if you're playing a blood strategy its worthwhile to make sure you search for level 3 sites which often means remote searching.

6) Do you have a lot of swaps/wastelands in your kingdom? It really doesn't make much sense to cast acashic on farmlands, I usually only cast it on swamps/waste/forest/mountains with no sites showing yet.

7) How valuable are off-path gems to you? If you've got no use for a path unless you empower somebody twice gems of that flavor aren't terribly tasty.