[thejeff]

There's definitely some kind of bug with monthly site-searching and capitals. It's been around from the start, but it should be easier to pin down now that all searching can be done monthly.

Sometimes capitals (including captured enemy capitals) are targeted, usually they are not. If a capital is targeted, it will be a valid target for all paths. Which capitals are valid targets changes from game to game with no pattern I've been able to spot.

Some non-capital provinces are skipped. I haven't yet seen this in 3.08, but I've only had a few test games, none of which lasted very long.

My guess is that there's something wrong in the "Is this a capital?" check, that causes both problems. Now that all searching can be done with monthly casting, it should be possible to see whether there's a correlation between capitals searched and provinces not searched.

Other site-searching problems:
A mage set to auto cast searches can target a province lost the same turn. (Not lost the turn it's cast, but the turn it's targeted.) You cannot manually set a mage to cast on that province, since you no longer own it. This is an artifact of the turn order. Targets for monthly rituals are determined right after the ritual is cast, before battles occur.
For the same turn order reasons, a mage auto casting searches will not target a province gained that turn, though you can manually target that province.

The first of those I would call a bug, since it lets you do something you can't do by other means. The second would be nice to have, since it would let you keep your empire searched with less effort, but the same fix would probably address both.