[thejeff]

Baalz, are those other valid targets provinces you've had for awhile that have just been skipped over? Somewhere in the middle of the province list?

If you take new provinces will it search them? (At least most of them)
And the casters go back to "defend", they don't keep trying to cast on the province they're in, after the turn?

If so, that matches what I've seen. Some provinces are skipped, for no apparent reason. This leaves gaps in the list that look like valid targets, but the algorithm doesn't think so, so it kicks the mages out of monthly search mode and if you try to order them to search again, it defaults to the current province, because there is no valid target.