[Omnirizon]

I think your gem income sounds pretty normal.

typically, there are one or two gem types are acting as a bottleneck on what you can do with your other gems; this depends on the nation you are playing and your particular strategy. I think for most people equipping thugs drains most of their gems; so if there is one piece of equipment you need, or a particular thug you are summoning, that becomes the bottleneck. The best way to conserve gems is to not waste them. Don't use thugs recklessly, and find out the best equipment. Often, a thug with 40 gems worth of equipment can outlast one with 100 gems worth if you equip smartly (also, having access to certain buffs can help a ton here, as it allows you to use a spell in place of equipment or to boost the effectiveness of it).

also, acashic(sp?) record is really bad efficiency. Given the above, you are typically better off focusing your searching. Also, by late game others have searched out provinces, and acashic record will severely overlap. By mid game, when wars are involved and provinces changing hands, it is difficult to know what your opponent has already searched for. Best to try and infer from what paths you know they have, and also sort of favor taking chances on searching for what you really need.

Lastly, I never manually search, I find it so inefficient. Spell site searching is twice as quick, and therefore translates into gem income twice as fast (not to mention more efficient use of mage time). Given that, you will make up for the gems spent on the searching. Another benefit is that you can be very precise (targetting mountains/wastelands/forests first; targetting each land type with the appropriate search type; etc); this also translates into quicker gem income (especially of the types you want the most).