[Septimius Severus]

Originally Posted by Cammorak

Then that raises the next question of when magical sites are generated: on searching or on game start (barring creator-defined sites)? I've seen some posts with people holding off on high-magic sites so they can search specific paths, which seems to indicate the former, but the latter seems more logical for some reason.

Which magic sites are in a given province are determined at game start. The .map file can then be used to overide whichever sites have been assigned at random during game start. Some sites will only appear in a certain terrain type. Magic sites can be of different levels, so you need a site searcher with enough magic in the appropriate path to actually find the site. Or an appropriate site searching spell.