Strands of Arcane Power

sansanjuan · #1 December 26th, 2009, 03:00 PM

Any idea how the site searching mechanics work for this spell? Does it drive off the casting mage's paths? What are the chances of finding a given site? Do boosters help the casting mage for site searches? If so is it the boosters worn when cast or can they be equipped later?

Sorry for the spate of questions...
-ssj

Knai · #2 December 26th, 2009, 03:46 PM

I'm not entirely sure about all of this, but what it looks like is you search as if the mage were searching, but with a small fraction of your actual magic abilities. However, you search every province which has your dominion. If you have a really good rainbow mage (ie. a god which has wished for magic power a few times, to make everything more powerful), you will find a lot. I'm not sure how the enemy mage killing and feeble minding works, or how you can get hit, since the mages I've had cast this are dangerous enough to be able to effortlessly slaughter any other mage with a magic duel.

Kheldron · #3 December 26th, 2009, 04:05 PM

Well I've got this one up in one of my games.
It seems to search in every province where you have at least one candle up, if you also control that province. I've got a fair number of enemy provinces where my candles are up but no search so far.

It shows you which poaths were searched at which level exactly as though you had manually searched the province with a mage.

I've only seen searches ranging from lvl 1-3, lvl 4 might be possible but I've yet to see it, even though my mage's got a lvl 10 path with a booster.
What's strange is that, if it doesn't search for a higher lvl than you have, your actual lvl doesn't seem to influence that much : I've got several provinces searched at lvl 1-3 in a path where I am only lvl 3.

More often than not you'll only get a lvl 1 search anyway.

It checks again every turn and you may find a province searched for lvl 2-3 in a given path when it was only searched for lvl 1 the turn before.

Hope it helps.

sansanjuan · #4 December 26th, 2009, 05:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kheldron

Well I've got this one up in one of my games.
It seems to search in every province where you have at least one candle up, if you also control that province. I've got a fair number of enemy provinces where my candles are up but no search so far.

It shows you which poaths were searched at which level exactly as though you had manually searched the province with a mage.

I've only seen searches ranging from lvl 1-3, lvl 4 might be possible but I've yet to see it, even though my mage's got a lvl 10 path with a booster.
What's strange is that, if it doesn't search for a higher lvl than you have, your actual lvl doesn't seem to influence that much : I've got several provinces searched at lvl 1-3 in a path where I am only lvl 3.

More often than not you'll only get a lvl 1 search anyway.

It checks again every turn and you may find a province searched for lvl 2-3 in a given path when it was only searched for lvl 1 the turn before.

Hope it helps.

Kheldron,
Thanks for the reply. So it only searches within the paths of the casting mage up to that mage's level. I wasn't sure if it was a weak ashraic record where a pure astral mage might find sites outside his (sole) path.
-ssj

Loren · #5 December 26th, 2009, 07:12 PM

It randomly searches provinces which you own and which have at least one candle. They will not be searched all at once but in time they end up searched. You can only search paths that you have, I've never seen a province searched to more than level 3 by this spell.

Since I've seen provinces searched to level 1 or 2 but later at 3 with the same mage I think what's going on is that it randomly applies one level of searching.

I have never cast it with a mage with one or two levels of a path so I don't know what happens in this case.

Generally you fry or kill enemy mages in provinces you have a candle in, although I have been feebleminded by it when I hit a powerful enemy mage. Note that the spell does *NOT* go down if you're feebleminded, but you will not be able to feeblemind any other mages until your mind is restored.

I suspect that the number of candles you have has an effect on how fast you search a province, it seems the borders don't search as fast as the inner areas. It's also possible I'm seeing some sort of range effect. I've never tried to map it carefully, that's just my observation.

binarysolo · #6 December 26th, 2009, 08:17 PM

My observations after casting it a few times in SP, given that I *really* wanted this spell to work, as I hate micro-ing magic search as well as unnecessary magic searching that the friendly AI does on captured capitals and what not.

1) Strands searches only paths which the mage has... I *believe* this includes priest levels.

2) Strands searches up to 3 levels in any magic path.... I have not seen any searches at lvl4 yet. Path boosters contribute towards any level checks.

Not certain: 3) The amount of path levels you have affects your site searching. If I recall correctly it's MagePathLvl-1, min 1 max 3.

4) Strands only searches in a somewhat probabilistic/die-roll way -- it searches a few sites per selected provinces per turn.

5) Strands searches ONLY if you have at least 1 candle in the territory.

6) Strands can feeblemind or outright kill random enemy mages under dominion. (The effectiveness is... not terribly awesome.)

Not certain 7) If the caster of strands gets feebleminded by an opposing mage (never happened to me personally) the spell still exists as a global, though given that you are feebleminded you have no magic paths and therefore cannot do any remote site search.

Overall thoughts: not a terrible spell at all per se, but if you have high enough Astral to cast this, you might as well save up your pearls and cast Astral Nexus instead.

Knai · #7 December 26th, 2009, 09:12 PM

The obvious exception being when there are very large maps without all that many people on it, or when you are far enough ahead magically to have both up.

Or when dealing with the AI only.

thejeff · #8 December 26th, 2009, 10:30 PM

The real exception being that if you cast Arcane Nexus, everyone else will try to dispel it or kill you.

So if you're not ready for that ...

Knai · #9 December 27th, 2009, 01:12 AM

Depending on how much you are killing with Strands, you may see the exact same result. But yeah, that's the real exception. Probably best to learn the hard way though, just so people aren't inclined to forget about that downside.

chrispedersen · #10 December 27th, 2009, 01:33 AM

huge difference. Strands people will kill you when your gem total shows on the charts. Nexus people will kill you on principle.