Re: Site Searching Strategy
Some disorganized thoughts...
If you've got no mages to use the gems produced by sites uncovered by Acashic Record, you can alchemize them to get more Astral (or, even less efficiently but still occasionally useful, empower somebody so that you do have mages to use the remaining gems). However, anybody who takes the province from you gets the benefit of those sites too, so there's a small potential cost to exposing them. It's also just about the only way to search for sites that you don't have mages for, which makes it potentially valuable. How expensive is it, if you do have mages otherwise capable of casting the little radar spells? You'll probably stop casting them on a province after about 5, on average, or about ten gems and five mage-turns per province. Compare that to 25 gems and one mage-turn. Acashic record will net you slightly more than the individual radar technique, but not much. So it's only a good deal if you really want to make sure you can find every damn site, if you want lots of gems that you can't actually use very efficiently, or if you value your mage time at 3+ gems per turn. It sure is fun and easy, though... Oh, and if you only have 2-3 paths for which you can use radar spells, and Acashic Record is an option, you can expect (at normal site frequencies) to make back your gem investment vs. radar spells (by alchemizing those useless gems that start rolling in) in about 20 turns. So if you're playing a nation with strong Astral but not much else and no options to change that (is there such a nation? If so, it better have a lot otherwise going for it) it wouldn't be a hideously bad bargain.
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