Balancing Very Early Research and Site Searching

[AreaOfEffect]

A rainbow pretender is a big bundle of research in one little package. This actually makes him a terrible site searcher when you think of the opportunity cost. Your pretender can either be the equivalent of 5 to 6 national mages doing research, or one exceptional mage searching for sites every other round. Its better in my opinion for you to have 5 to 6 mages go out there site search while the pretender picks up the slack at home.

The only time you want your pretender to be the one doing the site searching is when one of your key strategies involves finding gems of a path that only your god has. Even still, you want your national mages to rule out unlikely provinces in order to optimize your pretender's time. Provinces with 2 sites found already will unlikely have a 3rd.