how to sitesearch effective ?

[Boron]

Originally posted by Saxon:
Yes, a Dark Knowledge will find any site with at least one death gem associated with it. This is a nice bonus and applied to the others, like Gnome Lore and so forth.

sure ?
i read the excel chart from sunrays excellent dom site .

there is e.g. :
academy of high magics , lvl 1
type air .
produces 1 air + 1 death gem.

corpse candles marsh , lvl 1
type water
produces 1 death gem + 1 water gem

ebony tower , lvl 2
type blood
but produces 3 deathgems

and so on and so on

in a brief esteem i would say 1/3 - 1/2 of sites who produce death gems aren't death sites .

but dark knowlegde only does a search like a lvl 9 deathmage .

so all the sites like the listed examples aren't found by dark knowlegde right ?

this makes dark knowlege ihmo a pretty bad spell . at least the cost is 3 death gems und you often get luckily a d4 dusk elder which can search for deathsites as efficient as the spell .

so as a conclusion for myself if i want much magic sites i am almost forced to make a rainbow ghostking right ?

[Arralen]

Originally posted by Boron:
i read the excel chart from sunrays excellent dom site .
there is e.g. :

academy of high magics , lvl 1
type air .
produces 1 air + 1 death gem.

you'll need a level-1 air mage to find this,

corpse candles marsh , lvl 1
type water
produces 1 death gem + 1 water gem

.. a level-1 water mage here..

ebony tower , lvl 2
type blood
but produces 3 deathgems

and a level-2 blood mage to find this site.

Gems produced have nothing to do with what kind of mage you need to find the site, ATOWR .

in a brief esteem i would say 1/3 - 1/2 of sites who produce death gems aren't death sites . But dark knowlegde only does a search like a lvl 9 deathmage . So all the sites like the listed examples aren't found by dark knowlegde right ?

right.
It's just the same with the other path-specific site searching spells.

this makes dark knowlege ihmo a pretty bad spell . at least the cost is 3 death gems und you often get luckily a d4 dusk elder which can search for deathsites as efficient as the spell .

I wouldn't say it's a bad spell per se. As nearly everything in DOM, it depends. If you have a 3gems/turn income and level-1 death mage (e.g. you're playing TienChi S&A), you'll prefer casting the spell to moving the stratmove-1 commander around. With death-4 dusk elders, things look quite different.

so as a conclusion for myself if i want much magic sites i am almost forced to make a rainbow ghostking right ?

Not necessarily a Ghost King, but a rainbowish pretender for shure.

posted by Saxon:
Has anyone looked at the code to see how the site frequency figure translates into actual sites? Also, does anyone know how the different terrain types effect the site frequency? In specific numbers? That would help determine where to start your searching.

.. you may want to search this forum thoroughly, the following is just off the top of my head:

For each province and each magic path there's a (general %tage + terrain %tage) chance that there is a magic site.

general %tage is set in the game options.

terrain %tage depends on terrain (guess!!), the highest number is used when mulitple terrains apply.
numbers are something like this:
high magic (code 1024): 30%
mountain, swamp, : 20%
woods 10%
grass -10%

or something similar (wouldn't be on the numbers)

[ July 01, 2004, 10:30: Message edited by: Arralen ]

[Massena]

From Sunray's magic site database, if all sites are equally probable then:
Level 1 mage finds 40-50% of gems in a province
Level 2 mage finds 70-80%
Level 3 mage finds 90-95%
Level 4 mage/Spell finds 100%

So...a Rainbow mage (level 2 in 7 types of magic) will find 5 times (75%x7) more gems than a specific spell - they won't necessarily be all as useful though!

[Vynd]

The problem with taking a Rainbow Pretender as Ermor is that your Pretender will be the only mage you have who can make use of the gems that you find, since Ermor's mages are among the most limited that I'm aware of. So most of these other gems will probably just get converted to Death gems. That's useful, but at a 4x1 cost (2x1 for Astral gems) is it really worth building your Pretender around? Probably only over the very long run.

My advice is build a Pretender that helps you more over the short-term, and find your magic sites by taking over someone else's territory.

[Taqwus]

If Ermor can get to Conj 6, Spectres (D-1, two independent random wizardry picks) will help dispose of other gem types; and if one has a surplus of non-death gems before that empowerment or alchemy is an option as well. Plus, there are non-Death sites that can offer substantial benefits; for instance, there are non-Death sites that offer free fortifications (very nice since Dead Ermor may be hurting for gold), and sites that offer forge bonuses will be very helpful for boosting research via mass-produced Skull Mentors.

[drool]

illuminated ones and members of second and third tiers find magic sites quite easily when walking trhough provinces. no matter if its your own, neutral, or enemy. i`m not sure if all spies are able to do this. black forest ulms are, thats for sure.

[Boron]

thnx for the advice

conjuration / construction are the 2 most important magic classes for ermor anyway or ?

@ vynd what would you suggest that helps me short term more ? only real choices for ermor are a lich , a PoD or a GK right ?

i hoped since i planned to research conjuration quite quickly to be able to summon some support mages for an additional path or 2
hopefully i get some of the queens of air but ermor is slow in research unfortunately
but i think you are right the only really cool summon i see at the moment are really the queens of air .