Tried something cool, found some cool magic sites!

[Boron]

Edi said:
I use single path spells all the time, typically when I can afford it, I designate a group of mages that contains most (sometimes even all) of the required magics as a radar squad and when I get a new province, it gets hit with everything.
Edi

If you play e.g. Arco/Ryleh do you then Accashic or still search every province with your single path spells ?
Pythium is imo designed for searching via Accashic but with Arco it is already a bit more complicated especially since their Mystics can get the elementals quite quick and Pythium has slightly higher starting astral income .

In SP i like accashic record most while in MP if i play a blood nation i normally don't focus too much on site searching or i play Ermor or Pythium or Arco which have not so big difficulties in sitesearching .

I think at least in MP i could never play a nation like marignon base , man etc. cause my sitesearching would suck then completely . In my single marignon MP game i failed promptly then as i assumed .

[Edi]

I prefer radar to Acashic scanning, because it wastes less gems and I can use the astral gems for something else. Of course, after some time the micro involved in it just gets tiring and I'll start throwing Acashic around if I can afford it. Arco usually has no need of Acashic Record until expansion rate outstrips radar scanning rate, which doesn't happen very early, usually.

Edi

[Wauthan]

Usually go with Edis' strategy and assemble a squad of searcher-finders asap. Most of the time this just means sending one of each highest tier national mage out to search each conquered province. Once the spellresearch meets the needs I hopefully have enough resources to create a minimum casting group that tosses spells at one province at the time. Starting with the welldefended core provinces and work their way in a spiral towards the frontier. In the mid and late game I tend to revert to Achasic record though since spellcasters are too valuable to waste on site searching. It's expensive, yes, but saves a lot of valuable time and manpower.

That said I don't think I ever do a dedicated blood, holy or unholy search. Would such a search even be rewarding? Just about all the blood sites cause unrest and can spotted that way. I never found any good holy/unholy site and they seem to be very rare as well.

[Boron]

Wauthan said:
That said I don't think I ever do a dedicated blood, holy or unholy search. Would such a search even be rewarding? Just about all the blood sites cause unrest and can spotted that way. I never found any good holy/unholy site and they seem to be very rare as well.

The summoning circle gives 60% discout on all blood spells . It is a blood 3 site .
I dunno how sites are assigned but there are 435 different sites in sites.xls shown and the special nation only sites are included . So something like a total of 350-400 sites .

Does anyone know a bit about the probabilities of sites ?
Is it like a site is with 50% possibility a lvl 1 site , with 25% a lvl 2 , 15% lvl 3 and 10% lvl 4 e.g. ?
Would be interesting to know

[Taqwus]

Some of the unholy sites let unholy priests enter to summon ghouls, mummies, possibly others (there are undead-summoning sites for shadows, CW undead, banes as well, but I think these might belong to death magic). The ghoul sites are of somewhat limited use to most nations as they're not likely to get any unholy priest other than a Mound Fiend, which can reanimate ghouls without a site at a similar rate IIRC.

I don't remember any holy site giving discounts or summons, just gems / unrest reduction / perhaps a local Purgatory (?), but I can't claim to have seen them all.

[Tuidjy]

There is an extrelemy powerful site called the 'Devil's Gate'. It lets
a blood mage summon a devil per turn. It is blood 3, so most people would
never find it, except that it also generates 15 unrest. I remember my
girlfriend trading for slaves and blood boosters in a game, just so that
she can empover a mage and find the site.

As for searching, I am partial to single path search spells, combined with
taking a turn away from expansion to search very promising provinces. Even
when I have an income of 100+ astral gems, I seldom use acashic record,
except when I know there is a major site in the province, or when hopping
for an underwater castle.

Two paths I always search for are astral and death, which are my favorite
paths at the moment. That is, unless you ask Saint Cohen, who is always
fighting the Last war he lost, and still calls me Air (Ab)user.

[Edi]

There three most powerful blood sites after Summoning Circle are Mount Chaining (40% Blood bonus), The Demon Gate (summons one Fiend of Darkness per turn) and Devil's Lair (one devil per turn for blood mages). All are very rare, aside from Brigand lair, there are no common blood sites.

Banes can be recruited for free from Bowl of the Lost, which is a relatively common death site for its power.

Other good free recruitment sites are Skull Temple (banefire archers and longdead horsemen), Mausoleum of the Great Sarlah (Bone Fiends), Tower of the Seven Tombs (Mummies) and a couple of others. Some of the best sites where you can buy mages are the four Academies of High Magics, The Grey Tower of Nexus, High Temple of the Magii, the metal orders, Black Tower, Ebony Tower, Twin Spire Tower, Mirror Wall Palace and Citadel of the Loremasters.

Edi