Researching vs Site Searching

[TwoBits]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Just to push things a little further, here's a scenario to consider:

You have 10 mages with N2 and 20 nature gems in your inventory (or 10 mages with D1 and 30 death gems, etc.).

What do you do? Set one mage to casting a monthly site searching ritual, and the other 9 to research? Or set all 10 to search 10 different sites, and keep them searching as long as you have gems to cast the spells, and un-searched provinces? Or something in between? And why?

Thanks