Acashic records vs. separate spells

[Adept]

When playing a nation that gets reliable S3, do you rush Acashic Record, or rely on the separate searching spells?

Has anybody worked out which is actually optimised?

[BesucherXia]

I believe Acashic Record is quite useful in SP, because you can simply build your defence and play the game beyond 100+ turns without feeling pressure.

In MP I always ignore it.
Maybe under the new cost introduced by CBM it deserves respect.

[Gregstrom]

Akashic Record is much less than optimal, gem-wise. It's quite good in terms of mage time, though.

Separate search spells (or manual searching) are preferred as a rule, because 4xAkashic Record=1xWish later in the game.

Ooh, I missed the new cost in CBM... 20 pearls is definitely better, but still a lot.

[Baalz]

The other consideration to is that AR gives you magic diversity. It allows you to search in paths you otherwise couldn't, which will often yield indie mages with those paths. AR is an important way for ie EA R'yleh to get diversity both in terms of magic paths and in terms of land mages. It can also be quite useful when you have mages who can use the gems but not remotely site search - ie F1 mages who could crank out lightless lanterns. The economics also are quite different if you have, say, a completely unsearched wasteland/swamp with no magic sites showing vs a farmland with a farm of plenty. Not economical if you want to blanket all your provinces and just plan alchemizing random gemtypes, but with a bit of leverage it can be quite useful. All in all, AR is not a default "goto" spell, but there are plenty of cases where it's the spell you want.

[Illuminated One]

Hmm, at 20 gems (unless you're counting pearls as two gems ) I'd say it is feasible on high gem settings.
Remote searching every path = 14 gems, so you pay 6 gems more. If you find a site earlier than with normal site searching it can pay off.
In high settings you are bound to find good indie mages/discount sites that way.

[Micah]

I'm still a die-hard manual search fan myself. *shrug*

[Swan]

pro
-increase magic diversity
-requires pearl and not specif gem
-requires only 1 mage

con
-high cost
-doesn't work for holy site( not sure here)
-require astral-2 mages

go for it in my opinon,especially if you are an astral nation.

[Baalz]

Originally Posted by Micah

I'm still a die-hard manual search fan myself. *shrug*

That's curious, even when you don't have mages well suited for it? I find some nations/strategies lend themselves much more to either manual or remote site searching for specific paths. D1/S1 mages are not very good manual site searchers, but can pop off the remote spells just fine, while some national mages have two strong magic paths and another one or two weak ones and maybe even holy, making great manual site searchers. Water is a bit of a special case because it's an inconvenient research placement unless you were already headed there, and of course you have to consider voice of tiamat and the over representation of W gems from random events. I find the choice varies greatly depending on the circumstances.

[K]

Akashic Record is a gamble.... much like all site searching. It's stupidly expensive, but when you are looking at a Mountain/Forest province that has been searched by the four paths you can scrape together you know there must be something there. Now, that may be a few supply sites or something even more lame like Arenas, but it can also be something awesome like a site making Wizards.

At the end of the day, you need to choose when the gamble is worth it and when is is not. Some sites produce signs that they are there like unrest, heat, cold, order, turmoil, etc..... and those are places you might want to search.

So use it to search key provinces..... or search when you have provinces that should have sites but don't.

[Gandalf Parker]

I agree that in MP I rarely use it. The smaller maps puts a rush on you that makes extensive searches of every province a luxury I cant afford.

But there are times I consider it. Besides those mentioned, if a lab randomly pops up in a province where Ive found no magic sites then Im eager to see if there might randomly be a good use of it. It might not be smart use of gems but its far too tempting to quickly see how lucky I might be.

Or if Im about to build a castle in an important strategic location. I particularly love having a search give me a castle there. Sometimes I do acashic on two provinces next to each other where I want to build a castle but cant decide which to build on.

But the size of the game will often decide how many acashics Im willing to do.

Gandalf Parker
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