Acashic records vs. separate spells

[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.