Tip: Looking for advice on site searching

[Psycho]

Is it worthwhile searching with mages that have less than four levels in a path? What percentage of magic sites belong to what level?

Am I wasting my time searching with a level two mage, when I'm going to cast a site-searching spell on the province later? Or would I be wasting that spell as there is only a small percentage of level 3 or 4 sites? I'm looking for an experienced answer. How do you people do it - do you prefer the manual search or the spells?

[Kristoffer O]

I'm not sure, but I'd probably search with lvl 2 mages, until I got site searching spells going. There are very few lvl4 sites. A handful in total and there are several hundred sites. Some paths don't even have one IIRC.

[OmikronWarrior]

Kristoffer O said:
There are very few lvl4 sites. A handful in total and there are several hundred sites. Some paths don't even have one IIRC.

But when you do find one, oh baby! [unreal tournament voice]GAME CHANGING![/unreal tournament voice]

Anyways, I've heard that 95% of sites are level 1,2, or 3. So, manually site searching with a level 3 mage will pretty comfortably get you most of the sites. However, having a mage manually site search takes them away from other product uses like researching and takes two turns to search one province, to say nothing of the inevitable back tracking to make sure you get all the sites. So, once you have established a solid gem income, then switch over to site searching spells.

Also, target certain provinces types first. Nature sites seem more likely to be found in forests, while air sites seem more common in mountains and wastelands. Fields are always awful for sites. I've never heard an exact odds breakdown, though.

[Kristoffer O]

I don't think it is possible to do a meaningful odds breakdown.

There are more forest restricted sites of nature., more waste restricted sites of fire and death. Earth and to some extent air sites tend to be more common in mountains.

Wastelands are generally your friend. Mountains, forest and swamps a bit so, while farms have decreased chance of sites.

I would guess that about 75% of all sites are lvl 0-2, 24% 3 and 1% lvl4. But of the lvl3 sites many are rare and thus less likely to be in tha game. Perhaps 80%-90% are sites findable by a lvl 2 mage. On the other hand, it is as Omikron says, the rarest ones you really want to find

Some sites are unique and there can only be one on each map. Some of these are more common, meaning it is not unlikely that it exists on the map, while other uniques are very rare as well. Sites linked to terrains are more common in the sense that if there was forests all over the place they would be common, but since they are restricted they will not be that common. Since most maps have few swamps you could say that the swamp sites are rarer (many of them are water or nature).

There might be a list of sites somewhere in the modding threads. I don't think it presents rarity, but might display path requirements.

[Lingchih]

Any idea on which type of site Astral is most common? Or is there one for Astral? I'm having a hard time finding any in a game I am playing.

[OmikronWarrior]

Another thing, there are ways to maximize odds when site searching. Depending on your initial site frequency set when the game was set up, each province is likely to have roughly 2 or fewer sites. Having 0 or 4 sites is statistically unlikely. Hence, if you've already searched a province for one magic path and did not find any sites, then its likelier for other path searches to reveal some sites. However, if a province already has two or three sites found in it, then the odds of any additional searches being successful go down. At 4 sites, the odds are zero.

Does anyone know the exact mechanic for assigning sites?

Edit: Astral Sites don't seem to have any preference for province type. However, I have had some luck generating additional astral income by using priests to site search. Most holy sites generate astral income. If nothing else, it gives your priests something to do when not needed to call back a Pretender or preach.

[Edi]

Kristoffer O said:
There might be a list of sites somewhere in the modding threads. I don't think it presents rarity, but might display path requirements.

Dom3 DB. Has a full list of sites, including level requirements, rarity and what terrain they appear in.

Out of the 709 sites, 149 are national start sites or sites that only appear by event, special script or in special scenarios, so they can be disregarded. That leaves 560 sites that can appear randomly.

All paths have at least one lv 4 site. Astral has 4, Holy, Fire and Death have 2, Nature has 3. All told there are 17 lv 4 sites out of 560 possible random sites and all lv 4 sites are rare. Meaning that if they get rolled on the first try, the site is rolled again and if you also get it on the second try, only then will it be placed in the province. In actual games I've found 10 of them all told and that's including all of my Dominions 2 games.

There are 66 lv 0 sites (meaning automatically visible), 16 rare (3 unique), 22 uncommon (8 unique) and 19 common (0 unique) and 16 of them are unique.

There are 252 lv 1 sites, 65 rare (9 unique), 119 uncommon (35 unique) and 68 common (1 unique).

There are 158 lv 2 sites, 70 rare (29 unique), 86 uncommon (25 unique) and 2 common (1 unique)

There are 68 lv 3 sites, 42 rare (30 unique), 18 uncommon (17 unique) and 7 common (no unqiues). The remaining one is a special site with special defenders and appears very rarely if it gets selected for in the determination of special provinces.

Another note about unique sites is that they can only appear once on the map, no matter their frequency, unless they are scripted in the map file, because map file scripting is run only after random site determination has been done.

[Kristoffer O]

Nice break down.

[Bastiat]

Sorry for reviving an old thread from the Strategy Index, but I have the following question regarding site searching and Edi's incredibly valuable database:

The "Era" column says "applicable only for national sites". I'm assuming this means:

1. Anything without an Era tag can be spawned in any Era?

2. Sites with an Era tag can only spawn in Capitals, or is there some other meaning of "national sites"? I'm unsure of this because there seems to be far more "national sites" than "nations", but maybe each "nation" draws a random national site for its Capital.

Any insights? Thanks in advance.

[Saxon]

Related to the issue of strategy, how do you search when you take over another player’s land in MP? If you have very different paths, it is easy, you search. However, if you share a path, you have to decide if you should search or not. Do you assume the other player searched religiously with radar spells? Do you assume he will have missed some provinces or only used a low level mage? The absence of a site closer to the capital, to me, suggests it is more likely they searched, but can I be sure?

One does need to consider how many gem sites they had before you took their province, as that will give some indication on how seriously they were searching. Also, if it was a rush victory, the land was unlikely to have been checked, while a victory later in the game would suggest otherwise.

Spending on searches is a form of investment. You want to get a decent return and the first part of the thread helps one calculate that. However, the MP dynamic complicates things. Do you spend the gems/mage time for low returns? I guess part of it will depend on your need for gems, the time you think you will have to recoup the cost and what resources you have free to invest. However, any ideas on how to maximize the return are welcome!

BTW, great point on searches with holy units, thanks for that.