Tip: Site Searching Strategy

[Hellboy]

Thanks for the answers, this does help!

I seem to recall from Dom2 days that there was an unholy type, and that that was different than holy. However, in the site DB, I don't see anything labeled as "unholy" - does this exist any more?

Also pulling from quantum mechanic's original post, we have the following list of tendencies in type of sites vs. terrain types:

nature in forests,
earth in mountains,
water in mountains and forests,
astral in plains,
fire in wastes,
air in mountains and wastes.

Is this list complete? I would certainly have guessed that water sites were more common in sea provinces (for example).

Also, death isn't on this list and neither is the terrain type 'swamp', is there no terrain type particularly good for death sites and no site type more likely to be found in swamp?

[Ballbarian]

"Unholy" sites don't exist anymore afaik. (...and I miss them!)

Not sure about the completeness of the sites vs terrain list.

(btw, I use acashic record with a vengeance when I have access to astral.)

[Ygorl]

Some disorganized thoughts...
If you've got no mages to use the gems produced by sites uncovered by Acashic Record, you can alchemize them to get more Astral (or, even less efficiently but still occasionally useful, empower somebody so that you do have mages to use the remaining gems). However, anybody who takes the province from you gets the benefit of those sites too, so there's a small potential cost to exposing them. It's also just about the only way to search for sites that you don't have mages for, which makes it potentially valuable. How expensive is it, if you do have mages otherwise capable of casting the little radar spells? You'll probably stop casting them on a province after about 5, on average, or about ten gems and five mage-turns per province. Compare that to 25 gems and one mage-turn. Acashic record will net you slightly more than the individual radar technique, but not much. So it's only a good deal if you really want to make sure you can find every damn site, if you want lots of gems that you can't actually use very efficiently, or if you value your mage time at 3+ gems per turn. It sure is fun and easy, though... Oh, and if you only have 2-3 paths for which you can use radar spells, and Acashic Record is an option, you can expect (at normal site frequencies) to make back your gem investment vs. radar spells (by alchemizing those useless gems that start rolling in) in about 20 turns. So if you're playing a nation with strong Astral but not much else and no options to change that (is there such a nation? If so, it better have a lot otherwise going for it) it wouldn't be a hideously bad bargain.

[Edi]

Hellboy, take a look at the site DB for Dom3 (link in sig), that should give you an idea of what sites to find in which terrain. A lot of sites are "Any land", but in general the tendency is:

• Fire: waste, mountains
• Air: mountains, plains
• Water: swamp, other non-waste
• Earth: mountains
• Astral: any, slight emphasis on plains
• Death: any, slight emphasis on mountains
• Nature: forest, sea
• Blood: any

I'll be updating the site DB in a few days because I now have all of the info I could possibly need, thanks to DrPraetorius. His efforts have given me accurate terrain masks, site frequencies and quite a few other bits of info that helped me track down some errors and add missing things to the DB. I'm also going to shamelessly steal his formulas for displaying the specific terrains and uniqueness of sites (using the terrain masks as basis) to make the DB more readable. That way the DB will be easily accessible and only the hardcore enthusiasts will need to try and decipher his data dumps.

[Blofeld]

Do border mountains count as mountains for the purpose of magic sites?
I haven't seen a single occurance of regular mountains in a map generated by Dom3 random generator, so that may skew the distribution and availability of magic sites quite significantly.

[Ballbarian]

Border mountain provinces count as mountains.
To get regular mountains in a random map, uncheck the border mountains box prior to map generation.

[Baalz]

Well, these types of questions are very situational. I agree that path specific radar spells are the better choice in most situations, but certainly not all. Basically, you've got 3 choices 1) Manual search 2) Search each path remotely 3) Acashic record. Here are some factors which have a significant impact on what you do.

1) Do you have strong astral with not much diversity, while also having conjuration as one of your first research goals? Bandar Log comes to mind, using acashic record sparingly when you first get it will give you a good multi-path gem income that your nice summons can use. Not a bad idea to go for arcane probing, then straight into conjuration.

2) Is the research required for radar spells at cross purpose to other research you need done early on? Mictlan comes to mind. With astral, fire, nature, & water mages all of path two, I often end up manually searching because I'm focused on researching construction and blood.

3) Do you really want gem incomes for paths you've only got first level mages in, or no mages yet (perhaps you're expecting to summon something to take advantage of them)? Expecting to need to bring a fight underwater and need water gems? etc.

4) Site frequency (including era, LA has less sites I think) absolutely effects the choice because the payout is higher so the more important factor is mage-turns. Conversely if you've got low sites, and consequently a low gem income then even the path specific radar spells may have a low ROI and it makes more sense to manually search.

5) Are there some higher level sites that would have a huge impact? For example there is a level 3 blood site which gives you a 60% blood magic discount, if you're playing a blood strategy its worthwhile to make sure you search for level 3 sites which often means remote searching.

6) Do you have a lot of swaps/wastelands in your kingdom? It really doesn't make much sense to cast acashic on farmlands, I usually only cast it on swamps/waste/forest/mountains with no sites showing yet.

7) How valuable are off-path gems to you? If you've got no use for a path unless you empower somebody twice gems of that flavor aren't terribly tasty.

[Hellboy]

Ballbarian said:
To get regular mountains in a random map, uncheck the border mountains box prior to map generation.

That's good to know - forgot about that!

Edit: Ooops, that was a dumb question, never mind.

[archaeolept]

Originally Posted by Ballbarian

Border mountain provinces count as mountains.

I'm quite sure this is incorrect; they are just plains, as to site frequency, and I believe as to allowable sites... ie. a site that could only occur in a mountain province could not occur in a border mountain province. I am not sure about the latter, though.