Researching vs Site Searching

[Edi]

Depends on what nation you play, but getting Thaumaturgy 2, Evo 2 and Conjuration 2 are always pretty high priorities for me, especially Thaumaturgy and Evo.

[Micah]

I still like manual searching, but I think I'm the only person that does.

[jutetrea]

Agree on high priority searching, quicker they're searched quicker you know what you have to work with.

If you end up getting the 50% discount conj site, you'll be wanting to move all your summoning there. Finding it early allows you to plan a bit better. Plus unit production sites, other magic paths, etc.

And the most compelling reason...the earlier they're searched, the quicker you accumulate gems for use later.

[Meglobob]

Micah said:
I still like manual searching, but I think I'm the only person that does.

I do alot of manual searching too, especially when I have mages with 2 or more high levels of magic (EA Niefelheim) or mages with many varied paths (EA Tien Chi).

I think its a good idea to put alot of effort into searching every province you own for every single gem you can squeeze out of them. Later in the game you will always face a gem shortage.

Research is very important too, typically by turn 10, I will have at least 8 mage researchers and 2 manual site searchers.

Btw in a MP I am in at the moment I have completed all research, every path to lvl 9 complete. Now I have 200+ battlemages which is really fun and wierd...

[jutetrea]

I have that happen alot in SP games, unfortunately i'm too lazy to individually script them so i just toss em in the back of a mess of troops and let em go to work.

I usually only manual search until I get lucky with enough income to get 2-3/turn for site spells. Even if I have a heavy research pretender I'll jump him around if he has multiple paths for a few turns.

[Meglobob]

jutetrea said:

I have that happen alot in SP games, unfortunately i'm too lazy to individually script them so i just toss em in the back of a mess of troops and let em go to work.

Yeh, in that particular MP game, I only have time to give orders to 1/2 or 2/3 of my nation, so I have put them into 40 mage death squads. 10 spam a army, 10 buff everything and 20 blast the hell out of anything. Not the best of tactics perhaps but good enough when you are not bothered about them dieing...

[CUnknown]

I tend to do manual site searching as well, but sometimes I'll throw in a site-search spell or two if I have them. I don't make those a priority to research, though.

Researching, for me at least, is sort of what I do with a mage when I have absolutely nothing else useful left for him to do. That being said, researching is what most of my mages do most of the time. It's just I'd rather be site searching or forging items or summoning monsters.

[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