Site searching

[SpiralRazor]

Realistically, whats the higherst number you need to find most of the sites in the game? Also, is there *any* priest sites? I dont think ive ever found a single one of them. Ive also read that nearly all the sites require a score of 2 in a path...true?

[Zonk]

Barring special maps, capital provinces will only have the national sites at the start of the game, but some events can create new sites (IIRC, all automatically visible), and there is a limit of 8 sites per province.

[WadeStar]

Originally posted by Zonk:

Originally posted by WadeStar:

Is there a way to mod/is there a mod that makes magic sites require higher scores to find? (I'm not interested in balance--I want to know only if it exists/it's possible).

It's possible, but it doesn't exist that I know of.
I made a mod that makes all sites automatically visible, which is basically the opposite, and I did it by hand which took a good amount of time.
If you used a script you could do something like increasing the magic level required to find the site much faster.

Yep, this is what I want to do. I just think it would be interesting to introduce a log function to the site frequency. Starting from level 9 or so.

So...

twice as many lvl 1 sites as lvl 2 as lvl 3 as lvl 4 as lvl 5 and so on...

what would that be? site frequency along the lines of 1 / 2^x where x is the site search level? So the ration of lvl 1 to lvl 9 sites would be 1:512 or something?

Of course, I don't know what the current base chance of a lvl 1 site is in the game (that would be "1" in the above formula, but I bet it's based on the site frequency variable) nor do I know if sites are calculated independently for each element or not (for example, if the game rolls one magic site, does it diminish the odds for rolling a second and so on? kinda doubt it).

Of course, implementing this sort of change would slightly advantage specialists and site search rituals over rainbow mages...

But I wanna do it.

[Zonk]

Site level isn't directly connected to its chance to spawn - that's based on rarity instead.

To do what you want to do, you would have to connect rarity and level, and ensure that each level-rarity pairing has the same number of sites for each path I believe.

if the game rolls one magic site, does it diminish the odds for rolling a second and so on? kinda doubt it

I believe that's *exactly* how it works actually. No idea on the specific numbers but think someone may have gathered data on them.

[WadeStar]

That would make sense for a site range of 1-4. But the site level is surely linked to rarity, otherwise a level 1 mage wouldn't find the majority of total sites for that path. He/she would find 25% (since currently site levels are 1-4*). Correct me if I'm misinformed on that.

*Excluding the special exceptions noted earlier in the thread.

[Zonk]

What I meant is that there isn't an automatic connection - higher level sites *TEND* to have higher rarity (for example, there is only one non-rare level 4 site that can spawn door, the Unfound Door), but there are rare level 1 sites and common level 3 ones too.

The game doesn't automatically decide that a site is harder to find because it's higher level.

Also higher level sites are not always 'better' than lower level ones, though they tend to be, especially when it comes to gem income:


Some examples of weak or at least not especially strong level 4 sites:
Temple of Time (2 astral gems, lets you recruit Priests & High Priests)
Vale of Unicorns (3 nature gems)
Cave of the Sleepers (1 astral gem)

Some examples of strong level 1 sites:
Stained Altar (20% Blood magic discount, summon rakhsasa)
Pharos (+2 to range of all rituals, lets you scry for 2 turns)
Stele of Law (-10 unrest, great if you can bloodhunt there)
plus various sites that let you see score graphs, which can be very useful in no-graph games (which are the default)

[Gregstrom]

As Zonk says, site rarity and search level required to find them are separate things, and are coded in separately for each site.

Each site has:
Rarity (common/uncommon/rare)
Search path and level required to find them (FAWESDNBH, 1-4, and 5 is a special case used to separate out sites that aren't generated randomly at map creation).

The two properties aren't linked by the game code, although design links them weakly as Zonk describes.

A site of *any* rarity can also be flagged as unique, meaning it can only be randomly generated once per map (no idea what happens if you script several into a map file though).

I don't know the procedure for randomly generating sites, but I believe it roughs out as:
1. Work out if a site is present.
2. Decide if the site comes from the common, uncommon or rare pool.
3. Select a site from the chosen pool.
4. If the site is unique, remove it from the pool.
5. If a site was generated, go back to 1 and try again. If not, move to the next province and go back to 1. If you've been through all provinces on the map, stop.

[SpiralRazor]

Just learned something new...Site search spells like Dark Knowledge, Gnome Lore, and the rest will not auto target a hex thats been searched by a path 4 Champion....Akashic knowledge will not auto a hex if all paths + priest path has been searched at lvl 4.

That leads me to believe no site in the game requires more then a score of 4 to find. 4+ Priests are rare though lol....best to use Akashic to search priest nodes.

[BoboYagga]

I know Akashic is rarely worth the gems but boy I really love the sense of completion it gives me, knowing there is nothing esle there and that I have found everything, it gives my OCD mind a rest. And yes I do have to collect them all...

[WadeStar]

Thanks for the input guys. I guess I better go to the modding community to see how to actually override the game's default script and implement a new spawning mechanic...

You all make it sound like it's possible.

[Gregstrom]

Changing the spawning mechanic is not possible. Manually overwriting stats on every site to give the impression of a different spawning mechanic is doable, but a lot of work.

[Count von Bunnyhopven]

Originally posted by BoboYaggatheTiny:

I know Akashic is rarely worth the gems but boy I really love the sense of completion it gives me, knowing there is nothing esle there and that I have found everything, it gives my OCD mind a rest. And yes I do have to collect them all...

Akashic can be worth it if you capture a province with high site adjustment (Waste, Swamp, Throne) after you have already reserached it and you know no one have searched it. Because finding every site at once in an expensive fashion can be better than finding some of them slower and cheaper.

Also helps you break in to new paths to an extent.

[Zonk]

Acashic Knowledge also searches holy sites (something you can't do remotely generally) and has range 10 (while other sitesearching spells go from 2 to 4).

It's still very expensive, but in SP I use it a lot on throne provinces.

Might very rarely be worth it in serious MP games if you have a Conjuration discount site and/or event.
If you end up paying less than 20 pearls for it it doesn't seem so inefficient gemwise.

[Count von Bunnyhopven]

It did cost 20 back in the CBM days. But today when the good stuf requres more research you have more time to get back your investment in site searching. Especially as most other remote searching either requires more research to cast or cost more.

[Morsigil]

Originally posted by SpiralRazor:

Just learned something new...Site search spells like Dark Knowledge, Gnome Lore, and the rest will not auto target a hex thats been searched by a path 4 Champion....Akashic knowledge will not auto a hex if all paths + priest path has been searched at lvl 4.

That leads me to believe no site in the game requires more then a score of 4 to find. 4+ Priests are rare though lol....best to use Akashic to search priest nodes.

No site requires more than 4 levels of a path to find with a manual search.

Edit: Apparently I was wrong about the holy sites.

[Count von Bunnyhopven]

Originally posted by Morsigil:

All the holy sites can be found with a level 1 priest, and no site requires more than 4 levels of a path to find with a manual search.

This is not true. There are plenty of holy sites and one of them requires H4 (!) to find. You could argue that it is a waste of time to search higher than H1, but in truth it is also a waste of time to search H1 too unless you are under water.

You should check Larz excellent mod inspector to learn what sites exist. http://larzm42.github.io/dom4inspector/