Tip: Looking for advice on site searching

[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.

[Edi]

I'll post a breakdown by magic path later. Right now I've got to go.

[Edi]

Okay, here's a breakdown of sites by path and level within each path. Startsites are excluded and so are The Desert Eye and Throne of the World because they only appear in that one scenario.

574 sites, around 560 of which are truly randomly determined. There is no analysis of what sites appear in what terrain, that would require a separate crosschecking against the DB and is much more work than I care to do. Effective number means that special sites (frequency 5, appears from event or invalid locmask) are not included.

FIRE, 56 sites (54 effective)

• Level 0: 5 sites, 1 common, 2 uncommon (1 unique), 1 rare, 1 special scriptable (Desert)
• Level 1: 29 sites, 7 common, 12 uncommon (1 unique), 9 rare, 1 special (36 Oleg's Alchemical Device)
• Level 2: 17 sites, 0 common, 12 uncommon (4 unique), 5 rare (2 unique)
• Level 3: 3 sites, 1 common, 1 uncommon (1 unique), 1 rare (1 unique)
• Level 4: 2 sites, rare, unique (180 Prison of the Desert Sun, waste; 533 The Sun Below, waste, cave)

AIR, 57 sites (56 effective)

• Level 0: 4 sites, 1 common, 1 uncommon, 2 rare (2 unique)
• Level 1: 31 sites, 7 common, 13 uncommon (4 unique), 11 rare
• Level 2: 14 sites, 0 common, 11 uncommon (3 unique), 3 rare
• Level 3: 7 sites, 1 common, 2 uncommon (2 unique), 3 rare (2 unique), 1 special (22 Bolivar's Tower of Reflections, no locmask)
• Level 4: 1 site, rare, unique (213 Palace of Dreams, plains only)

WATER, 89 sites (87 effective)

• Level 0: 11 sites, 4 common, 2 uncommon, 4 rare, 1 special scriptable (561 Tundra)
• Level 1: 45 sites, 13 common, 25 uncommon (8 unique), 6 rare, 1 special (26 Starke's Ice Cave)
• Level 2: 25 sites, 0 common, 9 uncommon (1 unique), 16 rare (6 unique)
• Level 3: 7 sites, 1 common, 1 uncommon (1 unique), 5 rare (4 unique)
• Level 4: 1 site, rare, unique (245 The Sea Underneath, any land)

EARTH, 111 sites (102 effective)

• Level 0: 19 sites, 9 common, 4 uncommon (2 unique), 4 rare (3 unique), 4 special (28 Hoburg, 21 Mine of the Cyclops, no locmasks; 508 The Desert of Ptah, unique, waste; The World Pillar, unique, mountain), 4 event-based (68 Copper Mine, 69 Iron Mine, 67 Silver Mine, 66 Gold Mine)
• Level 1: 36 sites, 16 common (1 unique), 9 uncommon (2 unique), 11 rare (1 unique)
• Level 2: 29 sites, 1 common (1 unique), 15 uncommon (5 unique), 12 rare (4 unique), 1 special (37 The Deepest Cave of the Province, provided by event)
• Level 3: 12 sites, 1 common, 2 uncommon (2 unique), 9 rare (4 unique)
• Level 4: 1 site, rare, unique (The Factory, any land but cave)

ASTRAL, 58 sites (57 effective)

• Level 0: 3 sites, 0 uncommon, 3 uncommon
• Level 1: 24 sites, 4 common, 11 uncommon (1 unique), 8 rare (2 unique), 1 special (20 Surakid's Tower, no locmask)
• Level 2: 16 sites, 0 common, 10 uncommon (3 unique), 6 rare (3 unique)
• Level 3: 11 sites, 1 common, 1 uncommon (1 unique), 9 rare (8 unique)
• Level 4: 4 sites, rare, unique (314 Library of Time, any land but cave; 535 The Endless Field of Cubes, waste; 530 The Mountain of the Past, waste; 494 Throne of Enlightenment, mountain)

DEATH, 73 sites (72 effective)

• Level 0: 6 sites, 0 common, 4 uncommon (2 unique), 2 rare (2 unique)
• Level 1: 33 sites, 8 common, 17 uncommon (6 unique), 6 rare (2 unique), 1 special (27 The Queen's Galley, no locmask)
• Level 2: 20 sites, 0 common, 14 uncommon (4 unique), 6 rare (2 unique)
• Level 3: 12 sites, 1 common, 3 uncommon (3 unique), 8 rare (6 unique)
• Level 4: 2 sites, rare, unique (482 Crown of Darkness, mountain only; 346 The Shadow Furnace, any land)

NATURE, 86 sites (83 effective)

• Level 0: 13 sites, 3 common, 5 uncommon (3 unique), 2 rare (1 unique), 2 special (542 Lyfjaberg, unique, mountain; 505 The Primal Forest, unique, forest), 1 special scriptable (560 Rain Forest)
• Level 1: 37 sites, 11 common, 18 uncommon (8 unique), 8 rare (2 unique)
• Level 2: 24 sites, 1 common, 12 uncommon (3 unique), 11 rare (5 unique)
• Level 3: 9 sites, 1 common, 3 uncommon (3 unique), 5 rare (4 unique)
• Level 4: 3 sites, rare, unique (387 Soul of the Wild, any land but cave; 532 The Previous Forest, waste; 493 The Vale of Unicorns, forest)

BLOOD, 39 sites (38 effective)

• Level 0: 2 sites, 1 common (388 Arena), 1 uncommon (390 Academy of War)
• Level 1: 20 sites, 1 common, 14 uncommon (5 unique), 5 rare (2 unique)
• Level 2: 12 sites, 0 common, 1 uncommon (1 unique), 11 rare (7 unique) (one of the rare sites, 634 Bloodshade Glen, cannot be found because it has an invalid locmask)
• Level 3: 4 sites, 0 common, 2 uncommon (2 unique), 2 rare (1 unique)
• Level 4: 1 site, rare, unique (405 Hall of Flayed Skins, any land but cave)

HOLY, 11 sites (10 effective)

• Level 0: 2 sites, 1 rare, 1 special (506 Holy Crypt of Anre, any land but cave, unique)
• Level 1: 2 sites, 2 common (1 any land, one only in sea)
• Level 2: 2 sites, 2 uncommon (1 unique)
• Level 3: 3 sites, 3 uncommon (2 unique)
• Level 4: 2 sites, rare (410 Temple of Time, any land, non-unique; 414 The Ward, any land but cave, unique)

[Dedas]

This is really useful! Should be added to the strategy index pronto.

[sector24]

I have not yet encountered a single level 4 site in my 7 months of play.

[Edi]

sector24 said:
I have not yet encountered a single level 4 site in my 7 months of play.

Keep at it. Especially if you play with higher site frequency and religiously search for sites, you will see them sooner or later.

I've got to see if I still have the Dominions 2 small Faerun SP game around where I had IIRC 3 lv 4 sites in the same province. Yes, count'em, 3 level 4 sites! Searched in one of the waste provinces and the place came up with The Sun Below, Prison of the Desert Sun, The Sea Underneath (all lv 4) and The Sea of the Tears of Men (lv 2 rare). Or then I had that lot in two adjacent provinces. I did have all of them in the same game and the gem income from the province was absolutely ridiculous.

Unfortunately I do not seem to have that game anymore.

[Forrest]

So all you need is a lvl 2 search to get 70%. You can come back to get blood out of stones later.

Big point is to watch the dominion as a indicator that you need to spell search a province.

A 2 or 3 across the board rainbow awake starter can jump start your gem income early. The big problem is when he hits the inkpot and gets diseased. I lost a nice rainbow that I was using for this till research was high enough to convert him to a SC.

[Edi]

Not quite. An across the board lv 2 search will net you roughly 85% of possible random sites. It will miss the common (and commonly found) lv 3 sites for FAWESDN (Bronze Pillar, Cave of Clouds, Weeping Stone, Iron Cliff, Crystal Garden, Well of Pestilence and Grove of Evergreens) that each provide 1 gem of the site type. Well of Pestilence also increases death scale, so it's easy to spot unless you have death dominion. The others need either lv 3 search or radar spell. But generally that income is peanuts compared to the general lv 1 and 2 sites.

[CUnknown]

I am rediculously miserly when it comes to site-searching spells. I don't think I would recommend this style of play necessarily.

But, I will go around manually site-searching with level 1 mages, even, as long as the mage doesn't have to walk too long to get there.

I do a cursory search with low level mages (lvl 1-3) for as many paths as I can, manually. Then I might site search with spells in certain spots -- say, mountains, forest, and waste -- and only spots where I haven't already found at least 1 or 2 sites. If I find 2 sites in a province, or sometimes just 1 if it's a plains or cropland, then I stop searching there.

So, I think even going over a province with a level 1 mage is enough, sometimes. Level 2, definitely, that is basically all you would ever need.