Researching vs Site Searching

[MaxWilson]

I really don't know the answer to that question. You could get a start on it by downloading Edi's database and looking at the proportion of level 4 sites, but you'd have to scale it by site frequency and the rules for that are funny. Something about rare sites get rerolled the first time they come up, and only stay rare if a rare site is rolled the second time, but I don't know the probabilities for much of anything. In practice, the way to bet is probably that level 3 searches can be considered to have found everything interesting, and only use a site-seaching spell on top of that if you're 1.) looking hard for some specific level 4 site, or 2.) out of provinces to search manually and have no important research to conduct, and no urgent need for new games.

Oh, I know how to be more precise. Look at a saved game where you have lots of auto site-searching done already; cross-reference the sites found with Edi's database and count up how many of them are of each difficulty level. That will tell you how many sites you'll miss through manual searching. If I get time I'll do this tonight, but I'm away from my computer so...

-Max