Yeah! And we know that Frogboy plays Dom3.  

Alas, as he said, the AI is the limit. Dom3 tactical AI wasn't very good and that's probably why they didn't let us lead the battles. But I am confident more and more of these spells with find their way.

Come on, Frogboy: we NEED to have Animate Dead in the game. Fighting with just 3 necromancers and their escort who can rise waves after waves of undead and launch them to battle (or a contrario fighting Ermor'Army at full power) is one of the greatest pleasures in tactical battles.

Even though I'm just a casual Dom3 player, I am amazed at the quantity of everything they put inside: all kinds of creatures, spells, items, lore.

In fact, if these 2 Swedes would make an Elemental mod with their Dom3 content and mechanisms, and sell it for 50$, I would buy it right now!

I don't know if you're changing it from Beta 2B, but it would be nice if the Volcano spell actually destroyed the city rather than hid it inside a volcano crater. (For that matter, I'm expecting the earthquake spell to do damage and not just alter the landscape.) It was really annoying to be able create the volcano--thinking that I'd be able to bring death and destruction to my enemy--only to see the city survive and not be able to get to it to conquer it.

Also, will we actually get access to all our spells from all the spell books we know? For instance if I had a sovereign that knew all four starting books, I was only allowed access to usually two. The weirder thing was that which two varied by faction. Of course I usually only became interested in Fire and Earth because of the land altering spells.

Still, the game shows a lot of promise.

There are great suggestions in this thread! I like that you will only implement spells that the AI knows how to use, but I would hate to see magic, of all things in this game, to suffer for insufficient AI. Frankly, if a game called "Elemental: War of Magic" is released with lackluster magic, with largely straightforward and simplistic spells, it will be a big disappointment and I imagine it'd have a significant effect on its reception. I would rather see Elemental delayed until Winter than be released with lackluster magic, due to lacking AI. I mean, if the AI can't handle anything but the most straightforward spells, how are we going to mod in our own, nifty spells? We'd have to mod the AI to be able to understand them, and that does not sound like a trivial task.

One issue I have is that all your elemental DD spells like Hurl Boulder and Fireball are exactly the same, besides their damage type. (EDIT: I just noticed that the mana costs are slightly different, too) Some should be stronger than others. Some should do little damage but have significant secondary effects. Some should just be downright better or weaker than others (while other spells in the category with the weaker DD spells would make up for it). The fact that Lightning, Fireball, Hurl Boulder, etc all have the exact same effect when cast on a unit with no resistances is a Bad Thing. Same with Ice Bolt and Arcane Arrow.

There are so many ways some of those spells can be spiced up, and probably many ways that the AI could handle relatively well. Hurl Boulder has a lot of potential, for one: boulders roll and bounce! The boulder can hit the main target, and it could continue rolling, hurting units behind the target for diminishing damage. It'd be particularly awesome if we could choose which direction to throw the boulder (who says the boulder has to originate at the caster?) - I'd love to watch my caster launch a distant rock into an equally distant enemy, at a skewed angle.

In my opinion, not all of those schools even need single-target DD spells. I'd be quite happy with none in the Fire Spellbook; it could have single-target DoT spells, AoE DD spells, but could lack a single-target DD spell. Even if the spells are largely straightforward and simplistic, true diversity between the books would go a long way to making magic more fun.

This problem is reproduced in other areas as well. For example, there seem to be a lot of different ways of destroying resource tiles. Would it really be so wrong to limit abilities like that to one or two spellbooks? What is the impetus in researching new spellbooks, or new spells, that do pretty much the exact same thing as a spell I already have? Some ~repetition here and there is fine, but based on that chart it looks to be rampant (though, as always, perhaps within the game it isn't as bad as it seems like it'd be).

Also, Life vs. Death. There is zero difference besides the type of land that you revive. I realize that you're using Life and Death to provide all players with the basic, core set of spells that everyone will probably need. But it would be nice if there was a little diversity even there. Maybe mix up mana costs (so some spells might be more expensive in one than the other, and vice versa). Maybe add a few exclusive spells to each, or have some spells that accomplish more or less the same thing in Life and Death, but in different ways or with small differences.

Subtle things don't have to be complex things. Subtlety can be very simple, and still very evocative.

One other thing, somewhat related: please consider changing your current "N essence means you can maintain N enchantments." Please make some enchantments harder to maintain than others. If you don't, then the less effective ones will never be used if the better ones are available. Implementing this, as someone else in some other thread pointed out, would be extremely simple: just make some enchantments require more than 1 essence to maintain.

Indeed. Gameplay & Diversity >>>>>>> Gfx. The only problem with Doms3 is the AI, but it's an MP game mainly.

PS. I would also pay for that Doms 3. mod. Just imagine...all of the Doms 3. spells in EWoM...

For a game that once aimed to be MOM 2, surely the logical inspiration would be Master of Magic? 

I kind of agree with one of the first post on more strategical spells 

Assuming Ice shard = water... It might be pretty neat creating a river out of nowhere (more choke points), or swamps (defense penalty? ) to troops (nom nom advantage )

What about causing an avalanche (if there are mountains nearby, that do significant damage and slow troops to a crawl (when they are forced to cross it?) 

Same spell could be adopted for earth shard-ers "Big boulders on top of hills!" Damage and blockade.

Fire shard  = Drought spell, foot cut for the opponent.

Oh! And what about magic that acts as a trap. Cast a spell on the ground and watch stuff explode (or alert you) when troops cross it. 

I think someone mentioned this earlier, and I meant to reiterate/expound on it in my post but I forgot: different ways of casting spells. It would be a long way towards making magic more fun. The basic and less powerful spells should be cast by choosing the spell and choosing the target, and seeing the effect. But more powerful spells could require more complicated procedures, like rituals. Some could require not only possession of a shard, but being at a shard. Some could require multiple turns to cast.

I would still like to see more countermagic. Right now all there is in terms of countermagic are elemental protection spells for units, a magical immunity spell for units, and dispel. What about protection for cities and land? There are land-altering spells, why not spells that protect land from being altered?

What about preemptive countermagic (on the strategic level)? A spell that you can cast at the end of your turn that will combat incoming harmful magic against your armies, cities, or even land. It could be implemented in many ways. It could be considered a global enchantment, and thus take up some of your enchantment slots, and if it is ever invoked (an enemy tries to cast magic on you), it will drain your mana. (It could also be a local enchantment, or not an enchantment at all). The efficiency and effectiveness of the spell would depend on your intelligence and your mana.

If an enemy with 10 intelligence casts a 10 mana spell at you, a 10 intelligence sovereign, counteracting the spell would cost 10 mana. If you have 20 intelligence, maybe it'd only cost 5 mana. If you have 5 intelligence, it'd cost 20. Or something (actual numbers are, of course, merely illustrative).

Something like this would require some serious balancing work, but meaningful countermagic, both preemptive and reactive, would make things really quite interesting!

For comparison, Master of Magic had 213 spells.

What happened to "Charm Monster"? That was a nice spell where you could cause a wandering creature to come to your side.

I agree with some of the posters here that there needs to be more defensive strategic spells.  

I should be able to dedicate my magical might towards protecting my empire.  There should be warding spells to alert me when certain CR armies near the area I cast them on.  Spells that inhibit magical travel.  Spells that slow mundane travel or cause morale penalties (think of casting an eerie fog over a mountain pass leading into your kingdom that slows movement to 1 or that causes morale to drop by X).  I should be able to lay spells over my land that make enemy casting more expensive unless he is strong enough to dispel my protective enchantments.  

I want to be able to use strategic magic to turtle my empire.  Laying wards on your borders, with slowing/despairing AoE spells (strategic level), magic protection against teleport or enemy casting.  

Of course it would have to be balanced.  To truly turtle your kingdom would have to require dedication to those spells and a commitment to using your enhancement slots on those types of spells.  

Currently it looks like the only magical protection available is to manipulate the land and to be ready to cast elemental protections and to liberally use dispel on one's enemies.  For it to truly be a "War of Magic" defensive options need to be stronger and more varied.  

I want Charm ;; 

I can pretty much summarise what people are saying in this thread with one line "Look at Master of Magic!"

Exactly , that's why it's a classic. Only Dominions had more spells, but they were mostly similar, and anyway there was no

real tactical combat.

Then again MoM was meant to be fun ,  even though the AI cheated a lot to be a challenge and i believe the AI would never cast certain spells.

I predicted a while ago that Elemental would be more like  Gal civ in terms of tech/magic i.e bland", generic. The AI would be decent as the rules in particularly magic would be designed to work around the weakness of the AI. But most players would eventually beat it on even terms anyway eventually anyway

I wouldn't put much faith in modding btw, if the base game is limited to spells of this nature, modding probably wouldnt help to add variety, it would just mean tweaking numbers mostly.

So far I'm not surprised. StarDock surprise me!

I like how everyone is ignoring that this is the list of the "basic" spellbooks, and 7 more are available to be found (but not taken at Sovereign creation). Assuming even that no new spells are added to the core books between now and release (unlikely), that'll still put it at 150-160 spells if the average number of spells holds.