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. 

Can an imbued Champion use their own Essence to imbue other Champions, or will Imbue Champion be limited to Sovereigns?

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!

Here a few spell ideas off of the top of my head. Sorry for the repeats. I'm not entirely sure what school of magic they would be grouped so judge for yourselves...

• Life Bond: caster (hero or sovereign) creates a bond between two friendly or enemy units (can include the caster, can include one friendly unit, one enemy unit). Any damage one pair takes is reduced by 50% and afflicted upon the other unit (if the other unit dies, the original unit takes the remaining amount).
• Death Bond: caster (hero or sovereign) creates a bond between two friendly or enemy units (can include the caster, can include one friendly unit, one enemy unit). If one of the pair die, the other dies as well. This also works for resurrection spells but has to be cast before the units die in order for both pairs to be resurrected.
• Mana Bond: caster (hero or sovereign) creates a bond between two friendly or enemy units (can include the caster, can include one friendly unit, one enemy unit). one pair splits 50% of all his mana reductions / gains (mana that is taken from casting spells, mana that is lost from enemy spells, mana gained from potions, etc) with another unit that has mana.
• Blood Bond: caster (hero or sovereign) creates a bond between two friendly or enemy units (can include the caster, can include one friendly unit, one enemy unit). If unit A takes enough damage to die, unit B will take all of the damage instead. If Unit B has remaining health, unit A will have their health set to the same percentage (ie, if unit B has 10/40 hit points after taking damage, unit A's health will be set to 5/20). Unit B will then die instantly. If unit B has no remaining health after taking the initial damage, both pairs die.
• Flesh from Bone: spell is cast on a friendly or enemy unit. If successful, unit is killed instantly (with lots of blood) and a skeleton is raised in it's place at 50% of the original unit's total health. Unit is NOT controlled by the caster (ie is a turned into a unit that is hostile to all forces) unless Forceful Oath has been cast on them before hand.
• Forceful Oath: spell is cast on a friendly or enemy unit. If successful, control over the unit is given to the owner of the caster and their morale is raised and becomes very difficult to lower.
• Blind: unit cannot see, sufferes 80% chance to hit with attacks.
• Hold Tongue: unit that spell is cast upon cannot cast spells.
• Horror: unit is put into a sleep state, cannot attack, and is liable to attack any unit. Chance of succeeding is increased if unit is already in a sleep state.
• Sleep: sleep puts the unit into a sleep state where it cannot be controlled.
• Wake: attempts to wake a unit that is in a sleep state.
• Killing Word: unit is killed instantly if spell is successful.
• Concuss: unit takes damage, chance of becoming disoriented, chance of breaking X% of potions within the ownership of that unit.
• Life Siphon: caster absorbs life from a living friendly or enemy unit.
• Death Siphon: caster absorbs life from a friendly or enemy dead unit (including undead).
• Mana Siphon: caster takes mana from another friendly or enemy unit (alive or dead).
• Shatter Metal: attempts to break any metal-based gear on a specific friendly or enemy unit. (can be used on structures? map objects?)
• Twist Wood: attempts to break any wood-based gear on a specific friendly or enemy unit. (can be used on forests? structures?).
• Stasis Shield: unit is protected from all physical damage but cannot move / attack.
• Energy Shield: any magical damage received by the unit is reduced.
• Tire: reduce the movement points ? tactical points ? of enemy / friendly unit.
• Break Morale: attempts to reduce a units morale.
• Barrier: a magical barrier is raised over a number of tiles preventing enemy / friendly movement over those tiles.
• Increase Gravity: the effects of gravity are increased. Arrows can't travel as far, enemies cannot fly, enemies cannot walk as far.
• Decrease Gravity: the effects of gravity are reduced. Arrows travel farther, enemies fly, enemies walk farther.
• Life Well: an area on the battlefield becomes able to regenerate the life of all those who enter (not undead) for a number of turns.
• Death Well: an area on the battlefield becomes able to regenerate the life of all undead who enter.
• Mana Well: an area on the battlefield becomes able to regenerate the mana of all those who enter for a number of turns.
• Limbo: units continue to take damage and operate normally within the area except that no unit can actually die. Units reduced to 0 health will remain alive until the limbo area is dispelled or dispersed. (only works for non-undead units)
• Blood Magic: kill X (non-undead) units and use their life to increase the potency of future spells for a time.
• Blood Drinker: heroe / unit / sovereign gets more and more powerful (permanently) the more enemies they kill.
• Ethereal: unit cannot be harmed by physical attacks but takes twice as much damage from magical attacks.
• Dismiss: instantly dispell a summoned unit.

For comparison, Master of Magic had 213 spells.

...with very little repetition in theme, much less in exact effect!

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

Just curious... Why does the Protection from Ice tactical spell be the only one of its kind to require a shard?   Th protect from fire and protect from air spells do not require a shard so says the good book above.

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.  

Dreams of a book of the dead like in evil dead or the dark hold from marvel comics.  That would be a nice find in the game.  *wonders if some spells could be found or earned that are very powerful based on completing very challenging quests or dungeons. 

I want Charm ;; 

Charm was currently in Life and Death, wasn't it? There should really be a school of its own for mind affecting stuff, or at least a Book of the Mind.

edit: It was in Restoration which also seems quite out of place.

edit2: Its description says that casters Int is rolled against targets Combat Rating. This makes me think there should be an attribute called Mind Resistance to make some type of creatures more susceptible to this type of magic than others.

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!

Have you seen what modders have done with Civ 4?  Elemental promises to be even more mod friendly.  I think the biggest difficulty for modders will be adjusting the AI to deal with all of the features modders can bring in!

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.