I liked your spell ideas.
People right now are skeptical about the spell system but I think over time they'll really appreciate the idea of spells in books because we can start to release spell books post release that players will at first find and then, when we're really happy with them, promote them to researchable items and then as a base choice.
This lets the AI start to use them gradually. 
We have a ton of spells disabled internally that have a lot of groans. Clone enemy being the big one that had a lot of internal debate.
