You get a few from magic technology research. As Kingdom I'm usually given restoration, summoning and the last seems random. Ive gotten Combat and enchantment for the third.

Beyond that Im not sure how you get more books; maybe from quests and notable locations.

From what I've seen in the .xml files, you don't (at least from the tech tree).

As I understand it, the only way to access the elemental spellbooks is to buy them in sovereign creation.

Magic research seems to have significantly fewer tech levels than warfare for instance. Why not just add them in?

When you create your sovereign, you don't know what shards you will have access to on the map. Wouldn't it make sense to let you modify the sovereign to take advantage of available shard resources?

I have got the book of earth from a quest I think. Fact of the matter is though if you don't take the 4 elemental books you're going to have a beast of a time getting them. Enchantment and Summoning you can get more easily through research.

Yup, you can open up the summon, combat and restoration spell books by researching the magic tree. An all physical sovereign actually works quite well, in fact I've got magic slanted sovereigns who rarely ever cast because at the moment shooting a bow tends to be equal to, if not stronger than, casting a fire dart.

Your lucky my soverign has a staff and he dont ever cast spells but hits stuff with it, instead and I purposely started him at 5 strength to make him more caster friendly.   LOL

what i don't understand is why all the default sovereigns start with all the spellbooks. surely varying them would add more variety? and what is the game trying to tell me by doing this? that not taking all the starting books is an "alternative" gamestyle? that by not taking them all i'm gimping myself? i can see how starting without the book of air and spawning next to an air shard would be problematic. but if it's too big a problem then why allow the possibility at all and not just force everyone to take all the starting books?

maybe the elemental books need to be automatic for all, and a few other books should be available at character generation? or all the starting sovereigns have between 3 and five and the game is balanced to expect an average of 4 starting books? maybe add spellbook copying as diplomatic option so others can get them more easily if they spawn by a shard and end up really needing them?

They need to add techs to the Magic tree to give you access to the elemental spells via arcane research.  That should be part of the magic system overhaul that is in the works.

I only ever use fire/earth spells.

Enchantment spells cost too much and take years to recover from casting.

The rest of the books are nice but don;t seem to improve my combat ability or survivability.