the empire one you have to research.. (lvl 2? 3?)
for some reason, you get teleport to start with in kingdom and have to research imbue. but you get imbue in empire and have to research teleport.
personally i think the differences between the two "generic" spellbooks for the two sides are pretty arbitrary and pointless. i also don't understand why i have a death spellbook without ever selecting it or discovering it (to my knowledge). is this the resoln faction death worshippers ability? or is it automiatic for all empire players? if it is something i discovered, or got for picking resoln, it's pretty pathetic for something called the Book of Death, as it has no particularly powerful high level spells. i fail to see what connection Spirit Dance has with the concept of death. it would help if i had some way of knowing what spellbooks i actually had. also, unlike most people i still don't seem to have discovered any other spell books?
imho they should just merge the life, death and enchantment spell books into one, automatic book that covers all the basic utility stuff, or make the books of Life and Death at least worthy of the names. i also dislike the way that the "extra" spellbooks work outside of the shard system, making one of the (supposedly) most valuable resources pointless if you chose to focus on these spells. imho, almost every spell should be tied to an element, and shards should have an affect for non-damage spells.
generally though, spells seem to be really poorly though out. the spellbook interface is horrible; the huge icons mean you're having to use those little turn page icons all the time, and it's hard to remember which page you're even on. it was ages before i even noticed the bookmarks at the bottom for switching between known and unknown spells. the spells aren't even sorted by level, and you have to look at each one individually to see what book it's from. and bringing up the whole, screen eating book every time you want to cast something is really annoying.
the game needs more spells, but at the same time their is some pointless duplication already. summon minor fire elemental and summon fire giant seem to have the same mana cost and spell book. why is this? is one more powerful than the other (in which case, why would anyone take the other?) or are they equally powerful (in which case, what a waste of a spell). and i still can't decide which of haste or quicken (if either) is worth learning.
back on topic, i have reached "teleport friend" at level 7, however, i have still yet to find a generic, low level, low cost teleport spell for my sov (like the one kingdom sovs start with), which is pretty annoying given that it's the most useful spell in the game when i'm playing kingdoms.
update: have found it. apparently it is called spirit dance for empire factions. i had ignored it before because i assumed (due to the different name and it's description) that it would take me to the nearest tile automatically, rather than letting me choose a location like teleport does).
