[Gameplay] specialize magic by book (fire magic aggressive, water magic defensive etc...)

As it is now one doesn't really need more than one book of magic, since fire spell can bring damage of all sorts, but they usually have an equivalent in earth magic or air. My suggetsion is that by choosing fire magic one should choose between a large number f aggressive spells, but lack defensive ones. Water magic could bring healing as a spell, but be weaker in terms of offensive spells. Earth could bring spells that affect the strategic map and air should add speed to units (please be careful with teleporting spells, because they tend to spoil the game since entire stacks could just appear out of nowhere thus defeatinhg any attempt to carry on intelligent tactics. Movement is always the most important element in warfare.)

As it is now players don't even bother researching 90% of spells since the lightning that you get at the beginning is already a very decent one so why having both fire ball and chain lighting?

(PS adding immunities/resistance to specific schools of magic would at least give some sense to variety of spells)

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In most games magic is split like:

red(fire/chaos/offense) - direct fire damage, damage over time, defense and resistance affecting debuffs, volcanic manipulation

blue(water/holy/order/resistance) - ice/water damage, healing, mind affecting spells, elemental protection buffs, sea/water manipulation

yellow(air/electricity/speed) - random electric damage (lightning is unstable), stun, speed affecting buffs, weather/wind manipulation

green(earth/nature/defense) - physical damage, nature summons, defensive buffs, speed affecting debuffs, earth/terrain manipulation

Also there should be cross-domain spells. For example Volcano should be a fire/earth spell. while holy shock(massive lightning damage to undead) should be water/air.

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Totally agree with this. This was one of my suggestions in the Elemental sub-forum regarding changes to the battle system. The magic system as it stands is too bland, and too many spells overlap.

I would suggest that Earth spells affect Defence and close combat, e.g. by buffing the target unit's strength etc. Air (or Storm, to reflect more destructive aspects of the school) may affect the battlefield, or do more single target damage (as opposed to Fire's AOE damage). I think more straightforward buff/debuff spells should be left to the Enchantment school.

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i accept a lot of what you're saying, but personally i'd take the themes even further and make the books independent of elements entirely:

ie no book of fire or water, but a book of lesser destruction, a book of minor summoning, a book of minor enchanting, then give EVERY spell in the game an elemental association so even a sov with only one book will get a benefit from any shard, but sovs with more books get more benefit. then create a common system for researching all spells and books (i'd personally merge the sorcery tech tree and the spell research mechanism and make learning spells and gaining books the same thing, because at the moment there is far more to be gained from techs than spell research).

i understand the problem that there is currently little reason to go beyond you basic lightning strike (other than maybe getting an AOE version thereof), but to my mind the best way to incentivise spell learning is to make the power of spells more closely related to the spells themselves rather than shards or intelligence. attributes should determine the max level of spell that can be cast and shards should reduce the mana costs of spells so you can cast more and more often. instead of it being "i've got 20 int now, so my fireball does more damage" it should be "i've got a 20 int now, so i can now cast flaming-naked-fire-banshees-from-tarterus." that would incentivise people to learn new spells and work well with the new global mana system.

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Yes! We definitely need more differentiation among books and/or elements. One problem is that at the moment, most spells affected by shard possession are damage dealing spells. If direct damage gets put largely in fire (as it probably should), this would make having a fire shard more important than any other...unless...other aspects of spells start getting affected by having a shard. So, perhaps, an air spell might make increase a unit's combat speed by 1 + 1 for each air shard you control, or something like that. A summoned Earth Elemental might start with one extra level of experience for each earth shard you had, etc.

I think one reason MoM did so well here is that they stole the magic system from Magic: the Gathering, which is a really well designed game with lots of differentiation between colors of magic. So many games have gone the elemental differentiation route and it's much harder to make work, However, one show that nailed it was Avatar: the Last Airbender, which Frogboy has already named as inspiration. I think more inspiration could be taken from this. For example, in that show, lightning is a Fire based power, not an air based one. I like that! Personally, I don't think Air shouldn't have direct damage. Period. Makes it more interesting. It should have movement and defensive powers instead (and maybe stretch it to illusion?). To differentiate Earth and Air defensiveness, Air could be about defense and Earth could be about damage reduction or something like that.

I have some more thoughts as well, but they'll have to wait - work time

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The real reason to not research more than the Lightning nuke is that the elements are meaningless.

https://forums.elementalgame.com/395415 ...

And yes, Air (or Life) damage spells are a stretch of imagination. Playing with arrows, increasing their chance to hit, range, or making enemy arrows go astray... those Air spells I can believe.

Raising clouds of dust, hiding units and breaking line of sight - sure thing.
On the strategic level, a cloud of dust that doesn't let the enemy see which units are moving there. Could be a lone scout doing a diversion, could be an entire army.

A tactical strong gale that doubles all unit's movement speed when traveling against the wind. (and you control which direction it has)
Altering the speed of some/all ships on the strategic level.

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