How do I cast non-city strategic spells???

Select your caster (you start the game with only your sovereign as a spell caster).  In his menu of commands, you should see cast spell.  Click it.  Your spell book opens up.  Select the spell, press the "cast" button and then you will see a square reticule that is colored red if you can't cast on that square/target, and green if you can cast on it/him.

Be sure to move Janusk out from the army stack before you cast on him.

No, there is no "cast spell" in his commands. Clicking on Relias so that only he and not his entire army is selected, I've got Auto Explore, trade items, Guard, Pass Turn and Visit Shop. That includes what is in his More Actions popup. This seemed like the natural place to find it but... what gives? I believe it's broken.

Hmm, And Relias is your sovereign?  Yikes, that's nasty then.

Agree - you should be able to at least have the option to cast Imbue Hero. I've never seen this issue before in any of my games. Did you install any mods?

I've never installed any mods since I didn't really begin playing until the latest patch. It's as clean an installation as you can get. But this is not the only problem I'm seeing. Occasionally the names of cities get mixed up - for instance the purple guy in my campaign is in a city named Altos and my capital is called Veanlu, but it says Altos over my capital AND his city.

Even worse, which just now happened, the game will not proceed to the next turn! I even realoaded from an auto save a few turns back and every time I get to Winter 243 AC the End Turn button does nothing at all, and after I click it the game stops responding. I can still pan around the map and select things but nothing else works. I was really hoping to finally get into this game after buying it on launch day and waiting so long for 1.1... but I guess my luck sucks. I really hope Stardock can solve my problem, else I will lose faith completely...

Also the game still has quite a few typos. Can they not have someone literate sit down and go over every piece of text? Becuase when thigns arent spelled corectly... well you see how it looks

Don't bother with the campaign. The real game is in sandbox. The campaign shuts off things you can normally do in sandbox (like research). It's possible spellcasting is shut off in the campaign, I havent played it since release. As far as the game not advancing the next turn, this is a known issue with auto explore. Go through all of your units and make sure auto explore is not on for any of them.

Oooh....campaign?  That explains it.  I haven't ever actually started the campaign...

Aha, I did turn on auto explore on the first free ship you get after they gave me a bigger one. It worked for several turns though. Anyway thanks for that tip, at least I can continue the game even if unable to cast strategic spells.

Regarding skipping the campaign, I don't really feel like missing out on it because it introduces me to the game concepts and such, so I'm not clueless in the sandbox

My point was, I don't think it helps too much. If you've ever played a 4x game before, there's no need. If you're totally new, I guess I understand. I just think the campaign makes you more confused. I would also suggest taking a look at some of the FAQs on the forums here for help. Good luck!

I thought the casting for heal, was a tactical, so could only be done in combat. I discovered a heal spell, and wanted to heal my soverign but coudln't do cast it because it wasn't listed. So I thought there are some spells that can be cast during combat and some cast on the main map only.

Is this the way, or am I not getting something?

Yes.  Strategic spells can only be cast outside of battle.  Tactical spells can only be cast inside of battle.

Best regards,
Steven.

Hello, Left-click on any part of the main map and this should appear.

Click the Spellbook, pick your strategic spell, cast...etc..

Hope this was helpful.