Question: Magic in your game

A lot of strategic spells are very useful overall, basically in every situation. Tactical spells I feel vary greatly from spells to spells and situation to situation. A spell like Fireball or Blizzard is great when attacking cities, not so good when fighting slags or dragons.

I generally use all the enchants, and these current haste/slow spells.
Blindness when I am empire because it makes monsters very weak...

How much I use it... I generally use all my mana

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I find spells generally useful.

Try Giant Form + Growth in tactical btw. 

My sovereign is usually a Kingdom mage who learns all five schools of magic thanks to the Enchanters trait.  I always use Mantle of Oceans, haste, slow, and direct damage fire spells like flame dart, which is usually enough to wipe out whatever foes she's facing.  If not, I always have a group of ice mage troops backing her up.

Fireball and flame dart for attacks.  Heal has been critical.  I am liking Focus.  City nchantments are good.  Used tutelage on my soverign.  Haste and grow are good.  I like blind as a concept, but it is hard to tell just how much it is doing for me.

Used land manipulation spells to cut a pass through some mountains to reach a quest on the other side of someone else's borders.  That was fun.

I find strategic spells like enchanted hammers, inspiration and propaganda extremely useful. I rarely bother with the other city spells because I've never had a city with enough essence to use more than these 3!  I've used tornado to scatter armies getting set to attack one of my cities and pillar of fire to soften up an opponent so the city militia could cope. Regeneration is useful.

For tactical spells haste, slow, heal and burning hands are very useful, flame dart is my principal ranged weapon and can be devastating if you have a chance to pick evoker when leveling up. Sunder will make short work of elementals - including the epic elemental lords, it's probably overpowered. Gift of iron is great if that book is available to you. Most of the others were underwhelming the last time I tried them (back in beta 3) - maybe it's time to give them another chance but the tools I'm using work well, I haven't felt the need. 

My current style of play is non-aggressive. I enjoy exploring and questing while expanding quickly enough to stay ahead of the AI so they don't declare war on me. Those who enjoy extermination likely use a completely different set of spells.