I actually think the opposite of what you think:  they need to add more variation and flavor to each element to make them useful in their own unique way.

If you'll also recall from your AD&D days, your mage was very weak in the early going, as well.

Well I could be mistaken, but aren't they different effects...  One teleports the caster and his army, the other teleports all unstationed units.... quite the different outcome in most cases.

So are these... quite similar but some subtle differences.  Flame dart will get stronger as you procure more fire shards... Shadow bolt doesn't but gets stronger with the caster level and also reduces spell resistance.

One of the problems with your suggestion (and it was the same in AD&D) is that the same spells get picked over and over again... it's no coincidence you mentioned fireball and lightning bolt... they're pretty much the first spell everyone is after!  

Not sure what edition/variant it was but I always preferred the AD&D magic variant where you could chose one (or two?) preferred schools/types such as evoker, illusions, enchanter, divination etc.  That's a similar concept to choosing the element specialties ala FE which I think works mostly ok the way it is.

Having said that, yeah I think the bases system is fine but I think there is some scope for having certain "special" spells become available on level up.  For example, maybe in addition to the base spells... if you have the Fire school then on level 5 you have a chance to be able to select the "Fire Specialist" ability or similar which unlocks a couple of extra fire based spells (similar to Book of Flames tech or whatever it's called).

I'd also like to see more rare spells unlocked via quest loot, eg "Lost Book of Flaming Explosions" which grants a couple of extra fire based spells but is only usable if you already have Fire1.

That's another issue. I think the number of units that can be teleported should be scalable with level. That would eleiminate the need for two different spells, and make leveling up more meaningfull.

IMO, level should be the driver for increasing all spell effects, and the shards shoud be amplifiers.

completely disagree with o.p.  

How about a pool of useful spells, making the decision not such a no-brainer.

the decision now on what magic schools to take is far from a no brainer, as is evident with your post. You want a good dd spell take fire or death. you want spells that help your city produce more go with earth. want more gold go with air  want to help your units on the tactical map go with air, life or earth, want to hinder your enemy on the tactical map go with water or death. and so on and so on.  Very far from a no brainer, this allows people to select the magic schools suited to their playstyle making magic choices more meaningful not less so.  what you suggest is what I call dumbing down a game.

I guess I must be misreading your post. you seem to be asking to be able to cast any spell by anyone with no regards to making a meaningful choice in character setup. I just can't see how that makes the game more interesting and varied, it would make it the complete opposite of interesting and varied in my opinion. having a few more spells in each class may be nice but then you really could get into spell duplication between the different schools.

You also suggest combing two spells together and getting rid of the other  such as cloud walk and call of the titans, that is not making the game more varied.  The 2 spells are very different in what they do and how they are obtained.  the fire dd and the death dd are also different. They scale differently which is a bigger difference than it seems.  The magic debuff is nice when I play my guy as a beastmaster  it makes it much easier to tame after a couple debuffs on the target. 

Exactly.  The issue the AD&D mage ran into was how many spells he could cast before re-memorizing.  Not many, and finding a good place to rest wasn't always easy, especially if you had cruel DM's, which, as far as my experience is concerned, is always.

Same works in FE: You're limited by mana, especially early game. 

I agree that Fire I is the worst, both tactically and strategically.  Every time I get a champion, I swear it's either got the same magic my sovereign has, or Fire I.  It's pretty rare that Burning Hands is even useful, let alone worth the mana cost.  Even if each of the other magic types only had their city enchants, they'd still be better than Fire I as is.

That said, one of the problems with picking the low-level magics currently is that, no matter how many levels you get, and even if you take the path of the mage, you're probably going to be stuck with I and II level spells.  I got a character up to level 20 and couldn't get another casting school, or my current one past II.  Fortunately, this problem is going away with LH, where you'll be able to pick your level-up traits, rather than having a few random ones to pick from.  I think this will make magic much more viable.  Of course, the point still stands that Fire I kinda sucks.

Errrr, nope! No matter which magic school(s) my sov had, he got to Archmage in that/those school(s) quite quickly in each n every game I played so far.

Yeah tell that to Master of Magic. People still play it TODAY even (I know I do). If a game is GOOD/GREAT it will always have value. Changing core design around doesn't help to save it...just take a look at Age of Wonders. lol  The one thing this game doesn't seem to have is a lot of tiers of magic spells. MOM had like 10 levels of magic spells per class of caster. Being able to mix and match those was one of the greatest things about MOM. I used to like going like 5 books of death and 1 book of fire and 2 books of sorcery. I always wanted Counter Magic because that was a very powerful spell for a low level requirement. I liked the Phantom Warriors too as they could come in handy in a pinch and ghouls and fire hounds at the start of the game were creme-del-lacreme units to have. I also had to have alchemy conversion where you could trade like 1 gold to get 1 mana. I always had an abundance of gold and was always weak on mana until I found that trait.

The thing about MOM is it really let you play your character and didn't restrict you so much or bind you down to a city or three. Even on small maps of MOM I could get 10 cities easy. I can barely get 5 on a medium map in this game. I could field stacks and stacks of units in MOM....I can barely field one good one in this game at least in the early stages. This game I feel like most all I'm doing is pressing end turn end turn end turn or using auto end turn and just watching the turns go by. Not enough action, not enough cities, not enough units to really get FUN out of it like a MOM game.

Let's face it after CIV II nothing was really better as even today CIV II stands out as the BEST CIV evah. Crossfire for Alpha Centauri wasn't even necessary it was an addon at most with a couple of new races that were even pretty much identical but still not even necessary to keep Alpha Centauri alive from now till doomsday.

Granted GalCiv DID need an upgrade because it was never really finished and wasn't a classic with the first game. It DID take numerous tries to get it right and when they finished with TWILIGHT they did get it right and that one is a classic.

This game is going to take a LOT of changes as well. More open ended play, more cities, more stacks, huge maps twice the size of large now. It's like GalCiv was in its infancy and has a longggggggg ways to go before it will ever be the classic that MOM or Alpha Centauri or Civilization II are.

All of which rely on the power rating. Ever try a diplo victory when your power is lower than the AI's? Ever try a magic victory when all of the AI's are piling on you?

Fire is useles? What about firestorm? It can turn a deadly AI stack into a strong stack. Also, never underestimate the advantage of  being able to deliver damage from a safe distance. (Fire bolt, fireball, etc). Sure you can "rush" the AI with haste, but by the time you get within 1 tile to take a single  swing, you've been hit several times by the archers and mages.