How do you get access to the elemental spell books

You get a few from magic technology research. As Kingdom I'm usually given restoration, summoning and the last seems random. Ive gotten Combat and enchantment for the third.

Beyond that Im not sure how you get more books; maybe from quests and notable locations.

I saw everything except elemental spell books from research, how do you get access to the 4 elements if you do not take at the start?

From what I've seen in the .xml files, you don't (at least from the tech tree).

anyone figure this out?

As I understand it, the only way to access the elemental spellbooks is to buy them in sovereign creation.

Yup, if you don't take them at creation you won't get them.

Magic research seems to have significantly fewer tech levels than warfare for instance. Why not just add them in?

hmmm unfortunate. I just created a sovereign with no magical spellbooks. I had a plan to comncertrate on this sovereign as a physical hero, who later develops a magical affinity. Guess I better scrap that idea then. Unless there are other spellbooks you can unlock?

When you create your sovereign, you don't know what shards you will have access to on the map. Wouldn't it make sense to let you modify the sovereign to take advantage of available shard resources?

Check out this segment from the "Elemental for Dummies" thread that's pinned in this forum.

There are over a dozen different books of magic in the game.

When a player selects their sovereign (their sorcerer, channeler of magic), they can choose which books of magic they want. Each book will have a cost to it. So you can spend a lot of points on having lots of books or use those points to make your channeler more powerful. In addition, based on what race you are, you will get a book of magic and based on which allegiance you choose (Empire or Kingdom) you will get a book.

Then there are books of magic you can research in the research area. There are also books of magic spread across the world that you can find via quests and other events.

I have got the book of earth from a quest I think. Fact of the matter is though if you don't take the 4 elemental books you're going to have a beast of a time getting them. Enchantment and Summoning you can get more easily through research.

thanks, i ended up restarting and taking the elemental books, i couldn't find them otherwise

Yup, you can open up the summon, combat and restoration spell books by researching the magic tree. An all physical sovereign actually works quite well, in fact I've got magic slanted sovereigns who rarely ever cast because at the moment shooting a bow tends to be equal to, if not stronger than, casting a fire dart.

My thought of the matter, is they are not needed.  I would simply add more technologies to the list than add something that people may already have.  If you can simply train and research your books, why spend valuable points early on in getting them when you will get them soon enough?

Your lucky my soverign has a staff and he dont ever cast spells but hits stuff with it, instead and I purposely started him at 5 strength to make him more caster friendly.   LOL

I wouldn't worry about restarting, currently physical sovereign are WAY more powerful than magical ones.

what i don't understand is why all the default sovereigns start with all the spellbooks. surely varying them would add more variety? and what is the game trying to tell me by doing this? that not taking all the starting books is an "alternative" gamestyle? that by not taking them all i'm gimping myself? i can see how starting without the book of air and spawning next to an air shard would be problematic. but if it's too big a problem then why allow the possibility at all and not just force everyone to take all the starting books?

maybe the elemental books need to be automatic for all, and a few other books should be available at character generation? or all the starting sovereigns have between 3 and five and the game is balanced to expect an average of 4 starting books? maybe add spellbook copying as diplomatic option so others can get them more easily if they spawn by a shard and end up really needing them?

I think the game is trying to tell the player that magic is far more valuable and fun than it actually is.

They need to add techs to the Magic tree to give you access to the elemental spells via arcane research.  That should be part of the magic system overhaul that is in the works.

There is a mod that allows you to gain elemental spell books from the tech tree.  Can't remember the name.

I only ever use fire/earth spells.

Enchantment spells cost too much and take years to recover from casting.

The rest of the books are nice but don;t seem to improve my combat ability or survivability.

This pretty much sums it up for me atm.