I wrote a fairly extensive document on this that one one looked at.  Here it is:  https://forums.elementalgame.com/395928

I would be happy to expand on this with a full spellbook set, spell ideas, and whatnot.  But I got zero feedback, so...wasn't sure anyone cared. 

From the Combat post:  *More versatile spell effect shapes:  Square (1x1, 2x2, 3x3, etc), Radius (3x3, clip corners to make round effects), Cone (generally triangular, expands wide in two directions), Line (2x4, 1x6, etc).  This would greatly increase the versatility for different spells to be put into the game, Fireball (round) Cone of Fire (5 square cone), Burning Hand (2 square cone) Polar Ray (1x6 line)...you get the idea.

@ Ishantil

I saw the headers and brief descriptions there. You are still writing the actual document?

I agree that the square AE spell area is just a lame hack. If it were simply "range x from target square" then it would automatically cut off the corners and gravitate towards a circle.
Cone and beam shape are missing.    Probably not even lazy but... unimaginative.

The spellbook thread has considerable material but concentrates on the actual application, usually without exploring the required changes to the spell mechanics and ignoring that every good spell absolutely demands a counter. Without that, a lot of good ideas end up like the release version of Teleport...

The actual applications are the easy part.  Assigning mana cost, spell level, and actual damage.  They are a later stage of the design, not the beginning.
The first step would be to define the character of a spellbook.  In WOM that step was omitted so all elements ended up as clones of the same spell template with zero unique character.

Water/Ice nukes, for instance should always have a chance to freeze/slow the unit for maybe 2 turns.
Fire nukes should always have a chance to ignite the target and therefore cast a small DoT in addition to the direct damage.
Earth nukes (really really big rocks...) should have a chance to knock back the recipient by one square.
Lightning nukes should stun and disorient, possibly be amplified by metal armor.

Fire should have a chance to hurt the benefactor of a fire buff. I mean, it's fire, not just pretty lights.
The fire book should be brutal, offensive, volatile. Quick to summon, hard to control. Liable to hurt you as much as the target.
Earth would be harder to get going but neigh unstoppable once it picks up momentum. Like a huge bowling ball rolling towards the enemy lines, squashing several units it it's path. Earthquakes cracking the battlefield open, diamond spikes shooting from the ground to build a palisade...
Brad mentioned Avatar there. I only saw 2 or 4 episodes in my life but one of them happened to be about the avatar learning a thing or two about fire.
Clearly Avatar was not an influence in the spellbook design.

Right now the elemental books have so little distinction it's a crying shame. Do I use the fire or earth nuke for 3 points? Either does physical damage. Hmmm... let's toss a coin?

The current spell mechanics are so bare bones that it's hard to even think about what spells there should be.  No elemental resistances,  no multiple effects like the nukes I mentioned,  no magical items except healing and summon clickies.  There will be no great and mysterious artifacts if all they do is give you an extra 3 attack and defense.  The Blade of the Demonspawn should have a 15% chance to summon a minor demon when attacking. The Barrier of the Sun shield would have a 20% chance to surround you with a fiery shield that would make attackers take serious damage on the next attack. That would be magical. Not another 3 points of attack.
What about focus items?  They can be researched / equipped like weapons / armor and alter the efficiency of a spellcaster. Less cost, more oomph... whatever.

But Elemental? With no "magical" mechanics whatsoever, all we can do is glorified ranged attacks. Physical ones at that. Ack.

Apparently the mana supply is supposed to change in 1.1 but that wouldn't really solve anything if magic was to stay reduced to being a bow with more damage.

So I'm exploring possibilities, side effects of magic, interaction of these systems. Choices. The one thing Elemental has very little of is choices.

The max power of Life/Death enchantments could be tied to the number of apropriate temples you built.  Kinda like shards but tied to level 3+ cities.

The max power of a water enchantment would obviously be limited by the number of your water shards.
(add Dodge to your water effects = )

Working out a solid system for multi-element enchantments that make sense would be a lot of work because there's a minimum of 30 combinations with only 2 elements.  120 with 3.

Still... that would add a lot of tinker value to the magic system...

Some great ideas in this thread already. Here's my little list:-

-Enhanced spellbook select at soverign creation. The cost of a spellbook should be increased greatly or a physical limit placed on how many can be owned in a single game. Either way there should be a limit of 2-3 books. The magic system should be complete enough that each book (or combination of books) should give a unique playstyle to the game.

-New caster traits at soverign creation. Traits to decrease spell cost, decrease casting time, improve power, double displing power, enhance summons, boosted magic resisted and many more. Your soverigns should be extermely customisable when it comes to magic; this is supposed to be war of magic remember?

-Unique cross school spells. If I remember correctly this is supposed to have been in the game from the get go. It's a great idea I think, and it would give some great replayablity + good fun mixing and matching spellbooks. Ofc these spells should be truely unique and powerful.

-A ton of spells that give us expanded capabilities. The magic in the game atm is pretty much 1 attack spell followed after another and it's just a bigger version of the first one. This game needs spells that give new options and strategies. Sorry but I am going to refer to MOM here because it's simply the best example. Lets take windwalking for example. That spell allowed you to move armies at the same speed of the person it was caste on over all terrain with no penalties. Simply increadible, massive strategic advantage. Zombie mastery; Turn all slain into zombies under your control. Time stop; freeze time. Suppress magic; Attempt to block all enemy magic. Subversion; ruin an enemies diplomatic relations with other factions. Spell Binding; steal enemy enchantment. Planer travel; move between worlds at will with unit. Enchant road; magic roads cost 0 movement. The list is massive. These are the kind of strategic spells we need to mount a real magical based war with.

Edit: new idea - Similar to galactic civilizations 2 starting tect selection, allow players to select their starting spells.

Thats cool with me.

I'm thinking that cross school spells should be nothing short of super powerful. One such example could be something like....earth+fire: results in that insane volcano spell from MOM that slowly destorys the world and makes the caster stronger for each volcano.

MOM had great balance though. You couldn't attain the maximum power of a spell school unless the player picks all 11 books. But just that alone grants some great bonuses. On the otherhand a player could go with diffrent schools for more versitile magic, or take less then 11 books and instead pick some very powerful traits to backup their magic. We really need something like this for WOM. as things stand with soverign customisation atm it's pretty dull.

Spell research shouldn't be so... anonymous.

You research "lvl 3" and you get immediate (if research) access to the spells of all 4 (or more?) books.

This whole "I research level 3" is so... stupid and artificial. Spell levels are nice and dandy but the research system does not need to show it like that.
In fact, something like "you know level 3 of magic" should not be shown anywhere.  This is strictly an internal and very artificial value.

First, all spell schools should have their own levels.

When I currently know Earth 2, all researchable Earth spells up to Earth 3 would be displayed. Researching the first Earth level 3 spell includes the research cost of researching the book level, too.

In fact, "researching book levels" could be dropped altogether.  You would research spells.  Period.
Increase the cost of the spells to make up for that but dump the silly "research the spell level" system.
The result is the same but it's less artificial looking.  Noone is going to cast "Level 3".

Even tech research is less artificial.   You don't have to research "Level 3" before you can research better housing or bows.

If you had multiple books, you would have to research more spells, automatically advancing through the levels.
The very technical approach of "Next I want the lvl 3 spell Blah so I'll only research spell levels until I open it up" is very very unmagical.

The book levels would still be there but hidden, only opening up a limited selection of what to reseach next.

Cross school spells would just be harder to research "intentionally" since you couldn't just skip to them by researching Earth 3 and Fire 5, then researching the Magma Rain.
Doing that just feels wrong.  Is this magic or a spreadsheet?

Of course, with more knowledge about which spell was which level you could do this more effectively by only researching the minimum required spells.
But you would still be researching magical spells, not some artificial stat like "generic book levels" as it is now.
Why tell the player directly about all shortcuts?  That removes the element of mystery from magic, reducing it to a numbers game.

I mean I can see where this is coming from.  In order to research Phasors, you have to research Lasers 3 and then Lasers 4.
So in Elemental, you don't waste time with the Lasers 3 and 4 you don't plan on using but skip them completely, only researching the "levels" up to Phasors.
W.T.F. ?   This is magical research?

Some magic counters for 0 turns to caste spells could be implemented. The counter magic spell from MOM is a good example. You caste it before any magic starts to fly and that magic will first have to overcome the counter magic.

Though it would be nice if for spells caste by an enemy mage on their turn the player was given an oppertunity to chose if they want to counter it or not on the same turn. But that would probably be a much harder thing to introduce into the game.

You know a good game that made use of tile based tactical combat?  Makai Senki Disgaea. Okay, so what am I getting at?

A lot can be done just by allowing various rewards for different ranges and tile patterns. Attacks that hit everything next to the caster. Attacks that hit everything one tile away from the caster. Attacks that hit everything in a 9 tile field in front of the caster. This could also be divided by spellbooks, so for instance, wind would have good range but would lack in terms of effects that reward you with heavy damage up close. Fire could have larger area of effects on more spells, to include such things as 7 tile lines that blast everything in a row, or weird cross patterns that hit a anything within 2 spaces to your rear or side, or within 5 spaces in a frontal line. Earth could be great at slamming whatever is next to you for maximum damage, and water could get a focus on simpler effects that have good area, damage and range, but lack in each field (hey, every system needs the jack of all trades.) We can even throw life and death some crazy attack patterns that while generally inferior, have valuable implications (such as an attack that hits everything that is located in location that you could move to if you were a knight in chess.) I'm not going to say that it's a bad idea to implement mechanics such as damage over time, counters, curses, terrain modification, etc. because that would be a lie- however, it's not a bad idea to approach the issue using extremely simplistic methods as well.

No need for artificial bumping. Just organise the info in separate posts. It's a lot easier to manage and read, too.

Like the bullet list in the first post here. I had expected to make at least one post for each to avoid the inevitable wall of text. Noone reads those.

Easier to add to as well if you get the categories right.

The first post should really just an overview with links to the actual content posts.

@Robert:  Good idea. 

@Luketan:  Luke-tan..like Mio-tan?  Also, the reason that D&D 4.0 is boring is because everything is "balanced" and incredibly bland.  Each spellbook should be balanced by each having strenghts and weaknesses.  That doesn't mean "every other book has the same access to whatever"

Being able to heal your guys as fast as they can be damaged is balanced against direct damage spells, for example.  It's okay for them to not be completely balanced.  I think the books should have overall power levels generally balanced.

So I guess I pretty much agree with you totally

If SD don't deliver the kind of magic system this game deserves, then I'm going to be begging, like everyone else will most probably, that they give the modders the tools needed to do it themselves =P

If they cannot stray from 'every spell is a clone of each other,' and 'most magic is a missile attack' the magic system is not going to go anywhere. They really need to go play a some more MOM to recapture the glory...