Thanks to both of you for the advice so far. It is very helpful. Dave, I understand if you decide not to do the long list but if you did that would be AMAZING and very helpful! I really enjoy the magic system in FFH and am trying to get of them as I tend to play as the magic based civs.
I end up doing this sort of thing mentally all the time, and I'm bored at the moment, so I'd be happy to oblige.
Air 1- Fair Wind. +1 movement to ships. Not that great.
Air 2- Maelstorm. Nice AoE damage to an entire stack. I want to say it maxes at 40% damage, but it might be 30%. Essentially, 4 mages knocks off 30-40% of the health of every enemy in range. As with all AoE, watch to not hit neutral parties, war WILL be declared.
Air 3- Summon Air Elemental- Has an Air affinity, iirc, and spawns a Lightning Elemental, either when it dies, or wins a combat (never used 'em).
Body 1- Haste. Awesome spell. Gives +1 movement to all living creatures in the stack. So, no siege, no undead, golems, demons or angels. But if your stacks lack those, it's a complete must-have.
Body 2- Regeneration. Increases healing by +10% (thats an extra 10% of health returned per turn, regardless of movement.) Lasts until the unit is fully healed. Has the same limitations as Haste, but again, a nice spell, almost like giving everyone temporary March.
Body 3- Create Flesh Golem. Makes a Golem, which can than be fed units to increase it's strength. It also gains whatever promotions you feed it. And both of those can come from temporary summons. Allows for some awesome late-game monster units, but it's a LOT of micro to get there.
Chaos 1- Dance of Blades?. Gives all units in the stack 1 First Strike. Decent buffing spell.
Chaos 2- Mutation. Gives all units in the stack mutation, which has a small chance of giving each unit any or all of the promotions. Take a stack of disposable units (basically anything but disciple or arcane typed units) away from everything else, and cast. Cannon fodder the ones that get Weak and Withered, treat like heros the ones that get Strong/Canibalize/Heroic Strength/Heroic Defense.
Chaos 3- Wonder. 4-6 random spell effects happen. User beware.
Earth Mana increases the chance to pop a metal resource on a mine. The first node gives the biggest increase, with subsequent ones being still useful, but not as big a jump as the first one. Free Earth Mana from Standing Stones.
Earth 1- Wall of Stone. Creates a building in a city that gives (iirc) 25% bonus defense. Useful for defending (obviously), I tend to use it only when I get it for free, such as when playing dwarves as Runes of Kilmorph, so I have 2 earth mana.
Earth 2- Stoneskin. Gives the unit 3 First Strikes, and +2 Defensive Strength, next battle only. This is a decent choice for Amurite Firebows, and kind of weak besides, unless an opponent is throwing a ton of unpromoted assassins at you.
Earth 3- Earth Elemental. Earth affinity, notable for giving normal strength, not an elemental type which might be resisted. I don't really use them.
Free fire mana from Pyre of the Seraphic.
Fire 1- Scorch. Starts a fire. Fires will turn forests, ancient forests, and jungle into burnt forest, which becomes new forest after a random time, and eventually forest. I don't often use it, but it can be useful if you picked up Knowledge of the Ether before Bronze Working to clear forests, assuming you have Fire Mana from the palace (So, Amurites).
Fire 2- Fireball. Great for bombarding city defenses, especially as elves who don't get siege. Second purpose is attacking one unit normally (the fireball cannot kill in this combat, iirc), and doing some collateral damage to ~4 other units. Nice for breaking small but tough armies down to killable range, but personally, I prefer to combine Maelstrom (Air 2), Blur (Shadow 1), and Shadowwalk (Shadow 2).
Fire 3- Summon Fire Elemental. Big Beasty with fire affinity that causes collateral damage. Really, it's a fun toy to play with, but lacks a real punch unless you get it early on a Channeling 3 Hero, Hemah or Gorvonan. Even then, I'd prefer Mind 3 (Domination).
Enchantment gives +1 happiness in each city per node.
Enchantment 1- Enchanted Blade. Gives all melee units in the stack a permanant magic buff that gives +20% strength.
Enchantment 2- Flaming Arrows. Gives archery units +1 fire strength. Great for Amurites.
Enchantment 3- Spellstaff. Lets you basically store a turn of casting. Cast Spellstaff, it counts as your spell for the turn. Next turn, cast, and you'll see you can still cast Break Spellstaff, which will let you cast again that round.
Entropy gives negative relations with good/neutral leaders.
Entropy 1- Rust. The spell that makes the diplomacy malus worth it. Affects all enemies in range, Rust removes weapon bonuses (for bronze, iron, or mithril) AND applies a 10% malus that can only be removed in a city with a forge. Combine with some AoE to cripple an enemy stack.
Entropy 2- Summon Pit Beast. Filler spell. It's not terrible, but it's special thing is that it lives for an extra turn if it kills something, which at strength 4 isn't too often by the time mages are around.
Entropy 3- Wither. Applies wither to a few units in the opposing stack. As wither is a crippling debuff, it shines when facing a handful of very tough units.
Ice only comes from Letum Frigus, or the Illian palace.
Ice 1- Slow. Reduces the movement rate of every enemy unit in a stack by one. For a melee+catapults army, this locks them down, since 2-3 casts will get most of the units in a stack, and the AI is loathe to split offensive stacks in such situations. Even against humans, you'll still lock down most of their army.
Ice 2- Summon Ice Elemental. Summons a moderate strength elemental with Ice affinity. Slightly higher starting strength than other level 2 summons, but makes up for it by only having 2 possible sources for Ice mana.
Ice 3- Blizzard. Big AoE spell. 40% damage, to a maximum of 80%.
Law mana reduces maintenance costs by 5%, and stacks with itself, and courthouses. Spamming Law Mana can actually reduce city maintenance to nothing.
Law 1- Loyalty. Gives all units the Loyal promotion, which means they die like normal instead of being captured or turned by special abilities.
Law 2- Summon Einherjar. Filler spell. It's not terrible, but it's special thing is that it lives for an extra turn if it kills something, which at strength 4 isn't too often by the time mages are around.
Law 3- Unyielding Order. Removes all penalties for unhappiness in a city. It could be size infinity with almost as much unhealthiness, but not a citizen will be unhappy. Awesome builder spell.
Each Life node you have gives all cities +1 health. A Life mana can be gained from the Tomb of Sucellus.
Life 1- Sanctify. Terraforming spell, removes hell terrain.
Life 2- Destroy Undead. The answer to Pyre Zombie spam. Does 40% damage to undead, capped at 100%. Yes, 4 castings will kill infinity Pyre Zombies. With no backlash explosion. It's very, very nice... if you need it.
Life 3- Resurrection. Takes three turns to cast, and kills your caster. Brings a dead Hero back to life. Awesome for Corlindale hijinks, or to soothe you after Alazkhan loses a 99.99% combat against a wounded adept in a desert.
Metamagic 1- Floating Eye. Summons an eye that acts just like a hawk. Nice if you're the Amurites, you can skip Hunting until very late, and still scout nicely. Made mostly redundant by a hawk for most others.
Metamagic 2- Dispel Magic. This can strip debuffs from your guys, and buffs from an opponent. Also lets you dispel mana nodes, so you can re-build them into a new mana type. Note that you keep mage promotions or Towers you built that required that mana after you dispel all the nodes.
Metamagic 3- Summon Djinn. Has +1 Affinity for all kinds of mana, but only a +1 from each. Nice if you're going for maximum Cave of Ancestors effect, I guess.
Mind mana gives a stacking 3% research bonus for each node.
Mind 1- Inspiration. Creates a building in a city that gives 2 beakers, and 1 Sage Great Person Point. Nice way to utilize adepts while waiting for them to mature. Makes two mind nodes to give all adepts, and all future promotions along the arcane line Mind 1 for free, and snag a 6% research bonus too.
Mind 2- Charm Person. Only works on living foes, but it prevents them from attacking. With a 20% chance to wear off per turn, 2-5 mages with Charm person can absolutely lock down an attacking stack. Each unit resists individually, but from my experience, 3 casts is enough to get 90% of a stack. Have a few more just to make sure though.
Mind 3- Domination. AWESOME spell. Steals the highest strength unit in an enemy stack. Forever. The downside is that if it resists, you lose the Mind 3 promotion, but the easy way around this is to take a caster hero, like Corlindale or Hemah, give them Mobility 1, Mind 1-3, and leave ALL other promotions for re-taking Mind 3. In my last game as Flauros, I had Gibbon dominate ~40 Ogres (~15 of whom survived to become vampire ogres) and Tum-Tum. Dominate is AWESOME.
Free nature mana from the Song of Autum, the Fellowship Holy building.
Nature 1- Treetop defense. This spell makes all units in a stack fortify if they are ina forest. Nice for extra stack defense in early invasions, or against elves.
Nature 2- Poisoned Blade. Gives all Recon units in the stack +1 Poison strength. Awesome as Svartlfar.
Nature 3- Vitalize. Turns a: plains->grassland, tundra->plains. Nice for terraforming.
Free Shadow Mana from Nox Noctis.
Shadow 1- Blur. Gives all units in the stack Blur, making them immune to first strikes.
Shadow 2- Shadowwalk. Ignores either building defenses, terrain defense bonuses, or both. I can't remember in spite of how much I play the Svarts. Combined with Blur and some kind of AoE or Rust it's usually enough to crack city defenders with equal tech units.
Shadow 3- Summon Mistform. 2 move, Hidden Nationality summon with a +1 affinity for shadow mana.
Spirit mana increases Great Person generation by 3% per mana node.
Spirit 1- Courage. Allows units in the stack to attack units with fear and adds +10% healing.
Spirit 2- Hope. Creates a building in a city that gives 4 culture, one happiness, and the courage promotion to units in the city.
Spirit 3- Trust. One time Diplomacy bonus. Never used it.
Sun mana can get gotten from the Mirror of Heaven, and Deis Dei, the Empyrean Holy building.
Sun 1- Scorch. Plains->Desert. Ice->Tundra. Terraforming spell.
Sun 2- Blinding Light. Immobilizes enemy units.
Sun 3- Summon Aureius. Notable for having a +2 affinity for sun mana.
Free Water mana from the Necronomicon (Overlords Holy building).
Water 1- Spring. Turns a desert into a plains. Obviously useful if you have a lot of desert, but you can spring an Oasis too, which turns it into 4 food, 1 hammer, and 2 commerce. Especially useful if elves, since you can't Bloom a forest on desert.
Water 2- Waterwalking. Not very useful unless you're playing a water map, though it can be awesome in that case.
Water 3- Summon Water Elemental. The Water Elemental, upon death, splits into two weaker elementals. If you have the Tower of Elements National Wonder, they'll split from a Strong Water Elemental to 2 normal ones, which if they're still around can then break into a total of 4 weaker Elementals. Combine with Twincast (From a hero caster like Hemah), summoner, and Belseraph puppets for some absurd numbers of throwaway summoned cannon fodder.
