Magic and spells
Magic serves to project your power across any distance, or to increase or lower income of a land. You can play Dark Elf without magic and you will capture lands quite easily, but players who use magic will be much stronger. The greatest advantage of magic is that you can affect any land on the map, no matter how far it is. To start with magic, you will need Mage Guild and enough 3rd level (magical) units. These units produce mana each turn, and increase spell power and are commonly called "mages" (not to confuse with race Magi - all races have their own mages).
When can I cast a spell?
You can cast a spell if you have enough mana  in storage. As you cast the spell, mana is taken from storage and used. If you cast a spell with power 0, it means the spell has failed and mana was lost.
To cast spells successfully, you need enough magical units. These can be recruited only in lands where Mage Guild was built. The more magical units you have, the greater the spell power.
When you start, you have 1 land and 2 mages - this is enough to ensure that spells won't fail on your first day. Once you capture more lands, you'll need to recruit more mages to level up your spell power.
List of all spells (yellow spells are beneficial, red spells harmful and green spells are special - available only to one race)
Three days of protection
To allow players to start the game, during the first three days (these are numbered 0, 1 and 2) it is impossible to cast spells on other player's lands. Only your own and neutral (unoccupied) lands are valid target during this time.
It is recommended to cast Content on the land you are attacking.
On the day 3 (fourth day of game) you can start casting spells on other players and they can cast on you.
What is spell power?
Each spell is cast with certain spell power. Spell power decides whether the spell will be cast (with 0 power the spell failed) and whether it will pass through magical defenses of the land or be rebounded. Spell power is a result of calculation from number of your lands and number of your mages, with percentual bonus based on number of your magic towers and your hero level in Spell power, but also with rather large random modifier (for example, in certain situation you can cast spells with power from 20 to 60).
If you cast spells with power 0, it means you must recruit more mages.
What is magical defense?
Magical defense of the land prevents the spells from reaching their target and rebounds them to nowhere. It prevents both beneficial and harmful spells, but the first have greater chance of passing.
Land without magical units (and without Defensive magical tower) has magical defense 0. Magical defense can be increased by Magetowers, by a hero or by spells (magical shields), but only in lands with magical units. Units that are moving (attacking or moving into another land) do not count towards magical defense of any land!
Beneficial (yellow and some green) spells pass the magical defense twice as easy as harmful (red and remaining green) - they need spell power that is at least half of magical defense (+1) to pass.
Example: You cast Content (yellow spell) with spell power 2 on a land with magical defense 3. This spell will pass, but Discontent (red spell) with the same spell power wouldn't affect the land.
Beneficial spells (yellow) 
These spells help the player on whose land they are cast. They are evaluated as first, before any harmful spells, and pass the magical defenses twice as easy. Magical shields are evaluated as last of the beneficial spells, so that they can't affect whether yellow spells will pass or not.
Harmful spells (red) 
Harmful (red) spells decrease the income, destroy houses, kill population and soldiers or destroy buildings. Only spells with spell power greater than magical defense of target land will pass.
Special spells (unique racial spells)
Every race has one special spell (green color), not available to other races.
These spells are activated for 1 year for free, as soon as you buy some DE-credits. Special spells can be activated also by way of buying the respective service, but it is quite expensive.
How do I know the results of spells?
If you have cast a spell, you have to wait for recalculation. Then you will find in Reports what was the result of your spell - whether it passed the defenses or not, and what it did.
Spells are evaluated in a fixed order, see Spell order.
In your lands, you can view current effects of "economical spells" (influence income and natality over certain time - 1 day in standard leagues) in the Land economy window.
Casting spell on several lands
If a player has many lands (like 40) and you want to cast the same spell on all of them, it would be too boring to cast them one after another. In magic window, select the name of overlord instead of a land and cast the spell. It will be cast on all lands of that player (with different spell power for each land).
If you want to limit the number of affected lands, you can enter number of lands (e.g. 5) and/or their maximal strength (e.g. 300) - that would mean that spell will be cast on 5 weakest lands of the selected overlord with strength below 300. See picture below.
It is recommended to purchase Improved spellcasting for DE-credits. Then you will be offered a list of overlord's lands with checkbox next to each land name, and you just check those on which you want to cast your spell. Also, with Improved spellcasting, in various places of game screen (e.g. Headquarters) your lands currently affected by economical spells will be marked by different color.
Formulas for advanced players - spell power
The formula to calculate highest possible spell power is :
spell power = total number of mages / total number of lands * 2 * (1 + building bonus + hero bonus)
Spell power is modified by random number and is always at least 1/3 of highest possible spell power.
That means, base for the spell power is "density" of mages (how many mages you have on one land; they can all be in one land, or scattered through all of them - it makes no difference). Bonuses for buildings and heroes are cumulative and do not depend on number of lands (one Small Magetower gives 5% bonus, and two give 10%, no matter how many lands you have).
Example
You have 50 mages and 2 lands, in one land is Small Magetower (gives bonus 5%).
Maximum spellpower is 50 / 2 * 2 * 1.05 = 52.5 (this means spell power will be somewhere between 17 and 52).
Formulas for advanced players - magical defense
The formula to calculate magical defense of a land is :
magical defense = (mages in land * mages in land * 3 / houses in land ) * (1 + bonuses for spells, towers and hero)
"Land" in this context means the land that is target of a spell and defense of which we are calculating. That means, the more mages there are in the defending land, and the less houses, the stronger its magical defense is. It makes no difference whether the houses are empty or not. For beneficial spells, magical defense is halved.
In your lands, you will see the current magical defense in Army window; this formula is used to estimate defense of enemy land or to calculate how many mages you have to recruit to reach certain level of magical defense.
Example
There are 20 mages and 100 houses in the defending land, and there is a magical shield cast on the land that gives 10% bonus.
Magical defense = ( 20 * 20 * 3 / 100 ) * 1.10 = 13.2 (rounded always down, so 13 is the result)
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