Call me stupid if you will, but I don't know what spell skill actually does. I know how to get it. I just don't know what it does.

Not a bad question.

Spell skill determines how much mana you can spend in a battle.

it does also determines how much mana you can spend on spells per turn e.g casting enchantment on units/cities or summon creatures

Ah.

I think I used to know that. I think what I didn't know before was that it was cumulative.

Good to know.

Yeah, IIRC its a total per turn, that is used up by both in-combat and out-of combat casting, I think queued casting goes off at the beginning of the turn, but the first turn you select it to cast it goes off at the end.

I am not sure what you mean "goes off at the end".

Spell Skill represents the amount of mana your wizard can channel each turn into a spell or in each battle that takes place.

For example if you have 30 Magic Skill and you had at least 30 mana you could summon a Magic Spirit instantly as they cost 30. However if you only has say 20 Magic Skill then it would take 2 turns to cast it and then you would only have 10 skill left to spend that turn. Either way the spell "goes off" either at the beginning of your turn or right when you cast it.

Also not many ppl realize but this is a stat that takes quite a while to get to decent levels.

You get to start off with 2 Magic Skill per "Book" you chose.

Also if you have the "Archmage" Skill you start off with +10 Magic Skill and also mana that you invest in increasing your skill (the 3rd bar after mana and research) gets a 50% bonus. Also your spells are harder for enemy wizards to dispel.

Thats exactly what I meant by "goes off at the end", in that first turn of casting, I always seem to still have spell skill available for combat casting, but not in whatever turn the spell finishes, so I've assumed that it gets cast at a different point in the turn.

I can't speak to your experience, but I know that spell skill is counted separately for overland and combat casting. If you have spell skill of 30, you can spend 30 mana points casting an overland skill per turn, and in the SAME turn you can also cast 30 mana worth of spells in EACH combat. Of course, your available mana pool is another story.

Are you sure on that, I'm almost 100% certain that casting skill is for cumulative combat.

I am sure this is true.

For another example lets say your one and only town is surrounded onall sides (8 total spots in box around town) by enemies and you hit next turn.

The computer atks you with the first stack and you use up all 30 points of casting skill and win.

SAME TURN he atks with stack 2, you get 30 points to spend again in spells.
and so on with all 8 stacks attacking you seperately.

Now the one limiting factor is how many mana crystals you have but for the above argument you had say 1000+ so you would not have run out.

Also this is why having Spell casting wizards in your town helps out as well as they refill there casting pool with each battle.

Nope. You get your full spell skill in available spells cast per combat, *AND* get to shovel that much mana into overland spells each turn. Nothing you can do in combat - other than run yourself out of actual mana to spend - will interfere with pouring your full spell skill of mana into overland spells in a turn.