[Ironhawk]

1. In dominions, the primary use of forts is to recruit more national units (and some good indys). Additionally, they should be placed so that they protect labs, temples, and interesting magic sites from capture.

2. Gems can be withdrawn instantly from any lab you control. Send the gems to your mages - not the other way around - by means of "mules". Mules are cheap, fast commanders who can relay gems, items, and reinforcements to and from the front lines.

3. If your mages are casting Fireflies then you have fire magic. Research up Falling Fires and use a 3F mage to cast it (or a 2F mage with Phoenix Power). You will see how much damage magic can do then.

4. If you have a recruitable H3 priest, many people like to prophetize one so you can get access to the H4 spells. Other than that, units with no holy are popular because they turn into instant H3 priests. If your nation has very strong national commanders they are sometimes prophetized so they can be turned into Thugs.

5. You must blood hunt to get blood slaves (basically, blood gems). Blood slaves are used to cast the spells from the blood school which are quite powerful. Particularly the powerful summons in that school.

6. You gain no value from beneficial enemy dominion. However, negative enemy dominion will effect your provinces. Also, enemy dominion causes some minor unrest.

7. Yes, you should be specializing in this manner. Recruit cheap, efficient mages for researching. Send one or two mages with good path coverage out site searching (or casting site search spells). Blood hunting is a very specific activity and you probably shouldnt delve into it too soon as a new player. Its not really complicated but you already have enough to think about.

8. Pretender creation has SO many subtleties that it is difficult to answer your question. I will just say this: generally speaking, you should not heavily invest in the same paths of magic that your national mages have unless you have a specific, heavy-duty, spell that you need your pretender to cast from those paths.