[MaxWilson]

A mage commander has a list of possible commands. He can Move, or (if he's a priest) Preach, or Construct (Lab), or Pillage, etc. If he's at a lab he has extra commands including Alchemy, Cast Ritual Spell, and Empower. Empower permanently boosts his magic path but costs three or four times as much as building a path-boosting item.

Note: unlike a path-booster, you can Empower to give a mage access to a completely new path. This costs 50 gems. If you have lots of pearls (for example) but no Astral mages you may burn some of those pearls to Empower somebody to S1 or even S2, but after that point it's usually cheaper to have him forge himself booster items than Empower himself further.

-Max