New Player questions

[Agema]

3) I'm pretty sure affliction chance is (damage inflicted by blow / creature max HP). So a 3 damage hit to a 10HP creature is 30% chance whether or not it has full HP or just 5 left. Death bless modifies this as explained in the comment above.

4) Experience counts for a lot.

As a general rule, you want to look for site searching spells (mostly Thaum-2, some Conj-2) pretty quickly. Construction-4 is also a good bet, as you can forge items that let you boost your magic skills and that's also when the magic items generally start getting really interesting.

After that, you need to identify what your nation is good at. Some can recruit big, stompy heroes, you'll want to priotise Construction 4 so you can forge them magic weapons and armour. If they can cast as well, look for self buffs (eg. Mistform, Ironskin, Quicken self) which are mostly available in Alteration & Enchantment up to path 3. Different magic paths also make different use of various research areas. I perceive Astral gets a lot from thaumaturgy, whereas air or earth is more Alteration and Evocation. Common battlefield paths are often Evocation (most common in the 4 elemental paths really) for mages to act as battlefield artillery, or Alteration and Enchantment to buff your units in the same way as individuals explained above.

A last thing to note is that Conjuration and Construction have unique creatures and items respectively available at level 8, so there's a big plus to getting there first and getting first pick.