Temples, Afflictions, and more

[GrudgeBringer]

A few questions that keep cropping up in my mind. There may be a better way to find the answers but I am all read out in that dang manual.

I am going to lump all magic users as 'mages' for simplicity.

I keep hearing about Lvl 3 mages ect. Now I come from a background that uses the old EXP format that you 'LvL' up and that gives you more power, spells, ect. HOW do you Lvl up in this game...I just can't seem to get that thru my head.

2. Temples....say you are Fomoria, Your mage does NOT build Temples and its the only magic user you have as a nation.

You can take over a province and have Indy mages BUT you need a temple to recruit one. Its like a big circle, I even recruited a Merc Mage thinking I could use it to build a Temple so I could build a mage that builds temples, but noooooooo. What am I missing!!!!!!!!!!

3. Lets say I am playing Arco and the Priestess can heal afflictions. I have an army with 3 commanders and 2 have afflictions one of them my Prophet. How can I have my priestess cast heal and make sure the right unit gets the 'fix', short of taking that specific commander to a seperate province with the Priestess so its just those 2 (and to be honest i'm not sure that works either).

I have tried to cast heal in my Capitol to cure Mages of afflictions but that doesn't seem to work (the best I can figure is that the spell does NOT work on afflictions caused by age.

Thanks for any help and if I seem to be trying to take the easy way out, maybe I am. However, it seems that most of you are talking a whole different language than I am and I have read that D&*^% Manual 3 times front to back.