Master of Magic

• Do not cast Magic Vortex or Animate Dead, they are bugged and make the game become unstable and crash eventually. Subversion does nothing. Also the AI pulls gold and mana upkeep out of its ass, so debuffing its cities and warping its nodes does nothing.

• The AI is dumber than a sack of mentally challenged hammers. If he's on the same landmass it poses a small threat, but he's totally incapable of loading units onto boats, so he can be totally ignored if water separates you. (unless he has flyers, but that's rare unless it's Draconians.)

• For any city at all, start with Granary, Smithy, Marketplace, Farmer's Market.

• Some good races: Halflings grow fast and Slingers are awesome, especially if you give them Mithril. High Men can build every building and Paladins kick ass, although they take forever to build up the infrastructure. High Elves are the only non-Myrror race that gives you mana. Draconians (found on Myrror) can all fly. Dark Elves (Myrror) gives you tons of mana and can build many powerful units, however they cause huge unrest in conquered non-elf cities. Klackons suck.

• White and Black magics are great, Blue is good. Red is limited in what in can do (BURN NUKE BURN) but it does that well. Green is kind of limp. Sky Drakes and Death Knights are the best ultra high end units.

• Diplomacy is a joke: the AI will declare war on you eventually. Try to trade for as many spells as you can before that happens. War is eternal, they will never make peace.

• There's a high score table. You can get super high scores if you really sperg at it TEMPORARYDASHCHARACTER my record is 109% TEMPORARYDASHCHARACTER but I honestly don't recommend trying for that, it's very spergy and unfun.

• To completely break the game:
  All Life books with Incarnation as the rare. High Elves, all power towards mana production. Cast Incarnation as soon as you hit ~160 mana, give him Heroism and Planar Travel, take him on a world tour. Right out of the gate Torin can beat any neutral city and weak nodes; after a few levels, a few items and a few buff spells, he can beat absolutely anything.