No. In fact all it is, is a new "HELP.LBX" file. I renamed the vanilla to "HELP.LBX [ORIG]" and dropped the new one into the directory. Done.

Nice! Now that is something I will definitely use and I think it's quite an awesome little addition.

Just founded my first city on Myrran. Awesome! And it boomed nearly instantly, since the location was so ideal, tons of food, gems, production, etc. Now it's attracting a ton of population per turn and is set to become the next powerhouse city for me.

What's up with the factions on Myrran? I saw Dark Elves in a city close-by. I'm wondering if I shouldn't try to capture it as another strategic foothold in this realm. It only has 4 brigades of Spearmen guarding it. Hmm...

Yeah, watch me capture that city and then have the entire Dark Elf horde come crashing down on my head and destroy both my cities, LOL!

Great game, though. Surprised at how well it still stands up today. Oh, and the added help text surprised me, too. It seems like most older games didn't have much in the way of help text. Pretty sure Syndicate Plus didn't. Games like Theme Park actually had tutorials, though. Pretty amazing. But I'm rambling, so I'll stop! :)

Race Relations in this game just means some cities you capture have more unrest based on what your race is. Your Race is defined by where your Fortress is, this can be changed 2 ways either by the Move Fortress Nature spell or casting Spell of Return and choosing a city of different race as your new base.

One reason a lot of people love Halflings (aside from Slingers and easy food) is that they are the most easy to get along with race around.

For an example of Race Relations it's kind of obvious that High Elves and Dark Elves would not get along right? Well if you are High Elves and capture a Dark Elf town you will have 4 more unrest in that town. HE's also do not get along with Trolls or Dwarfs and have 3 unrest in their towns.

Halflings on the other hand never have more than 2 unrest with any other race, that being Klackons who have 2 unrest with EVERYONE, and Dark Elves.

High Men treat High Elves, Halflings, Dwarfs, Nomads and Orcs just like themselves and have no extra unrest.

Also Neutral towns will ALWAYS send out raiders eventually no matter what the supposed relations should be so go ahead and grab that town if you want.

For more info on all the races check out the link below.

http://masterofmagic.wikia.com/wiki/Races

Guess I should add that Dark Elvess have 1 MAJOR thing and that is that almost ALL their units have Magical Ranged attacks like Shaman, Priests and Magicians normally do.

That's right even their lowly Spearmen have a Magical Ranged attack of 1 with 4 shots. Because of this most of their basic units cost 2.5x more than normaly, Spearmen cost 25 instead of the baseline of 10. They also have higher Magic Resistance than pretty much every other race.

Dark Elves also generate extra mana for your empire at the rate of 1 per population.

However Dark Elves are probably THE MOST contentious race in this game for anyone else to get along with. Only Barbarians come even close to gettting along with them with only 1 extra unrest. Most others have 2 more unrest with Dwarfs & Trolls 3 and High Elves 4.

Thanks for the info, EvilLoynis. I'll keep it in mind.

Neutral cities don't have any sort of alliance or common "leadership", so if you capture one of them, the others (even if they're of the same race) won't react to it. Go ahead and grab that dark elf city.

Mixing races can provoke unrest problems (and it's much worse if the race can't build much in the way of religious buildings to help counter it), but it's worth doing because they still add production to your empire and most races have at least one unusual or unique unit that will strengthen your overall army. In the case of dark elves, not only do all of their basic units have a ranged attack, but their warlocks - the equivalent of magicians among other races - have Doom Bolt instead of Fireball, which makes a few warlock squads brutally effective at disposing of tough creatures like drakes.

Conquering dark elves is when I really appreciate having some wraiths on my side while playing a wizard with death magic.

If you cast a black prayer spell to lower their saves, you can count on converting most or all of the defending troops into undead versions of the same troop type--with NO maintenance cost in food, gold or mana! Really helps with keeping the unrest down.

Death knights have a life-stealing attack as well, but their normal melee damage seems to take precedence over the life-stealing so they don't end up raising nearly so many undead in spite of being a more powerful unit.

Sadly there is a reason for this.

Life Steal is considered a TOUCH ATTACK which happens at the same time your first strike damage does.

Considering that each figure in the Death Knights deals an avg of 5.4 damage that cuts enemy defense in half you can see why their Life Steal rarely has a chance to be needed. Also in order for a unit to be raised to fight for you at the end of the battle it has to die MOSTLY from Life Steal. Hard to do when these guys are so tough at dealing out the damage.

Wraiths by comparison only deal 3.5 Damage and thus their Life Steal is doing more of the damage which is why it's very easy for Wraiths to raise entire armies.

http://masterofmagic.wikia.com/wiki/Touch_Attack#First_Strike_Sequence_Alteration
http://masterofmagic.wikia.com/wiki/Touch_Attack#Execution_and_Sequence

GAZE ATTACKS are one of the most powerful abilities in this game and if not understood properly can rip you a new one.

http://masterofmagic.wikia.com/wiki/Gaze_Attack

HERE is the order of combat for you all.

1. The attacker delivers its Breath Attack or Thrown Attack , if it has one.
2. The attacker delivers its Gaze Attacks, if it has any.
3. The defender delivers its Gaze Attacks, if it has any.
4. Both attacker and defender exchange Melee Damage with each other, as well as any Touch Attacks they might have. This is done simultaneously.

*** IF the attacker has first strike it differs only in the following way.

4. The attacker delivers its Melee Attack, and any Touch Attacks it might have.
5. The defender delivers its Melee Attack, and any Touch Attacks it might have.

If the Gaze Attack manages to kill off all the enemy figures then they never even get to step 4 (3 if gazer was the attacker).

Now take a sweet sweet look at Chaos Spawn again ;)

http://masterofmagic.wikia.com/wiki/Chaos_Spawn

The problem with Chaos Spawn is that they're so slow you should easily be able to kill them before they ever get close to you. Now if Chaos Spawn had a ranged gaze attack...

While I do like the Dark Elf Warlocks, they're very fragile and it takes a huge infrastructure investment before you can start producing them. They are great for city defense, though, since they usually kill the most threatening enemy unit before it gets a chance to act. It's just that, by the time I can build Warlocks, I usually have enough Nightmares and Priests to win.

Yeah, the chaos spawn always seemed better on paper than in the game to me. They just never felt like they were worth the mana when I've summoned them.

And I could swear I've rendered them inert with a simple weakness spell before--possibly the AI basing whether it can attack on whether there's a viable means of physical attack.

All this talk of dark elves sort of makes me want to play them again as my home race. It's been a while.

Yes they can be rendered somewhat powerless if their atk reaches 0 as they cannot INITIATE the attacks anymore although their gazes still work on defense.

However if you were to guard strategically placed Choas Nodes with them they get the additional +2 to all stats but HP, including all their gaze attacks I believe.

Dark Elves annoy me for a few reasons, one is that they do not have their own Engineers to build roads between towns and they basically get along with no one. They are the most contentious damn racists in the whole game. They even outdo Klackons for racism believe it or not lol.

But mostly DarkElves annoy me as they are not really able to make use of Myrrors Adamantium on their Ranged Attacks. I really don't think it would be unfair for it to boost Magical Ranged as it does Normal Ranged Attacks but it doesn't. Only one worse in this are Trolls but they have Regen to compensate.

You know what I think whenever I see a beholder — I mean a Chaos Spawn — guarding a Chaos node?

Woohoo, free XP!

Since they're so slow and their gaze attacks don't work at distance, they're sitting ducks for my mages and archers. Hell Hounds are actually more of a threat.

I think the Dark Elf bigotry is a two way street, but maybe that's because I usually play them with Life books. I prefer to think of them as badly misunderstood. :)

From my experience the ranged attacks from common DE units like Swordsmen, Cavalry, and Nightmares start out very weak, but increase dramatically in effectiveness as the experience level of the unit rises. The ranged attacks from, say, a group of Champion level Dark Elf Cavalry are quite potent for a unit with very good melee combat ability (especially with Adamantium). The Nightmares are even better. When they're inexperienced it helps to wait until the enemy units get fairly close, like less than 4 squares away.

Priests and Warlocks, like most spellcaster units, can snipe from far away still do damage.

Seeing you guys talk about this game, it amazes me that so much detail and intricacy was packed into a 24mb game. Unbelievable.