A lone spearman killed my wizard in a dramatic cut scene.
Got a final score of 14.
I AM TRULY THE MASTER OF MAGIC.

It's better than the score of 5 I got during my first game when a raider took my starting city without breaking a sweat.
Speaking of blunders, is there a tutorial somewhere? I finished a game on the easiest difficulty, but I'm looking for more information.

Such old games don't contain tutorials, IIRC.
On the other hand manuals were proper manuals with useful info, not merely a few pages of instalation instructions.

Correct on both counts.
Do note that MoM does take some time to learn even with a manual.

Here is a rather detailed FAQ:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/564960/2059
Hope that helps.

Dan Simpson's masterpiece! Highly recommendable!

Look for the "Prima Guide" for MOM at bookstores or online,it is worth it as the book is well written and even entertaining to read.This book covers all aspects of the game.

I have this, and the Master of Orion Guide, both thick books. I am so glad I held on to these even though I upgraded my PC to Vista.

Any good tips on how to design your wizard? Should I concentrate on one type of magic, or combine different types? Are there any particular combinations that are good for newbies?
(I played this game back in the nineties, but I've forgotten pretty much everything, and even back when I did play it I probably just played on the easiest setting, as if it was just Civ with a bit of magic)

I recommend against spreading your spell picks across too many colors. Personally, I generally only pick one or two, and spend most of my picks on spellbooks rather than special abilities.
The spells you can research throughout the game are determined as soon as the game starts, and the more books you have of a particular color, the more spells and more rare spells of that color you can research. Having eight or more books of one color gives you progressively larger discount to casting and researching spells of that color.
Your spellbook choices have several other implications, but those two are the main ones.
One combination that works well for me is six chaos books and three life books (give or take), plus the Warlord ability. This is a good setup if you want to focus on conquering the map with non-magical units. The chaos books give you a decent amount of magical offense during combat, while the life books give you the extremely useful Healing spell as well as some helpful enchantments. Life mages can also summon guardian spirits, who are much better at protecting magic nodes than magic spirits.
I'm not an expert on races, but halflings or high men go well with the above picks. Halflings produce extra food, their slinger units are strong and available early on, and cities they conquer are less prone to unrest, so they're good if you're planning a fast military game. The high men are pretty middle-of-the-road, but their paladins are incredibly strong, and the red and white combat support helps out until you can start building them. I haven't tried the high elves, but they produce mana naturally (along with the dark elves), which can help support your fireballs and healing spells.

I'm having quite the fun as a white/blue Myrran Warlord, dwarves as my starting race. I generate a very large amount of gold, which I turn into mana when I need. Buffing the already not sucky units has made combat pretty effective. I've also captured a Beastman city.
My first attempt to take a tower failed, as I was light on troops. Right now, I've sent out some settlers and have uncovered pretty much all of my home island (medium land mass). So I figure I'll build up my cities and a nice force to invade the "normal" world soon.

Thanks, I think I understand. One more question: Housing. How useful is that? I mean, is it something I should invest in early on or should I go straight for granaries et.c.?

One more thing I should have mentioned about spellbooks: you need two books of one color to ever learn rare spells, and three to learn very rare spells. If you don't have enough books, then not only can you not research those spells, but you can't trade for them or find them in dungeons, either.
If I remember right (I can't look it up right now), housing increases your population growth and has no upkeep cost, right? I would suggest building housing first in almost all cases, especially if you're playing a race that grows slowly, like trolls or high elves. A bigger population lets you grow more food, earn more gold from taxes, and probably most importantly, build units and city structures more quickly, so it's definitely to your advantage to boost population growth where you can.
Incidentally, cities will have a maximum population based on where you build them, and will also get special terrain bonuses from that square and from up to two squares away. For example, building within two squares of a big game reserve (the deer icon) gives you a bonus to food production. One of your advisors (the cartographer, I think) can show you all of those factors for any square on the map.

Mental, you are correct. Housing boosts pop growth, trade goods gold flow.
And the Cartographer (F1) should always be used to pick a square to build a new city. Unlike Civ, you can't direct population to work specific squares...rather, they seem to just lump all the squares together to determine max pop, trade bonus and prod bonus. By hovering over a square with the cartographer on, you can find the location that maxes out all of these (or balances them the best for your needs)