Yes, both of the wizards on my land have been now completely defeated. Time to fly and build ships and go another island. I've met a guardian spirit of another wizard.

One note: if a wizard finishes the Spell of Return, but he only has outposts to return to, the game will crash. So when farming a wizard, make sure he has a city (not just an outpost) to return to, or else go ahead and finish him off completely.

... The ultimate spell is in sight, and it seems the last wizard standing has only 1 city left (which I can take over anytime, but I just want to research and explore everything).

Still haven't goten to Myrror though.

Have you accounted for all opponent wizards that started the game, or just all opponents on Arcanus? One of them might have started on Myrror (it would almost cetainly have to be Sss'ra, if anyone, at Intro diff).

All of them. 3 killed, one left with one city. I'm saving her since I want to explore and research everything first.

And since I'm here, is there a quick way to circle through cities? You can check the Cities menu for a list, but then you have to click on it again if you want to check a different city. I'm missing the "next city" arrows which were there in Alpha Centauri.

Sadly no, not in the base game. I gather that Insecticide adds this feature, though.

The guaranteed wizard on Myrror only happens at the higher difficulty levels. Since S'ssra is Myrran by default, he's usually there. I always choose his wizard picture at startup to prevent this. I'm just so tired of the monotony of seeing him, it's never a surprise and every time he builds up a huge power base and starts casting his world-destroying Chaos spells. Borr-ring.

I didn't say an opponent was guaranteed to be on Myrror, I said that if anyone was on Myrror at Intro difficulty, it would pretty much have to be Sss'ra. AFAIK, even at higher difficulties there is no guarantee you will have an opponent start on Myrror, it just becomes a lot more likely as opponent starting picks get randomized and more spell picks are available to each opponent. Maybe Insecticide guarantees a Myrran wizard, but I doubt it.

I wanted to make sure that ZFR knew that he might not have met an opponent that started on Myrror if ZFR has only been on Arcanus thus far. I know in my current game I've got one wizard that has been growing unchecked over there, and I need to crack a tower as soon as I finish off the last of the Arcanus wizards (and maybe get some paladins going).

On an unrelated note, wolf riders backed by Alchemy are pretty awesome. Fire Giants go down surprisingly fast to them.

Finished. Both by killing all and by casting Spell of Mastery.

Final thoughts:
Overall I liked it a lot. Definitely a nice variation of 4x. The wizards and magic realms are different so there is good replay value. Pros: almost everything. Some cons:

_ The interface has some tiny problems. The left-click to move and right-click to select, while not exactly a bug or mistake, took a bit getting used to. More than once did I want to select my city, only to instead order the currently selected units move there... Some interface things could be improved though, like cycle-through-cities mentioned by me earlier.

_ It felt too small. The maps in Alpha Centauri seemed way bigger. Too bad you can't select map size. Also, although I selected land size as normal, I still felt there is too much water. I would love to play this on a huge map with a big landmass. Maybe even with more players, 7 or so... Which would make pacts/alliances more meaningful.

Anyway, it's definitely on my to play again list. Next time I play it, I'll go with Normal. And after that I'd try Insecticide.

Just a small glitch I noticed. The "Random Events" from settings would get unselected from time to time. Not sure what triggers it. Is it by design?

And another thing, I just noticed this game doesn't have multiplayer. It would have been fun to play against other human players.

A final thank you to all who helped in this thread.

I don't know why the Random Events setting would keep getting unselected, I don't recall ever having that issue. Did you unselect it at any point yourself?

There is a shell out there somewhere that allows for multiplayer, though there are some oddities associated with it, like neutrals getting to move once for each human player (so up to 4 times before a given player would get another turn), and that the computer will control your units if you are attacked.

Sadly even with the highest land mass setting the world is still probably at least 60% water. I agree there should have been a better way to adjust the size of the "world" you play in but sadly there is not.

Interface problems, well keep in mind it was made for DOS not windows. After all this game came out in Sep 1994!!! That's right as of this month this game is 21 years old. I first saw this game about 20 years ago and I was only 15 at the time sigh where does the time go.

Take a look at the list below, it's of some of the most popular games I like along with your Alpha Cent and their release dates. Master of Magic was released before many of the games it's compared to by quite a gap so they obviously were copying and improving from MoM. :D

1993 - Master of Orion 1
1994 - Master of Magic
1996 - Civilization 2
1996 - Heroes 2
1996 - Master of Orion 2
1999 - Alpha Centauri (Feb 12th)
1999 - Heroes 3 (Feb 28th)

Absolutely, I understand that. As I said, some things were actually just a matter of getting used to. And given its age it was actually quite good overall.

I loved how you could click on almost anything for detailed additional information. That was great.

(and I just remembered another interface annoyance: in combat clicking D for Done brought your cursor from battlefield to over the button. A bit annoying when you wanted to attack with your archers and be Done with your mellee units).

There is an expanded help "mod" listed around here (probably one of the stickies) which apparently provides even better help than the normal in-game help.

In combat, you can use the space bar to pass a unit's turn, and it doesn't move the cursor. Space bar doesn't work overland though.

Thanks for the tip.
Any way to have your wizard not cast any spells in Auto in combat? Sometimes I'd like to finish it quickly, but without any mana waste.

The help text mod is Psyringe's Lush In-Game Help Text, a.k.a. PLIGHT, which can be found here:

http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?tid=3642

You can't really appreciate just how good the game is until you play it several times. Every game will be it's own unfolding story, and they can be radically different because there are so many different possible starting conditions and so many different viable strategies.

I take it your first wizard had mostly Chaos books. That works. It sounds like you never even made it to Myrror. That happens too. It happened to me the first time I won a game.

The thing is, Nature is significantly different from Chaos is significantly different from Life, Death, Sorcery. Mixing them creates even more ways to play, and that's before we even start discussing all the different retorts, and the strengths and weaknesses of all the different races you can select. And every starting position and every new game world will be different too.

Definitely move up to Normal difficulty.