I actually did explore Myrror later in the game.

Yes, the difference between wizards is much greater than for example Civilization. My next game will be Life, with possible Nature added, on Normal.

While I expect large land size helps, I would still suggest jumping to Hard. Normal seemed rather easy. Just started a game on Impossible, Large land size, with a bunch of retorts: Warlord, Myrran (Trolls), Alchemy, I think Nature Mastery and remaining picks Nature spellbooks. Not entirely sure it was a good idea to go straight to Impossible, but I guess I'll find out.

It depends a lot on personal preference. On Normal neither the player nor the AI have any advantages, which means the AI is pretty easy to exploit and beat. On levels above Normal the AI starts cheating more and more to try and match the player. That unquestionably makes the game harder. For me it also makes the game less fun, but some people don't mind because they enjoy the challenge.

Since ZFR started his first game on Intro, I'm guessing Normal is a good next step.

He found Intro quite easy and while new to MoM isn't new to 4x. My first MoM game on Normal turned out to be quite easy. Either way it sounds like he plans on playing a bunch more times so it doesn't really matter.

Heh, same here. I found it in a bargain bin display at what's now Costco, but was then still called Price Club. It played on my no-name PC, under Windows 3.11 and DR-DOS v5.0, with its Intel 486 chip running at a blazing fast(!) 100 MHz. 'Course, I was a wee bit older than 15 at the time; more like er, uhh, ahem... twenty-seven.

What I remember most from those days was never being able to play a full game straight through without it crashing at least once, because of issues with the way it managed expanded memory which caused game data to eventually be written to the graphics area. On the plus side, the game taught me to save early and save often, a habit which has saved my bacon any number of times with other games over the past few decades.

I don't remember when my parents acquired the game, but I was nine when it came out...maybe. *tuneless whistling*

I definitely remember the various crashes from the box version. Certain spells like Lycanthropy were absolute no-no's if I wanted to finish a game.

You youngsters and your fanciful recollections! I would have been in college when MoM came out. I wasn't playing too many games at that time, which is why I missed it entirely.

The only games I remember from college are EA Sports NHL Hockey (92 or 93, presumably) and multiplayer Marathon.