The good: Added some new buildings, new spells, and new retorts. Greatly improved interactions with other wizards. Made it possible to have a long term peace with another wizard. The bad: Changed it so you only start with weak spells. In the original game, if you dumped all your books into one school of magic, you'd get one higher level spell. Altered numerous races in ways that changed who they are, and how they work, including taking magical weapons away from barbarians, and compounding that by making the Alchemy retort give everyone, except barbarians, magical weapons. Finding retorts and spellbooks is almost impossible in the game, even once you've taken every node and ruin you can find. The really bad: Basically ruined the Myrran retort. If you choose it, EVERY WIZARD GETS IT. Odds are they'll all have draconians as well, so they'll expand far faster than you. Doing so makes it a complete waste. Previously you'd get one, maybe two wizards who would start with it, but now, all of them get it so there's no significant benefit aside from being able to choose a few other races. Turned every wizard into an expansionist. The moment the game starts, it's a race to create as many cities as possible, and the computer already has a head start, even at lower difficulty. The AI is omniscient regarding your cities. It not only knows where they all are, it knows how many troops are in each one. Even random monsters will target the city with the least/weakest defenders, knowing in advance which one that is. If that city suddenly has one more defender, monsters will instantly change and target another, even though there's no legitimate way they could know that troops increased. The spell "Awareness" no longer exists, giving your omniscient enemies a massive advantage. They know where all your cities are instantly, but you have to scout and find theirs. It's a good effort, but needs some serious readjustments to be anywhere near as enjoyable as the original.
