You probably didn´t find anything in the node, because you killed the enemy in parts. I guess in your final attack the elven lords had to fight only 1 or 2 air elementals. If most of the enemies in the node have already been killed, you don´t get a reward for clearing out the last enemies. My favourite wizard is an archmage/warlord/alchemists with rest in life books and barbarians as your race. cast a magic spirit, then just cause. Raise taxes and then rush to berserkers, after
Turinturambar
Fantastic!
Yeah, you shouldn´t worry too much about multiplayer race balance. But I found that most races were pretty good anyway. barbarians, nomads and dwarves were my favourite, only orcs and beastmen seemed to be pretty boring. With gnolls you had to go with swordsmen or spearmen, where their +attack bonus would be most useful. Rushing with lowcost units doesn´t work on impossible though, that´s why they seemed so weak. As long as every race has something special going for them,
I hated the original master of magic!! Just kidding, of course I loved it like everybody else. The thing that made it so good was, that the immersion factor was so high. The world seemed so alive with neutral cities/lairs/nodes/rampaging monsters etc. Combined with the huge replay factor of 13 very different races and customizable wizards, and the 5 spell realms the replay factor is immense. The only thing where it is lacking is balance between races and magic realms,