I think I mentioned before that this is one of those games where the beginning is the hardest part of the game. I'm sure some of you will agree with me. Once you conquer a few cities and get yourself a decent army (including some heroes), you can overcame the advantage the computer players have due to increased difficulty level. Because, once you do that, the average AI kicks in. So, imo, the difficult part in playing with different magic realms is what spells you'd have available at the beginning. After 200 turns you'd be equally strong no matter what your choices at the beginning were - you'll only need to vary approach at winning the game a bit.
I'm playing with life now, but with a couple of books in chaos. I've already defeated Sharee (she had strong Death magic and some chaos in this game) and Jaffar (almost exclusively sorcery). Sharee's ghouls were no match for my hell hounds supported by some swordsmen and pikemen, while although Jaffar had 3 storm giants in his capital, a mix of archery units (longbowmen, javelinners, shamans) with Heroism spell on them was enough to bring him down. Both wizards were stronger than me at the beginning, but kept wasting their troops sending them in small waves against a well defended (and otherwise quite unimportant) cities of mine. To be honest, now that I've cleared the main land mass that I'm on of enemy wizards, I don't feel continuing to play anymore - it's just a matter of time before I find and destroy the other two.
Btw, a couple of things that annoy me - enemy wizards can have their troops flee from combat even during my turn. For example, I bait their hero with a single unit of spearmen, but then I cast phantom warriors and they flee. The other thing is that although their ability screen says that they don't have any mana left, they're still able to cast spells in combat.
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