GAMES:Master of Magic

Sound

Works fine, however you might consider disabling the music to improve performance. Choose Game -> Settings and uncheck Background music and Event music. If that doesn't help, try running installation program and choosing No Sound for music playback device.

Tip: the soundtrack of this game can be easily obtained from the Internet in the MIDI format. Try playing it in the background using your favourite music player. This solution has a few advantages over listening to the music in game:

better quality
no slowdowns
music management in game is very poor -- not every track is being used and it quickly becomes repetitive. Playing it separately, you will be able to listen to the music you normally would never hear!

Video

The game runs at standard VGA resolution and being a turn-based strategy, doesn't really require lots of horsepower. However, you may want to speed up its execution by trying out the following:

enable frameskip -- values of 1 or 2 should be perfectly acceptable
disable Expanding Help option under Game -> Settings
disable Movement Animations option under Game -> Settings

Network

There is no multiplayer support built into the game (if there was some, I would never look at anything else in my life ;).

There is a standalone tool called Multiplayer Shell (shareware), but this remains untested.

General

Remember that the game is rather poorly written. Even with the latest patch (1.31) it may unexpectedly crash.

Furthermore, the game may slow all by itself if there are many units on the map. This may lead to the game being unstable, so if you encounter such condition try killing enemy units (massively) and saving often. The game saves your progress by itself every turn, upon pressing the Next turn button. However, you can force it to save anytime by pushing the F10 button.

There is also an unofficial, community-driven patch, pushing the game version to 2.0. It's solely game-balancing and because of this is recommended for experienced players. You can find it here: http://www.dragonsword.com/magic.php