So there's a for-sale Master of Magic expansion/rebalance called Caster of Magic, and I've gotten a lot of enjoyment out of it. After a quick curbstomp on easy as an optimized Nature Summoner to make sure this wasn't Long War style of "balance" (it's not, the difficulties are pretty faithful!) I customized a wizard as Lolth, spider-queen of the Drow. And I intentionally made her... quirky, in a war the manual very much warned about:
One book of each type (including Life!), plus a Chaos and Death
Omniscient (gives a unique resource multiplier for each separate realm of magic you have, like pop growth/production/mana)
Cult Leader (extra power and obedience from religious structures)
Guardian (Sounds nice, but think xenophobia. Cities of the starting race get defensive and economic bonuses)
Myrran, starting in the (under)dark world as, naturally,
Drow Dark Elves
Seems like an obvious build to maximize Omniscient, so what's the problem? Well, the manual makes it clear that the endgame is balanced around the more advanced spells, spells you can't get from 1-2 spellbooks. What I had was an economically explosive early-game powerhouse, with the incredible flexibility of access to every magic school. But only the lowest tiers of those schools.
Fortunately, dark elf units come with various arcane powers of their own! It accidentally felt very appropriate for playing a deity rather than a wizard, relying on my racial units much more than I ever did in the base game. My armies mostly consisted of swarms of warlocks (or apprentices at first) screend by invisible nightblade assassins. I supported them with practically limitless amounts of low-powered blessings and summoned beasts - including, yes, giant spiders
Also illusory warriors.
Life magic let me heal the worthy, Death let me paralyze foes and zombify them. Nature gave me spiders and awareness of everything within my borders. Sorcery gave me illusions to distract and eventually turn my foes against each other. Chaos gave me... uh... OH yeah I could set my units on fire to protect them from melee. Enemies can't grab you if you're on fire
Things were still getting tricky by the end, though. The Life-Sorcerer started lifting his cities into the clouds and defending them with lightning-tossing titans. The Life-Druid met my warlocks with human magicians, cheaper and buffed with holy magic. The Necromancer... was quite happy to trade me some lovely mid-range spells
Holding the entire underworld and half the surface, I would have won by attrition eventually. Or equipping some proper "heroes" with artifact gear. But shadow demons fly, have powerful ranged attacks, and are very tricky to truly kill. They're not even undead, so were able to benefit from my life magic! The wizards of life surrendered once I had their capitals under siege. I like to think I let them keep their little magical utopias (: World conquest seems a little meaningless for an actual deity, I just needed to make sure these mortals didn't get any ideas.
As for the Necromancer - my shadow demons paid him a visit. He *really* should have seen that coming, allying with a CE deity. Also, undead are icky
;;;;)Caster of Magic, a Master of Magic expansion
Edit: Drow Warlocks are pretty amazing because they get a spell Doom Bolt which does considerable guaranteed damage once per battle. So a full stack of them can theoretically kill one to several of practically any foe! The only problem is that they are absurdly squishy, and defenders move first. Hence my next plan, specializing in Blue magic (sorcery). Invisible warlocks who fly... Almost seems unfair, but every magic specialization gets apocalyptic game-concluding spells towards the end. If one has enough books. The manual did warn against what I did