New year, New Master of Magic! v1.5 fan patch

[Seravy]

A group of triremes attacked my bat. I clicked 'auto' and then went away for a while because it took forever for six triremes to do their random movement. Had to mute the sound as well.

This is why I play with "movement animation" off. Saves time overall, not just in these battles.

I had "summoning events" turned off in the options and yet was notified of every hell hound and ghoul cast by opponents while Detect Magic was on.

Game checks the "enemy spells" setting for that. I assume the summoning events is for your own spells.

Help text for "backup saves" option needs to be updated. Help text for Astrologer screen reflects the old version of this scree

I probably already said this but I don't do help texts for 1.5, anyone can do that.

I tried, tried, tried this game to keep my military up that the CPs won't declare war on me. But it's useless, nothing can stop them. I can't build up enough units because I don't have the food. Even with aggressive expansion to build food supply The CPs get bonuses and can build until the bar on the Astrologer screen is way above mine, and then it's war until the end of the game.

A system that works balanced in CoM is expected not to in the original game. Unfortunate but not surprising.

Minotaurs have +3 to hit with magic weapons?!

Yes, Minotaurs are a +2 to hit unit. See http://masterofmagic.wikia.com/wiki/Minotaurs

Strongest Myrran CP put its summoning circle on one of those 2-spot islands with a node. Filled it up with scary creatures like Colussus, Great Wyrm, Basilisk, but they had nowhere to go. Somehow this 2 spot island was pop 13 as well.

AI puts the summoning circle to the continent where (AI cities-other cities) is the smallest number. There wasn't any continent where the AI shared land with another player, so the island was rated the place which needs additional forces most.
Maybe a different formula would work better here? Like highest enemy cities, ignoring how many are owned? Although then if there are no shared continent, it would just select randomly instead of focusing on the weakest continent.
Shore tiles produce some food, and Sorcery/Nature nodes produce a lot (2 and 2.5 if I remember correctly) if one of those was on the island.

Can you gain more than one casting skill per turn? I was archmage, investing 267sp every turn, and only gained one point.

Yes you can. It uses the formula Skill=Sqrt(Total SP accumulated).

There hardly seem to be any neutral towns these days. Maybe because I'm playing on small? I used to be able to rely on neutral towns to fill gaps in my race's weaknesses but now it seems like only enemy towns can be taken to add to my repertoire.

I don't remember if the change to town numbers was made optional or not, I think it is so it shouldn't be affecting the game.
Land size certainly does however, I also observed having minimal amount of neutral towns on smaller maps. The conditions on where they can appear seem to be pretty strict and if no correct place is found in 1000 total attempt (among all towns generated) then the game gives up on it.
Maybe the conditions are a bit too strict...hey this says no closer than 4 to a node or lair...that...kinda is hard to fulfill when you have 250 tiles of land and 50 lairs on it... this explains it. If I were to remove this restriction it would always put the maximal amount of neutral cities (since it wouldn't fail 1000 times anymore) which is...a lot. Doing that would mean no free space for settling at all on Small or Tiny...probably not much even on Normal. I rather not do that, at least this way the amount is random and not fixed.

I started a new game as Trolls on Myrror and there were two wizards on my plane! Ss'sra and Kali.

That's rare but perfectly normal. Allowed number of Myrran wizards is 1-2.