I've seen a lot of people on many different boards complaining about the long pauses during combat when playing Master of Magic with sound enabled on WinXP using VDMSound.
I DO NOT take credit for this fix as I found it in an old textfile I got from who-knows-where. So full credit goes to whoever wrote that text file. Anyway, here's the solution:

1)Have VDMS create a new desktop shortcut for MoM.
2)Right click on the new shortcut and choose properties.
3)Click the Advanced button.
4)Choose the Performance tab.
5)Under 'DMA servicing', MANUALLY set the min/max values to 0. That's right, ZERO.
6)Now, click the tab up at the top marked SoundBlaster.
7)Under 'Output', MANUALLY set the value of 'Buffer' to 999. Note that you may have to play with this number a bit, depending on the speed of your system. Try 999 first. If the sound is really screwy, change it in steps of 50-100 and keep trying. 999 should work just fine though.

That-is-it. You should now be able to play Master of Magic, with soundblaster emulation through VDMS with NO ANNOYING DELAYS during combat! 😀