Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!dali.cs.montana.edu!milton!unicorn!n8742883 From: n8742883@unicorn.WWU.EDU (Perry Pederson) Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st Subject: (Long) Populus answers Message-ID: <1324@unicorn.WWU.EDU> Date: 7 Aug 90 22:18:57 GMT Reply-To: n8742883@unicorn.WWU.EDU (Perry Pederson) Organization: Western Washington Univ, Bellingham, WA Lines: 116 (Note-- I tried to forward this text to mwca!bill, but I'm having server problems in sending it to him, so I'll post it for everyone to read anyway... if you aren't interested in Populous, hit that 'n' key now!) >Can anyone tell me what the world name is for level 8? It looks like >Eordnord, but I'm using a Video Key and the text isn't real clear; I tried >to enter Eordnord but it wasn't accepted - anyone know the right name? Yow! Another populus player exists out there!! I'm at work right now, but when I get home I will take out a list of the levels I've been to, and send you the info on level 8. That will be in about six hours. (I've been past level 50 and still goin' strong!) > >On a related note, any general pointers as far as overall strategies would >be helpful. For example, is it worth expending the extra manna to build up >my land so floods don't wipe out my people? When are castles preferable to >lots of huts? > I have rarely been to a point in the game that the computer is so strong that he is capable of flooding me, although this has happened to me a few times. In order to prevent flooding I tend to try to start out my initial people on high ground, and raise the land around them to make a high plateau. Of course, some of the people go for lower land as I'm expanding around, and I don't worry about these things too much. Castles vs. lots of huts: Castles give you FAR more manna than any combination of huts, and when a tribe emerges from a castle, it is mega strong compared to tribes created from any other type of building. The tradeoff (and it IS serious) is that people emerge from castles by FAR more slowly than other huts, preventing you from expanding rapidly into new areas, which in turn restricts your influnce (i.e. raising / lowering land) in those areas. I have found a good strategy is to keep the land 'bumpy' enough around your inital area so as to keep the buildings more primitive and quickly produce tribes to colonize the surrounding areas. Once the 'first wave' of settlers have built buildings, I turn just *one* of them into a castle-- one castle is sufficient enough to provide enough manna for unlimited raising / lowering of lands. As my tribes expand over the wilderness, I keep my perimeter buildings on the primitive side in order to insure a quick supply of colonists, and begin flattening land in the nucleus of my "empire" to create high-manna producing castles. I keep repeating this process for my expansion policy..... A warning about knights (for both you and the computer): Knights may sem like a great way to conquer the enemy; you create one, and it does all the destruction unaided! The bad side effect of this is that when a knight burns down a building, it is treated as a "rock" and makes for bad growth if you desire to colonize an area near it. To make matters worse, the land which was providing the enemie's building with food is *ravaged* and turns just a *slight* difference in it's pattern-- if you are having problems reading the name on the screen (which I sometimes have with my *normal* monitor) you probably won't see the difference in pattern. The 'ravaged' lands will never be used for agriculture until it is raised/lowered and then flattened again. A castle consumes about 20 squares of farmland; if it is destroyed by a knight, all 20 squares become useless (until altered) and the castle is turned into about 10 sqaures of rock. which can only be removed by reducing the land down to sea level, which can be a lot of work. The morale of knights is to be wary of the consequences of using them on lands you may want to take over-- if you want to capture enemy strongholds, put your holy symbol on it and have your tribes do the rest as they will capture the building, not just destroy it. When you get to levels where the computer starts chugging out knights, (around level 44+, I believe) don't panic! Computer knigts are very stupid in that you can lower land around them and drown them our easily, removing all problems associated with them. :-) And last but not least, there is an undocumented wandering monster creeping the plains of the game! It totally freaked me out when I saw it!!! I've seen it mainly in the deserts, and once in a ice scenario; the moster travels straight up-and-down, which means that relative to the angled "gameboard" it is travelling at a diagonal. In the desert scenarios it appears as a giant slime creature (!!!) and leaves a trail of swamps after its path. I guess it's undestructable-- I've never been in a position to attack it. The thing sure laid waste to one of my civilizations in the game.... Hope that helps ya! I'll send the codeword to level 8 in about six to ten hours from now if you still need it. Populus is a fine game, and I have been entertained by it quite a bit. I also purchased 'the promised lands', which is not as stunning as I had thought it would be; all it does is load a different graphic set over existing maps. I had thought it contained *new* maps to conquer, but it just puts a different face over the maps containd on the old populus maps. Some of them are somewhat attractive though-- I like 'computerland' which has different brands of Atari computers (the old 800 is the most primitive one, all the way through the Atari 800XL, 1040, Mega-4, TT, and some workstations) with atari flags on them vs. similar Commodore computers with little commodore flags! Kinda cute. Anyway, I've blathered on enough now about the game...... Will reply later, ***** ******* Perry Pederson: email: n8742883 * * GEnie: PPEDERSON **** * Voice: (206) 676-7177 * * ***** * ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- +++++ + + + 'I' before 'E' except after 'C'.... +++ + + + ... We sure live in a weird society! +++++ ++++++ P.S. The "Well Done, Mortal" quote changes at level 50; I'm dying to get to level 100 to see what the dude says!