Populous FAQ Version 1.12 By edwithgames Created: October 2005 Updated on 02/09/2011. Spelling mistakes corrected, added a proper walkthrough, added more to the list of worlds and generally revamped and polished the guide. Updated on 19/09/2011. Slightly altered the formatting of two of the subsection headings. Updated on 31/08/2012. Added Hidden Messages section and added more information to the Worlds section. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ****** Introduction ****** This walkthrough was created because at the time I could find no walkthrough for the Sega Master System version of Populous. I've been playing Populous for a very long time now and have completely mastered it and I want to share my strategies and knowledge of the game with others. This version, in my opinion, is much better than any other version of Populous since the player can't change the laws of each world once the game has started. For example, water fatality cannot be changed nor can Evil's statistics be changed. The only bad things about this game are that there is no two player option nor does this game actually end. This FAQ is split up into several sections and subsections. These are: - Technical Information - My Experience With The Game - Story/Object Of The Game - How To Play - Starting A World - The World Information Screen - The Game Screen Buttons * Pause And Place Buttons * Search Buttons * Power Buttons * Behavioural Modification Buttons - The Manna Bar - The Close Up Map - The World Map - The Info-Shield * Walker * Settlement - Population Meters - Landscapes * Grassy Plains * Desert * Snow And Ice * Rock And Lava * Futuristic * Bitmap - Settlements * Grassy Plains * Desert * Snow And Ice * Rock And Lava * Futuristic * Bitmap * Ruined Settlements - Walkers * Regular Walkers * The Leader * Knights * Craziness - Strategies * Raise/Lower Terrain * Move Papal Magnet * Earthquakes * Swamps * Knights * Volcanoes * Floods * Armageddon * Reducing Evil's Population * Go To Papal Magnet * Fight Then Settle * Gather Then Settle * Settle * Invading * Continental Shelf - FAQs - Bugs/Glitches * Landscape Out * Leader Knights * Unoccupied Settlements * Demoted Knights - Worlds * The Score Screen * The Blue-Hooded Figure * World Types * World Name List * The End? * World 5995 NIMINGTORY * World 5995 NIMINGTORY Screenshot Links * New Information - Hidden Messages - Final Notes ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ****** Technical Information ****** Populous was created by Bullfrog and Electronic Arts and released by Tecmagik on the Sega Master System in 1991. Since then many clones have been made. It also inspired other games to be made such as Command and Conquer and Sim City to name a few. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ****** My Experience With The Game ****** I first played this game back in 1992 when my brother got it from a shop advertised in Sega Power Magazine. I first thought it was boring but after learning how to play it I eventually got to the point where I thought it was one of the best games on the Sega Master System. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ****** Story/Object Of The Game ****** The story is that you are a deity who controls a population of followers. These followers are what give you power. Unfortunately there is another deity with an opposing group of followers... So the object is to wipe out the opposing followers with the powers which you will later acquire and thus defeat the other deity. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ****** How To Play ****** The controls are as follows: D-Pad: Moves the cursor all around the screen to wherever you need it. The cursor is in the form of a fist or a pointing hand. The cursor becomes a closed fist when you are not permitted to perform an action e.g. when the game is paused. The cursor becomes a pointing hand when you are permitted to do perform an action. Button 1: This presses the button on which the hand cursor is currently placed and uses a pre-selected power. Button 2: This is the cancel button. Use this whenever you want to cancel using a power such as swamp. This also toggles between the three on-screen menus. Button 1 + Up/Down: Press and hold button 1 and then press up or down. This will raise/lower the terrain when the hand cursor is on the close Up Map. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ****** Starting A World ****** When you first start the game, you will see the title screens. After these you will get to a red screen called the World Information Screen which describes the first world called GENESIS. From here, you can either press Button 1 to start playing GENESIS and the word "BUILDING" will appear before you're transported to the world; or you can press Button 2 to go to the password entry screen. Here you can type the name of a world and if you're successful, you will be taken to that world's World Information Screen instead. A nice touch the programmers added is that the higher the world number (from here on referred to as "Battle Number"), the longer it takes to find the world so don't be worried if the game is "SEARCHING" for a long time for the password you put in. If unsuccessful, the game will eventually say that the password was not found and you will be returned to the previous world's World Information Screen. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ****** The World Information Screen ****** The World Information Screen will describe that particular world's attributes. Please note that although each world is unique, some may have identical attributes. See the Worlds section found towards the end of this guide for more about this. - World Name: This is the world name and is basically a password you can enter in the password entry screen. It's a good idea to write them down so you can enter them in the password entry screen and return to the world you were playing before. - Battle Number: This is the number of the world you are about to start. Generally, the higher the world number, the harder the world will be although there are exceptions. - Landscape Is: This will describe which landscape type the world has. There are six in total. These are explained later. - Evil Is: This describes how fast your computer-controlled opponent (from here on referred to as "Evil") creates terrain. There are five levels: very slow, slow, average, fast and very fast. Generally, the faster Evil creates terrain, the harder it will be to defeat him. - Evil Rating Is: This describes Evil's Artificial Intelligence. Evil's intelligence can be very low, low, average, high and very high. Generally, the higher Evil's intelligence, the more difficult it will be to defeat him - Build Near: This describes the rule for raising and lowering terrain in the world. "Build Near Towns Or People" means that you can raise and lower terrain on the Close Up Map as long as one of your settlements (the blue flag must be visible) or one of your walkers is visible. With "Build Near Towns Only", you can only raise and lower terrain when one of your settlements is visible (the blue flag must be visible). There is a small exception to this rule: you can still raise terrain one level up from sea level with just a walker present but you may not lower terrain or raise it above one level above sea level. This is so you can still allow a walker to build a basic settlement or so you can build a small bridge for him to cross the water when no settlements are nearby. - The swamps Are: The swamps in a world can either be shallow or bottomless. Shallow swamps disappear when a regular walker falls in and dies in them. Bottomless swamps do not disappear when a regular walker falls in and dies in them. - Water Is: The water is either fatal or harmful. Fatal water means that a walker will die if he falls into the water of this world; no matter what the landscape, the walker will die immediately. When the water is harmful, the walker will drown at a rate that depends upon the landscape type. - Population: This tells us the exact number of walkers with which both Good (you) and Evil start. The higher the number, the easier it is for either side to establish themselves, build a sizeable population and gain manna quickly at the start. The lower the number, the longer it will take at the start. Generally, whichever side starts with the most walkers will find it easier to establish themselves and gain manna during the earlier stages of each world. The lowest number of walkers with which you can start is 1 and the highest number is 15. - Powers: Below the population number will be five YES or NOs. If you look to the left, you will see that each YES and NO corresponds to a certain power. This part basically tells us what powers both Good and Evil are able to perform in this world. If the power has NO corresponding to it, then the power may not be performed even if you have the required manna to perform it. It is recommended that you make a note of all these details before you press Button 1 and start the world because you will not be told again unless you lose the world. Make a note of the powers you can perform and the attributes of each world before starting so that you don't plan to perform powers that you ultimately won't be able to perform. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ****** The Game Screen Buttons ****** After you've read and made notes from the World Information Screen, press Button 1 to start the world. The word BUILD will superimpose itself over the World Information Screen for a couple of seconds before you're transported to the world. You will find yourself exactly in the centre of the world you just started with the hand cursor over the two Papal Magnets. You can now begin the game. You will notice several things on the screen. You will notice the Close Up Map which is the big map in the centre of the screen; you will notice the World Map at the top of the screen which is located inside a large book; and you will also notice many grey tiles surrounding the Close Up Map with strange symbols on them. The grey tiles with symbols on them are buttons and placing the cursor on them and pressing Button 1 will do a variety of different things. The grey tiles with no symbols on them do nothing so you can ignore them safely. You will also notice a large red and white shield in the upper-right of the screen. This is the Info-Shield and it will display information about the bearer of the shield throughout the game. As stated, once the world is started, your hand cursor will be on the Close Up Map in the exact centre of the world. Pressing Button 2 here will transport the hand cursor to the group of several buttons on the left of the Close Up Map. Pressing Button 2 again in this are without pressing any other button before will transport your hand cursor to the group of four buttons below the Close Up Map. Pressing Button 2 again will return the hand cursor to the Close Up Map. By doing this, you can gain access to all the buttons at your disposal. ******************************************************************************* Here I will list and explain the functions of all the buttons on the left of the Close Up Map. *** Pause And Place Buttons *** - Pause: This button is on the far left of the tiles and has the symbol ZZZ on it. This is the Pause Button. When you press pause on your Sega Master System Power Base, this tile will be highlighted and will turn a lighter shade of grey. If you wish, you may press this button instead of pressing the button on your Power Base. Regardless of that, it's very useful for telling you if the game is paused or not. When paused, you may not perform any powers nor can you alter terrain. You can however, still move around the world, use the search buttons and place the Info-Shield on walkers and settlements. - Papal magnet: This button is in the middle at the botton of the first group of buttons and it looks like an ankh. Providing you have enough manna, you can press this button and your hand cursor will both turn into an ankh cursor and be transported to the Close Up Map. With this new cursor you can place the Papal Magnet on any tile of flat land on the Close Up Map. If you do not want to place the Papal Magnet, simply press Button 2 to cancel and the cursor will again be a hand cursor on the Close Up Map. - Info-Shield: This button is located next to the Papal Magnet button and has a ? symbol on it. Pressing this button will change your hand cursor into a shield cursor and transport it to the Close Up Map. With this cursor you can place the Info-Shield on any Good or Evil walkers on settlements. This will cause information about the walker or settlement to show up on the main Info-Shield located in the upper-right of the screen. ******************************************************************************* *** Search Buttons *** The next four buttons are search buttons. These will search for specific walkers and settlements when pressed. This means that when you press them, the Close Up Map will move to the location of the searched walker or settlement. They are located just to the left of the Close Up Map and each has a symbol in brackets. - Papal Magnet In brackets: When pressed, this will move the Close Up Map to four different things in this order: 1. When pressed once, the Close Up Map Will move to the position of the Good leader. 2. When pressed twice, the Close Up Map will move to the position of the Good Papal Magnet. 3. When pressed thrice, the Close Up Map will move to the position of the Evil Leader. 4. When pressed four times, the Close Up Map will move to the position of the Evil Papal Magnet. Note: If Good or Evil have no leader the button will skip them so for example, if there is no Good leader, the button will go from step 1 to step 3 and then to step 4 before repeating the cycle. - Shield In Brackets: When pressed, this will move the Close Up Map to where the bearer of the Info-Shield currently is whether it be a walker or a settlement. If no walker or settlement is holding the Info-Shield, pressing this button will do nothing. - Swords In Brackets: When pressed, this moves the Close Up Map to the location of a battle. If more than one battle is happening, it will choose one at random and place the Close Up Map there. If no battles are happening, it will place the Close Up Map on one of the Good settlements. If more than one Good settlement exists it will choose one at random and place the Close Up Map there. - Knight Helmet In Brackets: When pressed, this will place the Close Up Map on one of the Good knights. If there is more than one Good Knight, it will choose one at random and place the Close Up Map there. If there are no Good knights it will place the Close Up Map on one of the Good walkers. If more than one Good walker exists, it will choose one at random and place the Close Up Map there. ******************************************************************************* *** Power Buttons *** The next six buttons are power buttons. With these buttons, various powers can be performed that will have some effect on the Close Up Map. I have described the symbols on the buttons and what power they perform. - Earthquake: This button performs an Earthquake and has a sound wave symbol on it. Providing that you may perform this power and have enough manna, pressing this button will randomly raise and lower the terrain that is currently displayed on the Close Up Map thereby making it unsuitable for building upon. You will notice also that with repeated use on the same area of terrain, the Earthquake power will gradually lower the land while also unflattening it. To Earthquake a different area, go to the Close Up Map, move to a different location, return to the button and perform the power on this new area of terrain. - Swamps: This button will make swamps on the Close Up Map and has a symbol that looks like a man drowning. Providing that you may perform this power and have enough manna, pressing this button will transport your hand cursor to the Close Up Map and will transform it into a swamp cursor. Pressing Button 1 here will place a random number of swamps on tiles of flat terrain on the area shown on the Close Up Map. If no flat tiles are shown, no swamps will be made so try and find an area with lots of tiles of flat terrain. Swamps can also not be placed on tiles with settlements, rocks or trees but can be placed in water although they are invisible in it. Walkers may not be able to walk on the water but if a swamp is in the water, the walker will walk in it and die. - Knight: This button will transform your leader into a knight and has a helmet symbol. Providing that you may perform this power and you have enough manna, pressing this button will immediately transform your leader into a knight. If your leader is currently occupying a settlement, the settlement will disappear and the knight will take its place. - Volcano: This button performs a volcano and has a mountain symbol on it. Providing that you may perform this power and you have enough manna, pressing this button will cause the terrain shown on the close up map to be raised in a peak much like a mountain. A number of rocks will also be created but no lava or crater is formed. With repeated use over the same area of terrain, more rocks are created and the terrain will gradually be raised to its maximum height. - Flood: This button performs a flood and similarly to the Swamp button, has a symbol of a man drowning on it although it's located a bit higher than that button. Providing that you may perform this power and you have enough manna, pressing this button will raise the sea level by one and will submerge all terrain which was previously one level above sea level. All settlements will disappear and all walkers will either die or start drowning depending upon the water type. - Armageddon: This button will start Armageddon and has a Skull and Crossbones symbol on it. Providing that you have enough manna, pressing this button will remove all Good and Evil settlements and place the Papal Magnets in the centre of the world. All Good and Evil walkers will all go towards them, gather together and then fight until only either one Good or one Evil walker remains. This will end the game. I will go into further detail about these powers in the Strategy section of this walkthrough. ******************************************************************************* *** Behavioural Modification Buttons *** The next four buttons are behavioural modification buttons and can only be pressed one at a time and will alter the behaviour of the Good walkers. To get to the buttons, press Button 2 twice from the Close Up Map. - Settle: This button looks like a flag and will command your walkers to build settlements. Fights will still happen and the walkers may gather but they will not go out of their way to do so. Building settlements becomes their priority. - Gather Then Settle: This button looks like a walker and will command your walkers to gather first then settle when there is one person remaining. Gathering is the process wherein one walker joins with another to make one stronger walker. This process is vital for winning the game. - Fight Then Settle: This looks like two swords and will command the Good walkers to fight the nearest Evil walker or settlement. When none are nearby, your walkers will settle. - Go To Papal Magnet: This looks like a Papal Magnet and will cause the Good leader to go to the Papal Magnet. Your walkers will go to the leader and gather with him. If there is no Good leader, all Good walkers will go to the Papal Magnet and the first to get there is the leader. While this button is on, no settlements will be built by any of your walkers. I will go into further detail about these buttons in the Strategy section of this walkthrough. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ****** The Manna Bar ****** The Manna Bar is directly above the Close Up Map. An arrow points to where you are on the bar. You start each world with the arrow on the right of two arrows. This means that you can raise and lower terrain as long as either a settlement or a walker are in view on the Close Up Map (see above). The arrow on the Manna Bar moves to the right gradually when your population increases and sometimes will move a lot to the right in instances of good fortune. The more population you have, the more population you will produce so it makes sense that when you start and therefore have a low population, the Manna Bar will move to the right very slowly. As the game progresses and your population increases, the faster the arrow will move to the right. You will notice that symbols are placed upon the Manna Bar and that the majority of these symbols correspond to the power buttons mentioned earlier. When the arrow is pointing at a symbol, it means that you have enough manna to perform that power and providing that you are allowed to perform it (as explained on the World Information Screen), you can press the appropriate button to perform the power. As the arrow moves towards the right, it should make sense that you have enough manna to perform all the powers that are to the left of it and that you haven't enough manna for the powers that are to the right of it. You start off only able to Move Papal Magnet and Raise and Lower Land. You then get the power to Earthquake, Swamp, Knight, Volcano, Flood and start Armageddon in that order. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ****** The Close Up Map ****** The Close Up Map is the section of the World Map covered by a + sign. Moving the Close Up Map will move the + sign around the World Map. The Close Up Map is where most of the action in the game will take place so it is vital that you know what all the symbols mean and that you know how to manipulate things in it. Many objects can be seen on the close Up Map. They are explained here. Please note that many of the objects will look different depending upon the type of landscape the world uses. Landscapes are explained below. - Clear Terrain: Terrain is the land upon which your walkers settle, walk, fight etc. Flat terrain is needed to build settlements. Much of your time will be spent flattening terrain so that walkers can build settlements on it. - Water: Water appears whenever the terrain is lowered enough. Settlements can't exist in water and walkers can't survive in it either. Walkers will either die or will drown depending upon the water type. - Walkers: Walkers are your followers and as such are the source of your power as a deity. Walkers roam the terrain either building settlements on flat terrain, fighting, gathering or dying. The blonde-haired walkers are Good and the brown-haired walkers are Evil. - Settlements: Settlements are buildings created on tiles of flat terrain by walkers in which to live and grow. Every settlement will have either a blue flag if it is a Good settlement or a red flag if it is an Evil settlement. - Cropland: Cropland surrounds every settlement. Depending upon the availability of flat terrain surrounding the settlement, the amount of cropland will vary. The more flat terrain, the more cropland will be made and the more cropland that's made, the better the settlement will be. Good cropland is white uniform dots on normal terrain; Evil cropland is uniform grey specks on normal terrain. Cropland cannot be built upon; it can be built next to and if the buildings are both Good or both Evil, cropland will be shared. If the two buildings are different (i.e. one Good and one Evil), the cropland will not be shared and will hamper the other cropland in the same way as a swamp, rock, ruined settlement or tile of ruined cropland will. - Trees: Trees cannot be created by anything in the game and are scattered about randomly on the original terrain at the start of each world. Trees cannot be built upon but can be removed easily by cropland or by sinking them into the water. Sinking them into the water shouldn't be necessary unless there are lots of trees grouped together. Trees come in different forms depending upon the landscape of the world. - Rocks: Rocks are created by volcanoes and are also scattered about randomly on the original terrain at the start of a world much like trees. As settlements cannot remove them with cropland and as settlements cannot be built next to them, it is a good idea to remove them. To do this, lower the terrain on which they lie till they disappear into the water. This can take a long time especially if there are a lot of them but it's the only way to remove them. - Good Rocks: If you notice, some rocks are darker than others. I call these rocks "Good Rocks" because they need not be sunk in the water to remove them. Simply raise then lower the terrain on which they lie (or vice versa) and they will disappear. Other than that, they still behave like normal rocks in that settlements cannot remove them with cropland and settlements cannot be built next to them. They are not created by volcanoes; instead they're scattered about randomly on the original terrain at the start of a world. They are also created by Evil, who seem to possess the unique ability to transform normal rocks into good rocks. - Papal Magnet: The Papal Magnet is a unique structure occupying a single tile. Placing the walkers' behaviour button on "Go To Papal Magnet" will cause your leader (Good) to gravitate towards it until he touches it and stays there. Your walkers will gravitate towards and gather with your leader. The Papal Magnet can be placed anywhere - even in the water - and can only be done if you have both enough manna and have a leader. The second condition is sometimes easy to forget. Placing the Papal Magnet upon swamps or ruined cropland will also revert the terrain to normal terrain. Papal Magnets can be placed on top of settlements and can also be built upon. - Swamps: Swamps are created using the Swamp power. Depending upon the landscape type, swamps can look different but generally they are either speckled tiles or black holes on single tiles. Swamps never occur unless either Good or Evil have created them first. Swamps are tiles of terrain that can kill walkers instantly; if a walker falls in a swamp, he disappears no matter how strong he is and no matter who created the swamp, Good or Evil. There are two types of swamp: bottomless and shallow; shallow swamps disappear when one walker falls in and dies and the swamp will change back into normal flat terrain; bottomless swamps do not disappear. Swamps are not removed by cropland and have also to be removed to allow cropland to spread. - Ruined Settlements: These are settlements that have lost a battle with a knight. They cannot be removed with cropland and have to be sunk in the water to remove them. However, unlike rocks, settlements can be built next to them. - Ruined Cropland: Ruined cropland surrounds ruined settlements. Settlements cannot be built upon it but can be be built next to it. Walkers will not be harmed by it but it must be removed so that walkers can build settlements. To remove ruined cropland, simply raise then lower the terrain on which it is (or vice versa). - Invisible Trees: In the Desert and Rock And Lava landscapes, you might notice tiles of terrain with no cropland on them next to settlement No. 9s. These act like trees in that they cannot be built upon but can be removed by cropland. For some reason, they only exist in these two landscapes. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ****** The World Map ****** The World Map is located on the top of the screen and is situated on what looks like a page of a book. The book symbolises the huge "book of worlds." On the World Map are several symbols: - The + sign is the current location of the Close Up Map in relation to the World Map. - Flashing black dots are Good settlements. - Flashing grey dots are Evil settlements. - Flashing blue dots are Good walkers. - Flashing red dots are Evil walkers. The terrain is represented by the basic colour of the terrain on the Close Up Map. For example: terrain on the Close Up Map for the Grassy Plains landscape type is many shades of green and so on the World Map it is a single shade of green. The water is represented in the same way; for example, the water on the Close Up Map for the Grassy Plains landscape type is many shades of dark blue and so on the World Map it is a single shade of dark blue. Relief (hills, mountains, lowlands) is shown on the World Map with shading. The World Map is very useful in locating volcanoes, earthquakes, walkers and settlements so it's good practice to refer to it when you need to. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ****** The Info-Shield ****** The Info-Shield is located to the right of the Manna Bar and displays information on the bearer of the shield be it a walker or a settlement. The Info-Shield will display different information depending on whether the bearer is a walker or a settlement. I will explain the Info-Shield for both walkers and Settlements. *** Walker *** When the shield bearer is a walker, the strength bars will be displayed in the bottom right quarter of the shield. As I explained earlier, walkers gain strength by a process called gathering. This is when two walkers combine to become one. All of your walkers at the start of a world will have two black and orange bars in the bottom-right quarter of the Info-Shield if you place the Info-Shield on any of them. When the right bar is full and becomes completely orange, a notch will be placed on the left bar. Slowly but surely with more gathering, eventually the left bar will fill and become completely orange. When this happens, the right bar will disappear from view, the left bar will move to the right and take the right bar's place and in the left bar's former place will be a new yellow and black bar. This new bar fills up even more slowly than the other bars and walkers with this bar are much stronger than walkers with just two orange bars. The yellow bar never gets completely full as a small black notch is always visible. Although it will not be shown, walkers with a maximum yellow bar can keep gathering and become stronger. Walkers like this are very powerful indeed. When a walker has two empty bars, he is about to perish and die so try to provide him with some flat terrain as quickly as you can. The top-left quarter of the Info-Shield will show either an ankh or a skull depending on whether the walker is Good or Evil. The bottom-left quarter will display the walker who currently bears the Info-Shield. This walker can be Good, Evil, normal, a knight, or drowning. The top-right quarter shows a different weapon depending upon the walker that bears the Info-Shield. The weapon represents the settlement from which the walker originated. A sword will be on a walker that originated from a castle and a fist will be on a walker that originated from a tent. Apart from that, the weapon appears to be useless. Strength is what determines the outcome of fights as I've seen a walker with a fist defeat a walker with a sword simply because the winner had more strength. When a Good and an Evil walker are fighting, the bottom-right quarter which normally represents strength will be replaced by two new bars. The bar on the left represents the Good walker and the bar on the right represents the Evil walker. Depending on who is winning the battle, the Good bar will fill up blue and the Evil bar will fill up red. If the walkers are almost evenly matched, the bars will both fill up half way and then one will empty and the other fill up depending upon the winner. After the battle, the bottom-right quarter will again represent the strength of the Info-Shield bearer. *** Settlement *** When the shield bearer is a settlement, the bottom-right quarter of the Info-Shield will be two bars. The left bar will be yellow and black and the right bar will be green and black. These of course can change. The left bar represents the quality of the settlement. The more yellow there is in the bar, the better the settlement. Tents have one notch of yellow while large castles have completely yellow bars. The right bar represents how much population is in the settlement. The more green the bar, the more population is inside the settlement. When the bar becomes completely green, the settlement will be full and a walker will leave the settlement to search for somewhere else to settle. Both these bars are proportional to one another. The more yellow there is in the left bar (thus the better the settlement), the more population the settlement can hold which means in a better settlement, it will take longer to fill the right bar to maximum green and therefore longer for a walker to leave it; conversely, the worse the settlement, the less time it will take for a walker to leave it. As better settlements take longer to fill up with population, the walker that comes out when it is full will represent more population and because of this, will be stronger; conversely, because it takes less time for a walker to leave a worse settlement, the walker that comes out when the settlement is full will represent less population and will thus be weaker. Even though better settlements take longer to fill up and produce a walker, they do produce population at a faster rate. This means that having lots of settlement No. 9s for example will cause your population to increase more quickly and thus the manna bar will increase more quickly too. The top-left quarter of the Info-Shield will show either an ankh or a skull depending on whether the walker is Good or Evil. The bottom-left quarter of the Info-Shield will show either a red or blue flag depending upon whether the settlement is Good or Evil. The top-right quarter shows a different weapon depending upon the settlement that bears the Info-Shield. The weapon represents the advancement of the settlement. A sword will be on a settlement that was built by a walker with a sword or a settlement that has been undisturbed for a long time; a fist will be on a settlement that was built by a walker with a fist or on a settlement that is relatively new. Apart from that, the weapon appears to be useless. As with walkers, you can play the game not paying any attention to the weapon as it doesn't affect anything. As with walkers, settlements can also fight. When this happens, the Info-Shield will go to the fight mode for walkers mentioned above. When the fight is over, the shield will represent the winner be it the original bearer or the aggressor. ******************************************************************************* You will notice that the shield gets passed around on its own from time to time. This is because when a walker leaves a settlement that bears the shield, the walker will take it with him. When a walker gathers with another, the new combined walker will bear the shield. When a walker loses a fight, the shield will go to the victor be it a walker or a settlement. You can of course give the shield to whomever you wish and break the cycle whenever you want. When a walker perishes and dies in the water or by wandering, the shield will not be passed to anyone and so the Info-Shield will not display any information and be blank. Pressing on the search buttons will cause the object of the search (such as a leader or a knight) to be given the shield for a few seconds before it is returned to its original bearer or returned to being blank. This is so information can be seen quickly about the object of the search without changing the shield bearer. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ****** Population Meters ****** You will notice on the sides of the Info-Shield are two bars. These represent the amount of population Good and Evil have. The bar on the left will slowly fill up with blue as Good population increases and the bar on the right will slowly fill up with red as Evil population increases. When a sharp drop in population occurs, you will see the amount of blue or red decrease instantly. It is good practice to keep an eye on these bars as they determine who is currently winning the world. The more population Evil has, the more powerful Evil will be. Bear in mind that like strength, the population does not stop increasing once the bars hit their maximum. Unfortunately you will never be able to discern how much population above the maximum you have. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ****** Landscapes ****** Here is an explanation of the six different types of landscape that appear in this version of Populous. I will describe the different appearances of the objects and the effect the landscapes will have upon walkers. Walkers will slowly lose strength as they wander around the terrain: I call this perishing. Different landscapes have different perish rates. When the water type of a world is harmful, walkers will start drowning when they fall in and will slowly lose their strength although at a faster rate than perishing. Different landscapes have different drown rates. Please note that the drown rate is proportional to the perish rate; generally the faster the perish rate is, the faster the drown rate will be. *** Grassy Plains *** - The terrain is green grassland. - The water is blue. - The trees look like normal trees. - The rocks are white crags. - The good rocks are dark grey crags. - The Good Papal Magnet is a white ankh. - The Evil Papal Magnet is a dark grey skull with horns. - The swamps look like speckled green tiles of terrain. - Good cropland looks like white dots on tiles of terrain. - Evil cropland looks like dark grey dots on tiles of terrain. - Ruined cropland looks like white and dark grey dots on tiles of terrain. - The perish rate is very slow. - The drown rate is slow. *** Desert *** - The terrain is yellow sand. - The water is blue. - The trees look like differently shaped cacti. - The rocks are brown pyramids - The good rocks are light grey crags. - The Good Papal Magnet is a brown cross. - The Evil Papal Magnet is a white star. - The swamps look like speckled green tiles of terrain. - Good cropland looks like white dots on tiles of terrain. - Evil cropland looks like dark grey dots on tiles of terrain. - Ruined cropland looks like white and dark grey dots on tiles of terrain. - The perish rate is fast - The drown rate is very fast. *** Snow And Ice *** - The terrain is white snow. - The water is blue. - The trees look like frosty normal trees with no foliage. - The rocks are white crags. - The good rocks are dark grey crags. - The Good Papal Magnet is a frosty white ankh. - The Evil Papal Magnet is a frosty dark grey skull with horns. - The swamps look like black and white speckled tiles of terrain. - Good cropland looks like white dots on tiles of terrain. - Evil cropland looks like dark grey dots on tiles of terrain. - Ruined cropland looks like white and dark grey dots on tiles of terrain. - The perish rate is fast - The drown rate is very fast. *** Rock And Lava *** - The terrain is dark grey rock. - The water is red lava. - The trees look like dead black trees with no foliage. - The rocks are white crags. - The good rocks are dark grey crags. - The Good Papal Magnet is a brown wooden cross. - The Evil Papal Magnet is a brown wooden dressing table with a mirror. - The swamps look like small black triangles on tiles of terrain. - Good cropland looks like white dots on tiles of terrain. - Evil cropland looks like dark grey dots on tiles of terrain. - Ruined cropland looks like white and dark grey dots on tiles of terrain. - The perish rate is average. - The drown rate is fast. *** Futuristic *** - The terrain is white and light grey checkered tiles. - The water is blue. - The trees look like polyhedral pot plants and conifers. - The rocks are brown crags. - The good rocks are blue crags. - The Good Papal Magnet is a blue ankh. - The Evil Papal Magnet is a brown skull with horns. - The swamps look like single large black squares on tiles of terrain. - Good cropland looks like white dots on tiles of terrain. - Evil cropland looks like dark grey dots on tiles of terrain. - Ruined cropland looks like diagonal lines on tiles of terrain. - The perish rate is very slow. - The drown rate is slow. *** Bitmap *** - The terrain is green and white computer paper. - The water is green Tecmagik words in blackness. - The trees are coke cans, green pencils and coffee cups. - The rocks are blue floppy disks. - The good rocks are yellow cigarette packets. - The Good Papal Magnet is a white computer mouse. - The Evil Papal Magnet is a black and red video game joystick. - The swamps look like torn black holes in the computer paper terrain. - Good cropland looks like uniform hollow black squares on tiles of terrain. - Evil cropland looks like uniform black glasses on tiles of terrain. - Ruined cropland looks like green and white squares on tiles of terrain. - The perish rate is fast. - The drown rate is very fast. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ****** Settlements ****** There are 9 types of settlement. Generally, the more flat land that surrounds settlements, the more cropland that will be planted and the more cropland a settlement has, the better quality the settlement will be. Just like everything else, the settlements will vary depending upon the type of landscape the world has. Here, I will list the 9 types of settlement for each landscape in descending order of quality e.g. "1" equals the worst type of settlement and "9" equals the best. All settlements occupy one tile of terrain except No. 9 which always occupies nine tiles of terrain. Settlement No. 9 cannot be built on the edge of the world while all the other types can be. Settlement No. 9 can only be built where there are twenty-five tiles arranged in a 5x5 square. Rocks can be present but must not occupy the corner squares otherwise the castle cannot be constructed. *** Grassy Plains *** 1. A tent. 2. A brown mud hut. 3. A tumble-down stone cottage. 4. A log cabin. 5. A thatched roof cottage. 6. A modern brick house. 7. A round, grey fort. 8. A white castle turret. 9. A large castle made from four white castle turrets. *** Desert *** 1. A small brown tent. 2. A small white tent. 3. A white Bedouin tent. 4. A grey and brown stone house. 5. A log cabin. 6. A brown shop. 7. A white chapel. 8. A brown castle turret. 9. A large castle made from four brown castle turrets. *** Snow And Ice *** 1. A frosty tent. 2. A frosty brown mud hut. 3. A frosty tumble-down stone cottage. 4. A frosty log cabin. 5. A frosty thatched roof cottage. 6. A frosty modern brick house. 7. A frosty round, grey fort. 8. A frosty castle turret. 9. A large castle made from four frosty castle turrets. *** Rock And Lava *** 1. A white Bedouin tent. 2. A brick mobile. 3. A small house. 4. A grey arch. 5. A small tower. 6. A white and pink hotel. 7. A miniature grey castle. 8. A round, white castle turret. 9. A large castle made from four round, white castle turrets. *** Futuristic *** 1. A gold tent. 2. A burgundy tent. 3. A purple pyramid. 4. A structure made from three green pillars. 5. A multicoloured pyramid. 6. A glass pyramid. 7. A glass cube. 8. A blue and white sphere. 9. A large castle made from four blue and white spheres. *** Bitmap *** 1. A Newton's cradle. 2. A typewriter 3. A ZX Spectrum. 4. A yellow keyboard computer. 5. A Sega Master System cartridge. 6. A small white computer. 7. A smaller white computer. 8. A brown rubber stamp. 9. A large castle made from four brown rubber stamps. ******************************************************************************* *** Ruined Settlements *** Ruined settlements are created when a settlement has lost a battle with a knight. The settlement will then turn into a ruined settlement which looks exactly like the settlement it was before except it will either have holes in it, be broken, or look flattened. The cropland of the settlement will turn into ruined cropland. To remove ruined settlements, lower the terrain underneath them until they disappear into the water; to remove the ruined cropland, simply raise then lower the terrain (or vice versa). The instruction manual does not mention sinking the ruined settlements in the water and simply advises the player to ignore them and just to concentrate efforts on removing the ruined cropland. I believe it says this because unlike rocks, settlements may still be constructed next to ruined settlements and sinking them can take a lot of time and effort - especially when there are knights with which to deal first and other problems. The best strategy is simply to remove the ruined cropland first since this takes the least time, and then when the threat of the knight is gone, start tidying up the terrain and remove the ruined settlements too because they do hinder settlements - especially settlement No. 9s. As with any problem, prevention is better than the cure. When a knight is about to fight one of your settlements, check the Info-Shield (good practice is to place the shield on Evil's knights to keep an eye on them) and try to predict whether or not the knight will win (most of the time the knight will win). If the knight is going to win, remove your settlement by raising or lowering the terrain underneath it BEFORE the battle starts and you won't be left with any ruined settlements or ruined cropland. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ****** Walkers ****** Here I will describe and explain the different types of walker found on Populous. *** Regular Walkers *** Walkers are visible amounts of population that walk around the world searching for somewhere to build a settlement. Good walkers (yours) have blonde hair while Evil walkers have brown hair. The behavioural modification buttons will affect their behaviour towards each other and towards enemy walkers. See above for explanations of these buttons. In this section, I hope to describe and explain the different types of walker that exist in the game. It is important to understand that a walker's strength is relative to the amount of population he represents. The stronger a walker is, the more population he represents. Unless the Go To Papal Magnet behavioural modification button is on, walkers will build settlements of various types on tiles of flat terrain. After playing for some time, you will notice that fewer and fewer walkers stay in the settlement after its creation and instead will walk away and build other settlements or do something else. As I explained earlier, walkers represent amounts of population and when a walker builds a settlement whose population capacity is less than the population the walker who built it represents, the walker will leave the settlement. This knowledge can be used to your advantage. As I explained earlier, settlement No. 9s (large castles) take a long time to fill up to their capacity and thus take a long time to produce a walker; however, if you lower the settlement's quality by removing some cropland by raising or lowering terrain without removing the actual settlement itself, you can lower the population capacity of the settlement and thus a walker will come out. To understand this technique better, try it yourself: place the Info-Shield on a settlement and keep your eye on the green bar which represents the amount of population in the settlement. Lower the quality of the settlement and you will see the green bar go higher as the capacity of the settlement lowers. When the green bar is at maximum, a walker will come out. Remember also to flatten the land again after this technique is employed. This technique should rarely be used on any settlement of lower quality than a settlement No. 9 (large castle) because every walker from any settlement of lower quality such as settlement No. 8 (castle turret) will only have orange in the right strength bar and will have an empty left bar. Walkers from settlement No. 9s will have a lot of orange in the left bar if the settlement is left for a while to fill up. Generally, the amount of green in the settlement No. 9 will roughly correspond to how much orange is in the left strength bar in a walker that is acquired from the settlement using this technique. Walkers with any yellow strength bar always represent more population than any settlement can hold so don't expect a walker with any yellow strength to come out of a settlement. If this technique is not used, the walker that comes out "naturally" (i.e. without using this technique) will only have his left strength bar filled up to a quarter with orange and a lot of the population will remain in the settlement No. 9. Of course, using this technique almost completely empties the settlement No. 9 which of course leaves it quite weak and vulnerable to attack so sometimes it's best to leave the population in the settlement No. 9 if it is located near a large amount of Evil population. This technique also works the other way. If a walker that represents a large amount of population goes over a settlement that is not at full capacity, some of the walker's strength will go inside the settlement. Usually this isn't a problem if weak walkers lose a tiny amount of their strength to a weak settlement but when a particularly strong walker (your leader that you're trying to make strong for example) goes into a settlement No. 9 (which can hold a fair amount of population) that isn't at full capacity, the walker will lose quite a bit of strength. When this happens, use this technique to get the population out again so he can rejoin the leader if you so desire. When a walker that represents a smaller amount of population than the current capacity of the settlement, the walker will go into the settlement and the population of the settlement will be augmented with the population of the walker; this will look as though the walker disappeared into the settlement. Sometimes this is a good thing because the walker might be close to perishing but other times this might be bad because the walker can no longer build a settlement of his own. When Good (your) walkers fight Evil walkers, the loser will disappear and cease to exist. When one of your walkers fights an Evil settlement (or vice versa), the winner will take the settlement for his side i.e. in this example, Evil will keep the settlement if he wins and Good will take the settlement if he wins. As a fight has occurred and population has cancelled each other out and if the original occupier wins the fight, the settlement will contain less population and so the settlement will be weaker. If no walker of the same side enters the settlement in the mean time, each fight will cause the settlement to contain less population if the original occupier keeps winning. This continued weakening of the settlement will eventually mean it will be taken after many fights. The number of fights needed to take the settlement depends of course on the amount of population inside it and the strength of the walkers attacking it. When a walker wins a settlement, the same principle above applies. If the walker that won the settlement represents more population than the capacity of the settlement, the surplus population will walk away in the form of a walker. If the walker represents less population than the capacity of the building, the walker will not leave the settlement and stay inside. *** The Leader *** The leader is a unique walker in that there can only be one Good leader and one Evil leader at any one time. The leader is a special walker and having one is necessary for doing several things. At the start of every world, no matter with how much population you start, you will have a leader. You can see he's a leader because he will be carrying a miniature ankh symbol; the Evil leader will carry a miniature skull. When leaders are occupying a settlement, the symbols they carry will be displayed on the settlement whatever the type. The first walker to leave the settlement once it's full will take the symbol and be the leader much in the same way that the first walker to leave a settlement bearing the Info-Shield will become the new shield bearer. With the behavioural modification button on Go To Papal Magnet, the leader will gravitate towards the Papal Magnet and any walkers will gravitate towards the leader. Remember that without a leader, you cannot place the Papal Magnet. With this ability of being attracted to the Papal Magnet, the leader can be used to build settlements in uninhabited parts of terrain or fight settlements belonging to Evil; simply place the Papal Magnet in those places and once the leader gets there, switch the behavioural modification button to either Settle or Fight Then Settle. If you want, you can place the Papal Magnet on top of Evil Settlements and your leader will fight them without your having to change the behavioural modification button. The leader has an effect upon the manna bar. When your leader dies in a fight, you will be punished by having some manna taken away; conversely, when the Evil leader is defeated in a fight, you will be rewarded with some manna. When leaders die, no matter how they died, they will leave the Papal Magnet behind. You will be unable to move it to a new location until a new leader is created. *** Knights *** Knights are very special walkers that can only be created under special circumstances. Knights look different from other walkers in that they wear a helmet, a cape (blue for Good, red for Evil) and a suit of armour. They are not affected by the behavioural modification buttons so will not settle or go to Papal Magnet; they do however, gather with normal walkers which is useful for adding some strength to them. Knights fight; they have more intelligence than other walkers in that they will know where each and every opposing walker or settlement is and can successfully hunt them down even when they're on different sides of the world. When knights win a fight against a walker, the same will happen as when a walker wins a fight against a walker i.e. the walker dies; when a knight wins a fight against a settlement, the settlement will become a ruined settlement. Details on how to deal with these can be found above. To create a knight, several conditions must be met: 1. You must be permitted in the World Information Screen to create a knight. Without this permission, creating a knight will be impossible. 2. You must have enough manna; that is, the arrow on the manna bar must be pointing to the knight symbol (a helmet) or to any of the symbols to the right of it. 3. You must have a leader. If you have no leader, you will not be able to create a knight. If you meet all these conditions, you may create a knight. Before you do though, it is good practice to place the Go To Papal Magnet behavioural button on and allow your leader to gather with lots of your walkers to make him very strong. However, this isn't required and you may create a very weak knight if you wish but such an act is foolish since the knight won't be able to win many fights and lower Evil's population. Good practice is to create a knight that has at least a small amount of yellow in the strength bars found on the Info-Shield. Remember that strength and population are relative: the more strength a walker has, the more population he has in him and thus if a knight has more strength, it means he can fight and cancel out an equivalent amount of population in Evil. If you do choose to create a weak knight and your leader is occupying a settlement, the settlement will disappear and the knight will appear in its place. If you have met the three conditions above and have created a strong enough leader to your liking, press the knight button located to the left of the Close Up Map; a "dong" sound effect will happen and you'll see your leader turn into a knight. Although your leader has not died per se, he has ceased to exist as a leader and so as a result, the Papal Magnet will be placed on the tile of terrain on which the knight was created. After the leader has turned into a knight, you will no longer have a leader and will have to create a new one to make a new knight and to move Papal Magnet so it is a good idea to create a knight in an area close to your population so that a new leader can be created more easily. Just because knights look different, they are not invincible; they are only as strong as their strength bars and if a knight fights a walker or an opposing knight who is stronger than he is, the knight will die and cease to exist which is why it is important to make a knight as strong as possible. As soon as the knight is created, his mission will begin and he will begin walking in the general direction of the nearest Evil walker or settlement. If water separates the knight from the Evil settlements and walkers he wishes to fight, you will have to create a land bridge for him to walk upon. To do this, simply raise land for the knight to walk upon and he will eventually wend his way to his target. As stated, knights can gather with walkers to augment their strength. They will not specifically go searching for walkers with whom to gather but will do so if they pass a walker and the opportunity presents itself. Knights can and will gather with your leader which will cause your leader to cease to exist. The Papal Magnet will be placed on the tile of terrain on which this happened and you will have to create a new leader if you wish to make a knight or move the Papal Magnet. There is nothing stopping you from creating more than one knight. If you have another leader who you think is strong enough, you may knight him also and he will go off in search of battle. The knights can and will gather into each other but will only do so if they fight the same walker or settlement. They will not wait for each other and will not deviate from their target in order to do so as they do when gathering with walkers. Knights are subject to the same rules that apply to other walkers in that they perish, drown, can fall in swamps etc. A knight can be killed if he falls in fatal water and will lose strength via perishing when he wanders. He will also lose strength at the same rate as normal walkers if he starts drowning in harmful water. Swamps are slightly more complicated. A knight is slightly more intelligent than a other walkers and as a result he will never walk into a swamp. The knights know of their danger and will attempt to walk around them and avoid them in the same way that a walker avoids the water. This does not mean they cannot fall in a swamp though; if a swamp is created underneath the knight, that is if a swamp is created on the same tile of terrain on which the knight is standing, he will fall in and die. *** Craziness *** All walkers (walkers, leaders and knights) will go "crazy" from time to time and will walk around in circles. This can be quite frustrating - especially when the perish rate is depleting their strength rapidly. Walkers do this either when they hit the edge of a world or when they reach water. Try to prevent walkers from touching the edge of worlds by putting it on Go To Papal Magnet and they will turn around and follow the leader. Eventually the "craziness" stops and they start behaving normally again but the process will start afresh if they touch the edge again. Knights can do this when they reach water and there is no bridge for them to cross. Simply create a bridge and wait for the craziness to disappear on its own or when an enemy walker appears to snap them out of it. The craziness isn't really a problem when your population is firmly established and there are several walkers who can build for you; but when you only have one active walker, the craziness can cause problems. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ****** Strategies ****** Here I will list various strategies for various actions in the game. The powers that are performed in this game all have times when doing them would be beneficial and times when they would be a hindrance. Similarly, Evil can also perform all these powers and knowing how to deal with the consequences of Evil's actions is knowledge necessary to complete worlds. Generally, as Evil's population rises, their ability to perform powers rises as well and the more population they have, the more manna they will have to perform powers that require more manna. Evil are still bound by the rules laid out in the World Information Screen however, and I can't stress enough how important it is to make notes on Evil's abilities and attributes before starting the world. Evil can perform all the powers you can except Armageddon which is a power reserved only for you (Good). I will also list strategies and patterns in Evil's behaviour. Depending upon Evil's intelligence and the powers Evil may perform, his strategies during the game will differ. ******************************************************************************* *** Raise/Lower Terrain *** Raising and lowering terrain is the most basic power and the most essential one you have. Although raising and lowering terrain is simple enough, there are certain techniques of doing it which can save time and effort. When you first play the game, you will indubitably raise and lower the terrain one tile at a time and you will soon get very tired of this. An easier method to create a lot of terrain is to keep the hand cursor stationary and simply create a mountain by raising the terrain to two or three levels above water and then to get it down again also without moving the hand cursor. You should be able to flatten the new terrain completely by only moving the hand cursor up and down and not sideways. Only create a small mountain up to a maximum of three levels above water level because otherwise you won't be able to flatten the terrain without moving the hand cursor sideways. This may seem strange first but keep practising with this technique and you'll soon discover it's much more efficient. You can also use this technique to lower terrain as well. To lower a mountain, simply keep the hand cursor stationary and keep lowering the terrain. Because mountains come in different sizes, this probably won't flatten the terrain completely but it will make the process much more efficient than simply lowering the mountain one piece at a time. Evil don't know of this technique and will simply raise and lower terrain one tile at a time. Depending upon how fast Evil is (on the World Information Screen), they will create terrain one tile at a time either shockingly fast or extremely slowly. ******************************************************************************* *** Move Papal Magnet *** There isn't much to say about this. I've already mentioned that the Papal Magnet can be used to remove swamps and ruined cropland. Evil will move their Papal Magnet a lot over the course of the game and the sound effect it makes is a good clue that Evil are starting to create a strong leader. Evil will usually do this just before their population gets to a quarter full. Another irritating thing Evil do is move the Papal Magnet many times in a row in the same location. Because of the way the game works, doing this repeatedly slows the game down and it can get quite frustrating. ******************************************************************************* *** Earthquakes *** Earthquakes are a weak power. All they do is unflatten and shake up the terrain displayed on the Close Up Map. The terrain will be randomly raised and lowered in different areas making flat tiles of terrain more scarce and thus making settlement building more difficult. You will notice that earthquakes gradually lower the land when used repeatedly and because of this, they can be quite useful as a tool for lowering terrain and volcanoes. When the Close Up Map displays nothing but water, earthquakes do nothing since there is no terrain to shake up. Earthquakes can be used to remove single tiles of terrain in the water because most of the time, when a single tile of terrain is displayed, earthquakes will remove it and just leave water but be careful with this as sometimes one tile of terrain is enough to create a lot of terrain. Evil can also perform earthquakes when permitted. If earthquakes are the only power they can perform, then earthquakes will be performed a lot throughout that particular world. Evil will earthquake any random areas of terrain that have your settlements on it. They will do this at set time stages so when Evil hasn't done one for a while, expect one soon. Evil will earthquake settlements that are right in the middle of a group of his settlements which is a bit stupid but having a single tent far away from your main settlement group might be enough to avoid an earthquake on your main settlement group. Evil will also earthquake you as a "punishment"; by this I mean that Evil will do one when they steal one of your castles or defeat your leader in a fight so a random earthquake might be a signal that they have done such an act. Earthquakes are visible on the World Map as they change the relief of the terrain so finding where Evil did one is not difficult. Most of the time, earthquakes are just an annoyance and not really a direct threat to your population; the only time they become a problem is when they are all Evil may perform and Evil will perform them non-stop throughout the entire world. They perform them so frequently in fact that you'll soon be repairing the damage to your flat terrain while they do another one. When this happens it's best to strip them of manna which I will explain below. If you have it on Go To Papal Magnet and Evil do a volcano, immediately switch to settle otherwise all the walkers from the uprooted settlements will vacate the terrain and your settlements will be much more difficult to get back. ******************************************************************************* *** Swamps *** Swamps are a very useful power and if used correctly and expertly, can spell the difference between defeat and victory. Like fatal water, swamps have the ability to kill a walker without fighting him. I talked earlier about how fighting is really population cancelling each other out and that to defeat a walker, a walker must represent an equal or larger portion of population than the opposing walker. With swamps, this is not necessary and strong walkers such as leaders that have been gathering with others can be killed so immediately that you can see the population fall in the Population Meters. If you haven't much manna and you can do swamps, save up the manna until you are allowed to perform them. Don't waste them by swamping on random bits of terrain to get a few weak walkers; instead, save it up and when Evil create a strong leader, do a swamp to kill the leader and the threat will be eliminated. Swamps are random in that doing one on flat terrain will place a random number of swamps on the tiles of flat terrain. Swamps inhibit cropland so doing them on areas of terrain that have settlements will remove the cropland and thus lower the quality of the settlements. This in turn might cause walkers to leave the settlements and fall in the swamps. When doing a swamp, bear in mind that they can only be created on tiles of flat terrain not occupied by a settlement, trees, rocks, good rocks, Papal Magnets and invisible trees. Swamps can also be placed in water and walkers will walk into the water to fall in them. Walkers do not usually walk in the water and are unable to do so unless a swamp is there. Worlds with bottomless swamps are rarer than worlds with shallow swamps but it doesn't matter since their best use is to swamp leaders and knights for which bottomless swamps make no difference. Bottomless swamps remain after a walker falls in and dies in them but since a knight will never fall in one and must have a swamp created underneath them for them to fall in and since leaders immediately remove the swamp as soon as they fall in them since they leave the Papal magnet behind after they die, bottomless swamps make no difference in these endeavours. Evil do swamps too and when they've started doing swamps, they will give up on earthquakes for the time being. Swamps are invisible on the World Map and this means they are very difficult to find once Evil has done one. The best strategy is to press the Pause button as soon as you hear the noise and then go and search for the swamps. If you haven't many settlements, finding the swamps shouldn't be a problem since the swamps will always be placed upon areas of terrain containing your settlements. When you have many settlements, a good trick is to use the Swords In Brackets button. As explained earlier, this button is used to find fights; when no fights are occurring however, the button will cycle randomly through all of your settlements one by one. I find the swamps easier to find this way. Remember to keep the Pause button on while doing this otherwise your walkers may fall in them. When you've found the swamps, press the Pause button to unpause and raise and lower the terrain (or vice versa) to remove the swamps. In worlds where one can build near towns only, you may find yourself in a situation where one of your walkers is about to fall in a swamp and you cannot raise and lower the terrain to remove them. There are, of course, other ways to remove them. Placing the Papal Magnet (if you can) on swamps will remove them. This may be time consuming but it is effective. Using earthquakes and volcanoes too although a bit extreme, will remove them as well but you'll be left with the consequences afterwards so you'll have to decide whether it be worth it or not. Swamps are not removed by performing Armageddon and you will be powerless to remove them after pressing the button so make sure you remove any swamps before pressing this button. Evil are thankfully oblivious to their usefulness as exterminators of powerful walkers and will never purposely swamp your leader or your knight. Like earthquakes, swamps will be used as a "punishment" too. ******************************************************************************* *** Knights *** Knights can be extremely useful in the right circumstances or the process of creating them can be a hindrance to your fortunes. To create the best knights, make sure you make him with at least a bit of yellow so that he can eliminate as much Evil population as he can. It is important to remember that the amount of population you have is approximately proportional to the maximum amount of strength you can give your knight. Say for example you have a population meter that's a quarter full, if you put the Go To Papal Magnet behavioural button on, get as many walkers out of settlement No. 9s as you can, the leader whom you're going to turn into a knight will not become stronger than about a quarter bar of yellow strength. When the population is at its maximum, you will be able to create a leader with maximum yellow strength. Based off this knowledge, I would say that the minimum population you need to create a decent knight would be slightly less than quarter full on the population meter. Remember that this is the minimum I recommend so if you need not make a knight urgently, try and wait for a bit of extra population before knighting your leader. Once you knight your leader, he will go off to battle and will seek out any Evil settlements and walkers. If there are Evil settlements near a large number of your settlements it would be a good idea to follow your knight and remove the settlement just before the knight fights it so as to stop a ruined settlement appearing. You can place the shield on your knight if you wish so as to monitor his progress. For some reason, if you leave a knight to his own devices he will inexplicably become idle. This is a strange phenomenon because as soon as you centre the Close Up Map on him, he will be about to fight a walker or settlement. Just be advised that you should check up on your knight every so often just to see what he's doing. Knights will avoid swamps so there is no worry there just be sure to create a bridge for him if he need cross water to get to his target otherwise he will go crazy and start going around in circles. You can make more than one knight if you wish but as Evil's population diminishes, the knights will target the same settlement and walker and will therefore gather into each other. The maximum number of knights with which I've ended a world is three so I advise not bothering to create more than this number because it won't increase the speed at which they kill Evil population. Evil can and will make knights if they are permitted to. In fact, they will start dedicating their game to the creation of knights once they can and will mostly ignore the other powers they have at their disposal. Evil have a different way of strengthening their leader which will not work for the you. Evil place their Papal Magnet on top of settlements and make their leader enter the settlement to gain strength. In theory, this would work for you with small settlements but for settlement No. 9s, this would be a problem because they hold so much population. Evil walkers will also leave settlement No. 9s and other settlements without the green bar being full. So basically, don't expect Evil to play the game by the same rules that you play and concentrate on your own game. Evil will usually knight their leader by the time he's gotten his strength up to about three quarters full of the left orange strength bar. Sometimes it's more and sometimes it's slightly less; expect Evil to knight at roughly three quarters though. It is a very good idea to keep the Evil leader shielded at all times because although you can search for their leader using the Papal Magnet In Brackets button, once Evil knight the leader, the knight cannot be searched for. Do not attempt to find Evil's knights by pressing the search knight (Knight Helmet In Brackets) button because it simply doesn't work. With the leader shielded, the knight created will also be shielded and can be searched for using the Shield In Brackets Button which locates the shield bearer. If you lose the Evil knight, look at the World Map and try to spot an anomalous flashing red dot moving towards your settlements. The chances are that this dot is the Evil knight. It is good practice to pause the game as soon as you hear the "dong" sound effect which signifies that a knight has been created. As soon as you hear this sound, pause it and search for the knight. Another good way of finding a knight is after you've paused it, search for their Papal Magnet. This should find the knight if done quickly since knighting the Evil leader will cause their leader to cease to exist and thus the Evil Papal Magnet will be placed where the knight was created. Knights are extremely destructive and dangerous and dealing with them should become your top priority as soon as you hear the sound effect. Ignore Evil knights at your peril. There exist several strategies on dealing with Evil knights. Your goal is to kill the knight with as little destruction to your settlements and population as possible. The easiest method for killing them is swamping them. If you can place swamps, press the swamp button and wait for the knight to walk through an area of flat terrain without many settlements, trees or rocks. Press the swamp button and with luck the swamp will land underneath the knight and he will die. If you were unlucky, the swamp didn't appear underneath him and he carries on walking. If the swamp appeared in front of his path, Evil will raise (always raise, never lower) the terrain one level to remove the swamp. Try again with the swamps until you either get him or run out of manna. If you run out of manna or cannot perform the swamp power you will have to try and drown the knight in water. This can be tricky because depending upon the world type, you will either need a settlement in view or just a walker. Obviously with just a walker it's easier. Lower the terrain quickly underneath the knight and try and make him fall in the water. This can be quite tricky; the best way for me is to wait until the knight is fighting a walker and therefore will be stationary and drown both the knight and the walker he's fighting (a necessary sacrifice). The drowning process is made much easier if the water is fatal since the knight will die immediately and then you can concentrate on doing something else but if the water is only harmful, the knight will drown at a rate depending upon the landscape type of the world. While the knight is drowning, it's a good idea to keep him shielded because depending upon Evil's rating (intelligence), Evil will sometimes raise the terrain and the knight will be back fighting your settlements. If that happens, simply drown him again and keep the shield on him. While he is drowning, if your manna has increased so that you may perform the swamp power again, you can try to make a swamp in the little patch of water in which he's drowning. If successful, or once the knight has finished drowning, raise the terrain and get on with the game. Another strategy for dealing with knights if they're not too strong and you have enough population, is to place the behavioural modification button on Fight Then Settle and get some walkers out of settlement No. 9s to fight him. Keep the Info-Shield on him and remove any settlements he can defeat just before he fights them to avoid the creation of ruined settlements. You can also try to position your Papal Magnet near where a knight is so that your strong leader can fight and kill him. One of your knights will sometimes target the Evil knight and the battle is quite intense. Just make sure that you make your knight extra strong so that he can deal with this possible outcome. Lastly, when Evil makes a knight when another is already around, do not panic. Try to deal with the first one quickly and when he's dead or drowning, go for the other one. Knights are a consequence of Evil having a large enough population. To deal with the knight problem more effectively, steps should be taken to lower Evil's population and Evil's ability to make more population. Details on how to do this can be found below. ******************************************************************************* *** Volcanoes *** Volcanoes are a very strong power. Not only do they raise the terrain high and uproot all the settlements on it but they also scatter a number of rocks on the terrain for good measure making resettlement difficult even after reflattening the terrain. Volcanoes are an excellent way of both lowering Evil's population and lowering their ability to make more population. The effect can be devastating on landscapes with a faster perish rate. For the best use of volcanoes, try to place them in areas where there is a high number of Evil settlement No. 9s. While useful, you will find that single volcanoes can be gotten down fairly quickly by Evil and so you should find it necessary to perform double volcanoes or even triple ones, manna permitting. Try to volcano several areas of Evil settlements and uproot most if not all of Evil's settlements. You will find that they will have difficulty getting them down and that they will lose quite a bit of population and manna because they will perform fewer powers and their knight creation scheme will be put on hold. Remember though that Evil finds it easier to remove volcanoes because of their unique ability to turn rocks into good rocks. Because of this ability, they will rarely get the terrain back down to one level above sea level and will instead keep the terrain flat but at a higher altitude. This might cause you problems if you ever want to drown a leader there or something but apart from that it doesn't matter too much. When Evil do a volcano on you they will sometimes accompany it with three earthquakes or a similar number either on the volcano or elsewhere. If they do this on the volcano it actually makes it easy to get down because the terrain is lower. It was because of this that I discovered how one's own earthquakes can be used to one's advantage in this way. If you can perform earthquakes, simply earthquake the volcano down as many times as your manna will permit and try also to sink the rocks this way too. Once you run out of manna, just remove the remaining rocks and flatten the terrain out. If you can't perform earthquakes, swiftly lower the volcano manually. Remove most if not all of the rocks and get on with what you were doing. If you have it on Go To Papal Magnet and Evil do a volcano, immediately switch to Settle otherwise all the walkers from the uprooted settlements will vacate the terrain and your settlements will be much more difficult to get back. One of the most difficult scenarios in the game is when Evil are only permitted either to do volcanoes or volcanoes and knights. Evil will not of course earthquake them down for you and as Evil won't concentrate their efforts on much else, volcanoes will be very frequent and can be quite devastating as you can't get them down in time before another one is done. As with knights, the best solution is to strip them of the ability to create population and thus acquire manna. Details on doing this can be found below. ******************************************************************************* *** Floods *** Floods are rare occurrences; this is because they require a lot of manna to perform and because they are so destructive that they need a lot of preparation to perform properly. Floods raise the water level by one level and so terrain that was originally two levels above water will become one level above water level after a flood. Before you do the flood, unless you want to go around the world saving your walkers from drowning and losing a lot of population in the process, it's a good idea to start making your terrain two levels above water level and encouraging your walkers to build on again at this level. While you do this, try and prevent Evil from building on the higher terrain as you want all their settlements to be submerged. Once you have enough manna and most of if not all of your settlements and walkers are safely on higher terrain, press the flood button and a "whoosh" sound effect will occur and the terrain across the whole world will lower one level. Your terrain will now be only one level above water level and all of Evil's terrain will now be submerged if they were only on one level before. Evil will start raising his walkers immediately and depending on Evil's rating, will either leave them walking around on small bits of terrain or will start creating enough terrain for the walkers to build settlements on. Try not to volcano Evil's settlements if you're planning a flood because Evil will start creating terrain many levels above water level if you do. The only times I perform floods are when I'm finding it very difficult to reduce Evil's population because Evil is creating many knights and earthquaking me a lot. The trick is to learn how to put the extra level of terrain on in readiness. Evil seem to perform floods very seldom. On the early worlds, floods are all they can do and will always do one unless you finish the world very quickly. Because Evil's rating in the earlier worlds is so low, Evil will perform floods even to their own detriment i.e. they will kill all of their walkers and you will win instantly. In these early worlds I would recommend creating terrain two levels above water level from the start otherwise you'll have to change it all later which takes longer in the long run. In the later worlds, Evil perform floods much less frequently and will go through a world without doing one - even when that's the only power they can perform. If you want to risk not creating terrain two levels above water level, it's up to you but those who wish to play safely may want to create two level terrain all the time just for peace of mind. If the worst case scenario occurs and Evil does a flood, water is harmful and you didn't prepare for it there are ways to lessen the damage. The best way is to pause the game and use the Knight Helmet In Brackets Button to scroll randomly through your walkers, most of whom will be drowning. Just find one, raise him up and go back to searching. Remember that it scrolls through the walkers randomly and so you will likely encounter walkers you've already saved before you save them all. If you have a knight, you will not be able to do this as the button will scroll through the knights only and ignore the walkers. ******************************************************************************* *** Armageddon *** Armageddon will end the world immediately. It places both Papal Magnets in the centre of the world (their starting position) and places the behavioural modification button on Go To Papal Magnet for both Good and Evil. This means that all walkers will gather with their leaders and go to the centre of the world to meet one another for one final fight. If your leader wins the fight, you win the world (since all the Evil population will be gone); if Evil's leader wins the fight, you lose the world (since all your population have been wiped out and some Evil population are remaining). As I state before, walkers represent amounts of population and since during Armageddon, all your walkers (including settlements which are removed) gather into your leader, your leader represents your entire population and likewise Evil's leader will represent the entire Evil population. Because of this, it's important to check the population meters before you press the Armageddon button because once it's pressed, there is no going back. Because you need a lot of manna to do Armageddon (it takes a very long time for the arrow to reach the point at the end), you will most likely have more population than Evil but on some occasions, when Evil is being quiet and not trying to invade or perform powers, Evil might just be ahead on population. Usually this is difficult to tell since Evil can be ahead on population when the meters have reached the maximum they can show. What I'm trying to say is that although it's very uncommon, it is not impossible for Evil to win and you to lose on Armageddon so be careful about the population. If you're unsure about population, don't do it. As soon as you press Armageddon, all the settlements will be uprooted and their walkers as well as regular walkers will start walking towards the leader in order to gather with him. As with regular Go To Papal Magnet, the walkers will gather among themselves if they meet too. Knights will instantly transform back into normal walkers and will gather with the leader too. After you press the button, you will be instantly powerless; all you'll be able to do is search for things using the bracket buttons and place the Info-Shield on walkers. You are still able to change the behavioural modification buttons but they won't have any effect. If any swamps remain, you cannot remove them since you're powerless so it's a good idea to remove them before you press Armageddon especially if they're near the centre of the world. You do not want your leader to fall in if he represents most or all your population or you will lose the world! Although you are powerless to raise and lower terrain, bridges will be made automatically by the computer if any walkers are cut off by water and any drowning walkers will be raised so don't worry that you'll have to wait for the walker to drown before the world is finished because that won't happen. It is important to note that you can perform this power in every world and that Evil can never perform this power so don't worry if Evil have more population and that they'll do Armageddon because they won't. Armageddon is a quick way to end a world and is quite useful for this purpose. If you're finding it tough to eradicate Evil completely and they keep coming back, Armageddon can be an easy way out. Armageddon can also be the solution to a particularly tough world on which you're just ahead on population but Evil keep making knights for example. Armageddon can end the world quickly - just make sure you're ahead on population. Despite its uses, Armageddon can be seen as a cheap way out of a world and therefore a form of "cheating" and less fun. The hardcore players out there might want to avoid using Armageddon and see if they can win the difficult worlds without using this power but it's up to you. ******************************************************************************* *** Reducing Evil's Population *** As I stated before, the best way to stop Evil performing various powers on your settlements and ultimately to win the game is to reduce Evil's population. Logically, the best way to do this is not to kill their population with swamps but to stop Evil from producing population in the first place. The way Evil make population is obviously with their settlements; the more settlements Evil have, the more population will be produced and the more manna Evil will have to perform annoying earthquakes, swamps, knights and volcanoes. Earthquakes are good to some degree but you'll quickly find that Evil flatten the terrain again too quickly. Multiple earthquakes might slow Evil down a bit but still it's too easy to repair them. Swamps don't uproot settlements and Evil remove them too quickly as well. Knights can remove settlements but if Evil have a lot of population, you'll find that even knights struggle to lower Evil's population since Evil have a habit of producing walkers from their settlements just before knights fight it when their rating is high. This takes up more time which means it will take longer for the knight to destroy all the settlements; couple this with the fact that Evil can remove the ruined cropland with tremendous speed on difficult worlds and Evil walkers just build settlements around them anyway. The best way of removing settlements is with volcanoes. Multiple volcanoes can strip Evil of a lot of settlements at once and it can take Evil a while to flatten the terrain again - even on the more difficult worlds. You will soon notice a drastic reduction in the number of powers Evil perform. There is one snag in the volcano solution though and that's if you can't do volcanoes. It's important to remember that all volcanoes are are raised terrain with rocks scattered on top. You can't create rocks on their own but you can create the mountainous terrain simply by raising the terrain in terrain with lots of Evil settlements. To do this you'll either need just a walker if the world type is Build Near Towns Or People or you will need a settlement if the world type is Build Near Towns Only. Either way, the best way to get one of your walkers or settlements in Evil territory is to put the behavioural modification button on Fight Then Settle. Eventually, a walker or two will stray far enough into their territory for you to do damage with these "makeshift volcanoes" or your walkers will win a settlement (all you need is simply one small settlement No. 1, a tent) and you can start making makeshift volcanoes and uprooting a lot of their settlements. Get as many up as you can and keep the terrain up so that they can't build again. Keep your tent their for as long as possible before Evil walkers start to attack it. If they do, just uproot that as well and go and find another small settlement around which you can create makeshift volcanoes. Combine these makeshift volcanoes with your normal volcanoes when your manna runs low or with your knights, after all, the ruined settlements are almost like rocks and on mountainous terrain it doesn't matter. Make your makeshift volcanoes with makeshift rocks! It doesn't matter, as long as Evil can't settle and make population because population is the key to the game. Evil of course will never do this trick. Sometimes, in rare cases, a flood will be the best method of reducing their population. You will have tried everything beforehand and are still struggling to reduce Evil's population because floods should really be a last resort because they're such a pain to carry out. After you do the flood, keep building terrain and settlements and try to win as quickly as possible. ******************************************************************************* *** Go To Papal Magnet *** You should know by now what Go To Papal Magnet does and how to use it. There are a few extra things that need to be said about the function though. Go To Papal Magnet can be used to invade Evil settlements, and basically to bring a lot of population to a certain area. Evil will also use Go To Papal Magnet to your disadvantage. For example, Evil will do an earthquake or a volcano when you have it on which uproots settlements and causes the walkers not to resettle. One way in which Evil will use it to your disadvantage is that when Evil have a leader whom they deem to have greater strength than your leader (usually they will have more population than you too) they will place their Papal Magnet on top of yours in a very aggressive move which, if left, will cause your and their leader to fight with his leader winning. This can be very frustrating since you cannot move your Papal Magnet anywhere without Evil's too and thus can't create a strong leader from scratch without being threatened with this action. There are several ways to turn this move by Evil to your advantage. If you have slightly more population or a lot more population, create a strong leader very quickly and defeat Evil's leader which will give a boost to your manna and will lower Evil's population a bit. This outcome is quite unlikely though since Evil probably have more population if they're doing this. You can keep moving your (and therefore their) Papal Magnet to different locations to try and avoid their leader but they'll catch up eventually so I recommend placing the Papal Magnets all the way to a distant corner of the world preferably with water and then take it off Go To Papal Magnet. Evil's leader will always go all the way there and even build bridges to accomplish this task which will buy you a bit of time to alter the game in your favour. It's quite funny to watch their leader go all the way there too! It should be noted that as soon as you take it off Go To Papal Magnet, you won't be able to move the Evil Papal Magnet as well so move it quickly while it's still on then immediately change to Settle or something. You can also drown Evil's leader while they're doing this trick or swamp them and as soon as their leader is dead or too weak, the Papal Magnet won't be moved with yours anymore. If you can't do swamps and Evil can, a good way to lure their leader into one of their own swamps is to move their Papal Magnet into the path of a swamp while he's doing this annoying trick. It can be quite tricky but if you line up the Papal Magnets perfectly and as long as your leader is ahead of the swamp, Evil's leader should fall in and you can start attacking Evil properly. This could be construed as a form of cheating but I consider it a valid trick and have recovered from tricky situations many times with this method. When Evil are invading your settlements using their leader and Papal Magnet, be sure to uproot every settlement that their leader wins to prevent them from gaining a foothold near your settlements and also to stop them getting more settlements. You should be trying to drown him or swamp him all the time too. If you can't swamp and Evil are preventing you from drowning the Evil leader (Evil do this usually when their rating is high), just try to wear him down. Do not put it on Fight Then Settle as all your walkers will flock to him and will die. Leave it on Settle and let them build; just keep uprooting the settlements Evil wins and do not let Evil get a foothold. Eventually, the leader will either die or will be weak enough so that Evil recall him to get a strength boost in his own territory. Remember that drowned leaders will be saved by Evil from time to time so keep an eye on them with the help of the Info-Shield. Ignore them at your peril! ******************************************************************************* *** Fight Then Settle *** Evil will sometimes set their behaviour on Fight Then Settle. You'll know this because Evil walkers will come flocking to your settlements. If too many flock to the same settlement and you think it will lose, uproot it. If you can swamp the walkers, do so; if you can drown the walkers, do so just don't let Evil take the settlement or you might set yourself up for a punishment earthquake, swamp or volcano and a manna drop penalty. Evil will put Fight Then Settle on when provoked. Do not go fighting Evil settlements when there are lots of Evil Settlements and too few of your walkers to fight them. If you do win one and Evil come flocking towards it, do a makeshift volcano on their territory, ignore your remaining good walker and get on with something else. A good strategy to stop your walkers and Evil's walkers from meeting too early is to "cut off." Usually, you will start a world with Evil on the botton of it and you on the top separated by a bit or a lot of water but sometimes you'll start on the same bit of terrain and it is a good idea to separate your and Evil's settlements with a stretch of water. Try and make it as wide as possible and keep monitoring it because Evil will try and join back on when they get powerful enough. For the more daring players, worlds in which Evil and Good start on the same bit of terrain might be a blessing. This is because it might be possible to win the world very quickly by invading Evil's settlements early on and drowning the remaining walkers. Just make sure Evil aren't too far away and that you have more population than Evil do at the time. If pulled off, it might save a lot of difficulty later on. I've won worlds that get very hard later on by killing off Evil early on. Experiment; every world is different and different strategies can win different worlds. ******************************************************************************* *** Gather Then Settle *** It is a good idea to put this on when the world has a harsh landscape such as Snow And Ice. The stronger walkers created by gathering will take longer to perish and are thus more likely to find somewhere to settle before they die. This behaviour can be annoying when many walkers are present as they will often deviate away from flat terrain in order to gather with each other. Put it back to Settle if this becomes a nuisance. ******************************************************************************* *** Settle *** This should be the most common behaviour you use as settling becomes your walkers' priority and the more settlements you have, the more population you will get. In harsher landscapes, Gather Then Settle might be a better idea at first when most of your walkers are weak. Once you get established, put it back to settle because you will have an abundance of walkers. ******************************************************************************* *** Invading *** Invading is an excellent way of attacking Evil especially if you can't create knights. Simply create a strong leader and place the Papal Magnet in Evil an Evil settlement and your leader will win it. Once enough settlements have been acquired, place the behaviour on Fight Then Settle. Be careful as your leader might get weakened by a repeated onslaught of Evil walkers. If Evil put their behaviour on Fight Then Settle, remove their settlements and watch them all swarm to your leader who will then kill them all and you will have removed a lot of Evil's capability for creating population. Eventually, you should wear them down enough so that you are well in the lead on population. Never be merciful towards Evil and allow them to keep a few settlements or walkers if you intend to win the game. Go in for the kill and wipe them all out as soon as possible. The object of the game is to win by wiping all of Evil out. ******************************************************************************* *** Continental Shelf *** As I stated before, settlement No. 9s take a long time to produce a walker but they do produce population at a faster rate. If all your settlements are of this type, you could not be producing many walkers and not building settlements at a fast enough rate. A good way of making sure you have lots of smaller settlements which produce more walkers is to build what I call a "continental shelf." It's not really a continental shelf in the strictest sense but rather a border around the world of two tier terrain which is narrow enough to ensure that settlement No. 9s cannot be built. This will produce an abundance of walkers who will wander around. Of course, you'll have fewer settlement No. 9s as a result but the smaller number won't affect things too much. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ****** FAQs ****** This is a section of common problems and how to overcome them quickly. All the information in this section is in the main guide but for those who want quick answers, here's an FAQ. - Evil have done an earthquake. What do I do? Flatten the terrain again as quickly as they do. It can be quite annoying when they do lots of them when it is the only thing they can do but you'll just have to keep at it. - Evil have swamped me. Pause the game and use the Swords In Brackets button to view all your settlements one by one until you find the swamps. - Evil have made a knight. Don't panic. Pause the game and search for Evil's Papal Magnet. The knight should be nearby. Swamp him or drown him and put the Info-Shield on him to keep an eye on him. - Evil keep placing their Papal Magnet on mine. Quickly place your Papal Magnet in a distant corner of the world and their Papal Magnet will be placed with yours. Immediately put the behaviour modification on Settle afterwards to stop your leader following. Their leader will walk all the way to their Papal Magnet. Use this time to reduce their population. - Evil have volcanoed me. Earthquake it down if you can then remove the remaining rocks and flatten the terrain. If they keep doing them, find a way to reduce their population. - Evil have done a flood. Use the Helmet In Brackets button to cycle through all your walkers and raise them up one by one. Don't stop till you've found them all. Once you have, rebuild the terrain very quickly and keep the behaviour on Settle. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ****** Bugs/Glitches ****** Here I will describe various bugs and glitches in Populous, how they can be obtained and how they can be used to your advantage. *** Landscape Out *** This is the glitch landscape used on worlds 5995-5999, 6995-6999, 7995-7999 etc. This is explained in better detail in the Worlds section of this guide found below. *** Leader Knights *** Normally, when a leader turns into a knight, the leader no longer exists and the Papal Magnet is placed where the knight was created to show where the leader ceased to exist. Sometimes though, a knight will be created who is also a leader. No Papal Magnet will be left behind and the knight will be carrying the smaller Papal Magnet symbol with him (either a miniature ankh or skull). To create a leader knight, place the Papal Magnet inside a settlement No. 9 (large castle) and when the leader is standing inside the castle, knight him. Do not allow the leader to go inside the castle and disappear, simply allow him to stand there by making him too strong to go in the castle. Hopefully, if you did it right, the knight will be carrying the symbol with him and he'll be a leader knight. The leader knight will not behave like a leader at all and will not gravitate towards the Papal Magnet as a regular leader will. Walkers will be attracted to him however and as soon as one gathers with the leader knight, the leader knight will become a regular knight and the Papal Magnet will be placed to show that the leader has ceased to exist. The only use for them is that they might cause a few walkers to follow the knight into battle and fight a few settlements themselves or they might cause extra walkers to gather with the knight and make him stronger. They are very rare but I have spotted Evil leader knights. They disappear very quickly though because an Evil walker will usually gather with the knight soon after they're created. *** Unoccupied Settlements *** Normally, when you uproot a settlement, the settlement disappears and a walker replaces it. There is a way for a settlement to become "permanent" i.e. if you try to uproot it, it remains in place and no walker replaces it. This can only happen when settlement No. 9s (large castles) become unoccupied. To make a large castle unoccupied you have to drown the walkers in them while they're fighting. You will notice that when a settlement is fighting, a walker will appear on top of it to fight the invader. While the fight is occurring, the settlement is momentarily permanent i.e. you can raise/lower the terrain surrounding it and the settlement will not be altered while the fight happens. If you're quick enough, you can try to drown the two fighting walkers before the fight ends and the settlement will become permanent forever. When this first happened, I thought I could make a walker "reoccupy" it and tried placing the Papal Magnet in there to get the leader to reoccupy it but it didn't work. The unoccupied large castle behaves in the same way as a ruined settlement and the cropland behaves like ruined cropland. Raise and lower the cropland and it is removed; sink the parts of the settlement and they will disappear too. Settlements can be built next to this unoccupied settlement and it looks very strange. This glitch can only occur with settlement No. 9s because of their size. Other settlements only occupy one tile of terrain and so when you drown the walkers inside, you also drown the settlement so only the unoccupied cropland remains. The unoccupied cropland is interesting but not as much as the settlement. *** Demoted Knights *** This is the most useful of the glitches. This will demote a knight back into a regular walker and so make them less dangerous. In fact it's an excellent way of dealing with knights since if Evil raise them up again, there won't be a dangerous knight rampaging around and I recommend this glitch as an effective counter-measure for knights. I didn't mention it in the strategies section since it is technically a glitch and could be construed as cheating but as it works you should use it if you're in trouble. To change knights back into regular walkers, the water must be harmful and not fatal. If the water is fatal, you shouldn't need to use this glitch. When the knight is fighting a walker or a settlement, try to drown him and his opponent. If you manage to get them both in the water before the fight ends the knight will be demoted back to a regular walker. Leave him drowning for as long as possible though since he is probably very strong. Evil will sometimes raise him up and he'll join back with their leader to make a strong leader whom they'll turn into a knight whom you'll then demote and... this can go on for a long time. Just keep demoting him as knights are too dangerous to be left alone. This can be tricky to pull off sometimes when Evil's rating is high because they will try to prevent you from drowning the knight. Just keep at it and you'll soon prevail. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ****** Worlds ****** The game starts at world number 0 GENESIS. Depending upon how well you do at the world and if you win, you will jump a number of worlds. The maximum number of worlds you can jump is 9 so if you do GENESIS really well you will go on to World number 9 BURWILCON. If you win the world badly, you will only jump one world so if you do GENESIS badly for example, you will only go on to 1 HURTOUTORD. The only thing I can't figure out are parameters and rules for jumping worlds. For example, I discovered HURTOUTORD because I purposely did GENESIS very badly. I let Evil invade me, take a lot of my settlements etc. and then fought back only to allow Evil to get me again and again. I think this process took at least two hours to accomplish but I was pleased with the result. The most common worlds to get after GENESIS are 3 TIMUSLUG and 5 SCOQUEMET. *** The Score Screen *** After a world is either won or lost, you will get a red score screen which tells you how you did. The score will be at the bottom and also will be listed the number of towns (settlement Nos. 1-8), castles (settlement No. 9), the number of knights and the number of fights won for both Good and Evil. Obviously the loser of the world will have everything at 0 except for the fights. I've never been sure but this list might have something to do with the score for the world. Time is certainly irrelevant because I've won some worlds within a few minutes and I've only jumped a few worlds. You can play the game without worrying too much about the Score Screen and just treat the number of worlds you jump as random if you want because you'll keep going to new worlds after you win the previous one. The Score Screen itself might have something to to with the number of worlds jumped after winning a world. If you have any further information about this please e-mail me and tell me about it. Update: I think having a leader at the time of winning a world affects the score a lot. Most of the time when I had a leader and won the game my score was above 100000 and most of the time when I had no leader my score was around 50000. A couple of times this was not the case but most of the time it was. *** The Blue-Hooded Figure *** After the red score screen, a blue-hooded figure will tell you which world you must do next. In the early worlds, he will say "Well Done Mortal", after 50 worlds he will say "Well Done Immortal" after 100 worlds he will say "Well Done Eternal", after 150 worlds he will say "well Done Deva", after 200 worlds he will say "Well Done Greater Being", after 250 worlds he will say "Well Done Deity", after 300 worlds he will say "Well Done Greater Deity", after 350 worlds he will say "Well Done Mortal God", after 400 worlds he will say "Well Done Greater God" and finally after 450 worlds he will say "Well Done Eternal God." You stay as Eternal God for the rest of the game. After this screen, you're taken to the next world's World Information Screen. *** World Types *** It is important to understand that World Types will repeat themselves in sets of five worlds. For example, consider the World Type GENESIS; GENESIS has bottomless swamps, fatal water, Grassy Plains landscape, Evil is very slow, Evil rating is very low, both Good and Evil start with three walkers each, Good can perform all the powers and Evil can perform none. This world type will repeat itself for the next four worlds which, including GENESIS, makes five worlds; GENESIS, HURTOUTORD, World No. 2, TIMUSLUG and CALDIEHILL will all have the above attributes. The only thing that's different about them is the layout of the terrain at the start of the world and the number of trees, rocks and good rocks. This is usually enough to make the character and difficulty of the world different enough so you won't mind repeating a world type. A new World Type starts and finishes every five worlds so 0-4 will be the same type, 5-9 will be the same type, 10-14 will be the same type, 15-19 will be the same type and 20-24 will be the same type etc. ad nauseam. *** World Name List *** Here is a long list of world names for this version of Populous. I started a complete list of worlds many years ago but never finished it because with world jumping it's difficult to start on the precise number you need. After the 2011 update of this FAQ I discovered that there is a world name password generator located at http://www.smspower.org/Cheats/Populous-SMS and any world name password up to the last one, 32768 SHISODING, can be obtained using this. This latest update renders this list redundant now but I've kept it as a reference. Please note that a few of these might be incorrect. 0 GENESIS 51 BUGWILLIN 106 MOREALL 579 TIMINORD 1 HURTOUTORD 52 SHADOGODON 111 ALPDIPERT 597 COREAEND 3 TIMUSLUG 53 COROPERT 112 BADKOPOUT 602 VERYDIICK 4 CALDIEHILL 54 BINMEOUT 115 BUGGBJOB 820 SHADIOUT 5 SCOQUEMET 55 SADMPT 117 CORSODDON 823 SADSODER 6 SWAUER 56 LOWHIPBAR 122 VERYQUEER 826 VERYUSMAR 8 EOAOZORD 57 QAZOUTER 362 MORADOR 833 HURTINGCON 9 BURWILCON 58 VERYELIN 390 SWAAING 840 EOAUSCON 10 MORINGILL 59 MINGBDON 396 BILOZED 848 BADIILL 11 NIMIHILL 60 HAMINMAR 398 MMPTTOUT 851 BUGSODME 16 BADACON 61 FUTLOPLUG 404 SHADEHAM 861 FUTINGDOR 18 HOBDIETORY 62 SUZTT 412 HAMOGOBOY 862 SUZIICK 19 BUGQUEEND 63 DOUPEBAR 421 SCOLOPPAL 863 DOUCEHOLE 21 CORBEHAM 64 SHIOZER 422 SWATHOLE 865 HURTHIPAL 22 BINOZOND 65 HURTIKEING 430 WEAVKOPOUT 871 KILLTLAS 23 SADWILLOW 66 JOSOGOORD 439 SADIKEBAR 877 RINGMEPERT 24 LOWINGICK 67 TIMOBAR 447 DOUGBER 880 BADOUTBAR 25 QAZITORY 68 CALMELUG 452 CALEAHILL 887 SADOZBAR 26 VERYMEEND 69 SCOMPHILL 456 EOADEORD 899 TIMTLUG 27 MINMPME 70 SWAHIPMET 457 BURDICON 907 NIMHIPTORY 28 HAMHIPOLD 71 KILLQAZET 459 NIMQAZTORY 3572 SHADWILCON 29 FUTOUTBOY 72 EOAEING 462 WEAVASHAM 3662 WEAVQAZAL 30 SUZALOW 73 BURGBORD 464 BADYCON 4999 KILLOGOAL 31 DOUUSICK 74 MORINCON 470 BINDFOND 5009 IMMTDOR 32 SHIDIEHOLD 75 NIMLOPILL 475 MINCEME 5050 VERYSODME 33 HURTLOPLAS 76 BILTHILL 477 FUTSODBOY 5056 SHIOEND 34 JOSTME 77 RINGOXMET 481 HURTDIELAS 5063 KILLASLAS 35 TIMPEOLD 78 WEAVEAED 484 CALDEBOY 5068 BILIKEDAL 36 CALOZBOY 79 ALPIKEHAM 485 SCODIDOR 5077 CORASOUT 37 SCOWILDOR 81 IMMOCON 487 KILLINGPERT 5085 FUTDET 38 SWAINGPAL 82 HOBMEILL 496 BADQUET 5088 SHIQAZING 39 KILLOHOLE 83 BUGMPTORY 500 SHADWILDON 5093 SCOYBAR 40 EOAMELAS 86 BINEHAM 511 DOUUBAR 5100 BILDIMET 41 BURMPAL 87 SADGBOND 518 SWAASMET 5108 SHADAED 42 MORHIPPIL 88 LOWINGLON 523 NIMDIEHILL 5116 HAMINGOLD 43 NIMMOUTJOB 93 FUTIKEOLD 532 SHADMPEND 5119 DOUASICK 44 BILADOR 94 SUZOGOBOY 535 SADAOND 5120 SHISODHOLE 45 RINGGBPAL 96 SHIMEICK 538 VERYLOPITOLE 5122 JOSAME 46 WEAVINPERT 97 HURTDIHOLE 541 FUTOZOLD 5125 SCOQUEDOR 47 ALPLOPOUT 98 JOSKOPLAS 587 NIMMECON 5129 BURWILAL 48 BADTAL 99 TIMQAZAL 554 MORPEAL 5130 MORINGPILL 49 IMMPEPIL 103 KILLSODDAL 564 SHADGBLIN 5136 BADAAL 50 HOBOZJOB 105 BUROXLAS 572 HAMODON 5145 QAZIJOB I must say that it is not advisable to try and guess world names. The chances of finding one this way are very low. I did however find one by accident. I accidentally typed 500 SHADWILDON as SHADWILCON and it found a completely different world: 3572 SHADWILCON. 4999 KILLOGOAL was mentioned for a long time in magazines and guides as the "last world in the game" because of its number. It is not the last world and it is certainly not the hardest either. You can do nothing while Evil can do earthquakes, swamps and knights while the landscape is Grassy Plains. You also both start with 15 population which makes the world not that difficult in my opinion especially as volcanoes aren't a problem. I have gotten up to KILLOGOAL legitimately and have played the game through the 1000s, 2000s, 3000s and 4000s to get to it. After KILLOGOAL and other '999 worlds, the game gets a bit easier for a while before increasing in difficulty after another 100 worlds or so. *** The End? *** The game states on the back of the box that there are 5000 worlds to complete. This is not strictly true. The game I believe, goes on a lot longer than 5000 worlds. The trouble is, from World 5120 SHISODHOLE onwards, the game no longer accepts the world names as passwords and so unless you play the game without switching the game off after this world, you will not be able to use the passwords you obtain. This means that world 5119 DOUASICK is the last password from which you can continue your game and thus it is the final password that works. Because of this, the game does only have approximately 5000 worlds as stated on the back of the box. The trouble is the game has no proper ending. There is no credits screen, no end to the story or anything like that, only passwords that don't work after a certain world. I once tried not switching it off and got to World 5300 and as it still didn't end and as I'd been playing for several hours, I gave up. With modern technology however, it is possible to continue the game beyond 5119 DOUASICK and turn the game off and continue later. I am of course talking about emulators, ROMs and save states. I used an emulator over several weeks to get to World 5995 NIMINGTORY and what I saw shocked me: it was glitch-terrain. Some screenshot links are below. *** World 5995 NIMINGTORY *** The World Information Screen looks normal enough except curiously it says the landscape is "Out." This "Out" landscape type is glitch landscape and I don't include it with the proper six landscape types. I also don't know whether the word "Out" is intended or whether the name itself is also a glitch. I'm guessing the name is intended because the rest of the World Information Screen is normal (although none of it matters in the glitch landscape). Press Button 1, and you'll enter a world with a World Map of flashing blue and white and a Close Up Map of white flashing pixels. Walkers are visible and settlements are only visible with the flags they have. Nine out of ten tries at this world type and the game will crash so you'll have to reload the save state and try again. Also, the first time I got up to this world, it corrupted the save state so be warned. This "Out" landscape seems to have either no rules or very strange rules. Your manna bar will increase quickly and you'll be able to raise and lower the "terrain" anywhere. I don't know how I won, but simply raising the terrain on Evil "settlements" seemed to erase their population and I won the game. Other times I lost using this method so a lot of it is trial and error I suppose. Remember that nine out of ten tries, the game will crash and I had to try this world about fifty times before I won and it got quite frustrating. Just keep at it and you'll "win" the world eventually. Once you do, you'll be taken to world 6000 and above which are normal worlds again and you can go on to the next glitch world which is world 6995! As I discussed earlier, the World Types repeat themselves in groups of five. This means that the "Out" glitch World Type is from worlds 5995-5999, 6995-6999, 7995-7999 etc. The furthest I ever got was to world 7997. I got up to world 7995 and spent ages doing it. Once I did, I ended up on world 7997 which try as a I might, I could not do: it just kept crashing again and again and since I was getting seriously bored with Populous anyway, I decided to call it a day at that. I'd spent enough time on it already. Try it yourself if you want and see if you can get further. Remember that the rest of the worlds in the 6000s and 7000s are normal apart from the '995-'999s so there are relatively very few glitch worlds. You can probably understand why the designers of the game stopped the passwords working! *** World 5995 NIMINGTORY Screenshot Links *** The first screenshot is of the World Information Screen and the other two are of the Close Up Map. http://i493.photobucket.com/albums/rr295/edwithmj/5995NIMINGTORYinfoscreen.png http://i493.photobucket.com/albums/rr295/edwithmj/5995NIMINGTORYmap.png http://i493.photobucket.com/albums/rr295/edwithmj/5995NIMINGTORYmap2.png As you can see, everything is normal in the World Information Screen except the Landscape is "Out." The Close Up Map shows glitch terrain even when it's supposed to be showing water. Walkers are visible and a couple of settlement flags can just be seen too. Here's a quote from Maxim, one of the admins of www.smspower.org about this: "I guess it is a glitch in the game, using an invalid landscape type; it could have been something they intended to use (a new landscape type at higher levels) or it might just be a bug. It is possible they never tested those level numbers, because of the cutoff, so it doesn't matter; or it's possible they added the cutoff because of the bug." So perhaps the "Out" landscape type was originally intended to be a difficult landscape type for a later world, maybe to be used as a final world. That would make sense seeing as they appear at every x995-x999 World Type from 5995-5999 onwards. If so, that might've led to a proper ending but we'll never know. *** New Information *** Go to http://www.smspower.org/Cheats/Populous-SMS and you will find a complete list of worlds. After testing this out, it appears that there are 32768 world name passwords. The game designers did indeed stop the passwords from working from 5119 SHISODHOLE onwards but the site provides a patch for the Populous game ROM which I applied to the ROM using WindHex hex editor. After this is successfully applied, any world name password will work when entered and I was able to get up to world 32768 SHISODING. It's a good job I never tried to get up to this world by playing the game normally as it would've taken me a while! The first thing I noticed about this world was that the terrain on the World Map looked exactly the same as GENESIS except it was Rock And Lava. The World Information Screen was different too with different attributes. Good and Evil started with one walker each and I completed the world as quickly as I could. The game did not end after this and instead I was taken to world 32773 SCOQUEMET. Does that name ring a bell? Yep, it's world number 5! I entered this into the password entry screen and it took me to SCOQUEMET again except this time it was the normal SCOQUEMET with Battle Number 5. So I did SHISODING again and luckily got back to the 32773 SCOQUEMET again and played it. Again, it had different attributes and the landscape was Rock And Lava instead of SCOQUEMET's normal landscape Desert but the terrain layout at the start was identical to the original SCOQUEMET. I played this one to completion and did the next one also until I got to BUGQUEEND which is Battle Number 19 normally but this time it was 32787 and instead of being Rock And Lava it was Snow And Ice. So the game repeats itself after 32768 worlds? Here's a quote from Maxim, one of the admins of www.smspower.org about this: "I think if you got up to level 65536 (16 bits) the game would display GENESIS identically to how it normally looks, because this is the true upper limit for the level number representation. It uses the level number to generate the level itself, and as you can see there are similarities when you get up to these high numbers which were never intended to be available. When it generates the passwords, it is wrapping over at 15 bits, because it uses three five-bit word part sets. In theory, if you were good enough at the game, lucky enough and spent way too much time, you could play the original game all the way up to level 65536 and wrap around, playing indefinitely." So in theory the game will loop back to GENESIS with the normal GENESIS attributes after 65536 worlds. I have no way of testing this because even the ROM hack won't help me as the passwords for worlds above 32768 only take me to the original 32768 worlds. So I'd have to complete 32768 worlds from SHISODING onwards to test this theory. I think I'll take Maxim's word for it! The website above renders my list of worlds redundant as any world name can be obtained using the site's world name generator although the patch must be applied for world name passwords of worlds 5120 and above to work. With the generator I was finally able to see the elusive World No. 2 which I now know is JOSAMAR. With this generator, the glitch worlds can be completely skipped altogether as there's no need to do them to get to the later worlds. I've kept my World Name List above as a reference. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ****** Hidden Messages ****** There are five extra passwords that can be entered to produce hidden messages in the game. Once entered, the messages can be viewed but the game must be reset in order to enter new passwords. I shall list the passwords and paste the message obtained below them. Screenshots are available on http://www.smspower.org/Cheats/Populous-SMS if you want to see them. SANTIAGO 09 NOV 89 HELLO TIM AND ROZ THANKYOU FOR YOUR LETTERS. THEY PARODY MY DRAB EXISTENCE WELL. FINAL IN 3 DAYS SO ALL IS DARK. MUST GO NOW AS I AM RUNNING OUT OF SPACE. BEST OF LUCK TO YOU BOTH. SEE YOU IN RIO. REGARDS PETER. STOCKHOLM DET VAR EN GONG EN SVENSKA FLICKA SOM TOG LILLA SIMON FUR ALLTID PIXIE HI NIKKI MANY THANKS FOR ALL YOUR HELP. THIS IS TO LET YOU KNOW THAT YOUR EFFORTS REALLY ARE APPRECIATED. BYE SI. CODETOGO IT WAS QUITE A CHALLENGE EH DAN. IT WOULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED WITHOUT YOU. THANXALOT CTG. TIME FOR ME TO GET A LIFE. CHEERS PEZ FRIO. STEVEANDJO HEY BRUV AN SIS-IN-LAW HAVING A WONDERFUL TIME WISH YOU WERE HERE MY ROOM MARKED WITH AN X. SEE YOU SOON BIGBOMBASHER. I have no idea why these were included in the game. If anyone has any information about them, please e-mail me at the address below. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ****** Final Notes ****** Thanks to Maxim and everyone else at www.smspower.org for the information in the Hidden Messages section, the ROM patch, the additional information about the passwords, and the World Name Password generator on their site. This guide can be found on the following sites: www.gamefaqs.com www.gamewinners.com If you wish to post this guide on your site, please send me an e-mail first to the address below. I hope you enjoyed reading this. I consider Populous to be the best game on the Sega Master System because of its longevity and varied game play. Having trouble? E-mail me at edwithmj (at) yahoo (dot) co (dot) uk and I will respond. Thanks for reading. Good Day.