Friday, August 22, 2014

Populous: the Beginning: juggling armies

Level 10 was another timed one, with an established village being sunk at the start by the enemy.  I was able to get two boats built quickly, and ferried nine followers and my shaman over to a stone head, which raised a partially-built village from the depths.  Converting all the wild men on that island to my cause, I rebuilt the houses and trained up some firewarriors, then took my meagre army over to the other island to quickly worship at the stone head there before the timer ran out.  I only succeeded because I made the worshipping party invisible, and they were therefore able to pray while my other warriors and preachers acted as bait for the attacking hoard.


The next level was more time consuming than difficult; there were two enemies, and the game hinted that the yellows were the weaker of the two.  I spent a while building my village and placing towers with firewarriors around the edge closest to the green base, while amassing an army of preachers, warriors and firewarriors around a campfire on a causeway I had built towards a stone head.  I was attacked several times by both greens and yellows, but managed to fend these off with relatively little loss - although once the green shaman did manage to place a swamp right in the middle of my settlement, leading to a few dead followers.

Once my army was a hundred-strong, I went off to the yellows, hoping the greens would not attack my relatively undefended village.  As it turns out, they were in the middle of attacking the yellows as well.  I was able to kill both enemy shamans, giving myself a load of mana for more destruction, and unlock the swamp spell before destroying the yellow village.  My army had been halved in size, but so had my enemy.

I went back to the village and started expanding.  The greens came by a few times on boats, but I was able to hit them with lightning quickly each time.  I rebuilt my army, this time to 120, and then went walking along the side of the land which the greens hadn't touched.  Halfway to the green settlement I was alerted that there was an invasion of my village - looking back I could see some invisible warriors had been infiltrating buildings, but they were, along with a couple of preachers, being killed by firewarrior towers.

Standing across from the greens, separated by a channel, I could see a vault of knowledge, containing hypnotise.  This was going to be key.  I raised a bridge and quickly crossed, then crowded my army around the vault while I worshipped it.  The enemy shaman came near and I killed her with lightning, then I gained the power meaning that I could just get the greens to fight themselves.  It didn't last long after that.

I'm getting closer to Bloodlust.

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