paulg@frith.uucp (Gregory R Paul) (09/12/90)
I've been fooling around with Populous for a while, and have gotten stumped at a point. I have some friend who've made it past level 500 without too much trouble, so I'm wondering if maybe I just missed something. I'm stuck on BURUING, level 137. It is a rocky world. The computer is very fast reacting, but poor rating, has earthquakes, volcano, and knights. I have everything if I remember right. I can outgain the computer for the first couple minutes, until he starts getting accumulations of power. Earthquakes and Volcanos are relatively useless against him since his very high speed can fix these far quicker than I can hope to regenerate points. By the time I can get a knight into his territory, he can defeat it relatively easily, and I can't keep up. I've tried sending my people into his land, but the distance and rocky territory put me at a serious disadvantge by the time they get there and it's a quick slaughter. I'm at a loss what to do. I can't trade disasters. Can't beat him militarily. Can't accumulate enough points to flood the world before he kicks me around. Any helpful strategies? -- Greg Paul | Electrical/Computer Engineer in search of a job.. paulg@frith.egr.msu.edu | Case Center Consultant | "So why exactly were these borogroves sysop: Sietch Tabr | so mimsy anyways?"
exspes@gdr.bath.ac.uk (P E Smee) (09/13/90)
In article <1990Sep12.063220.16021@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu> paulg@frith.uucp (Gregory R Paul) writes: > > I've been fooling around with Populous for a while, and have gotten >stumped at a point. I have some friend who've made it past level 500 >without too much trouble, so I'm wondering if maybe I just missed >something. Two possible ideas which you might not have considered. In the really hostile worlds (rock and ice) the starting terrain is often bad enough that you lose some of your initial people before they can settle at all. It is often handy to use 'join together' mode for the first few minutes, until you can stabilize some land, to preserve all your initial strength. (This is the little man icon, NOT 'go to leader'.) Second, if you can get anyone relatively near to the baddies, the hand-knit volcano is often a powerful ploy. That's where you get your settlement (or person, if land built on people) in one corner of the screen, and then raise some point on the opposite edge to max. The resulting pyramid is cheaper, and often more effective, than a real volcano, and you can do it earlier. (Of course, you have to be near enough to his settlements that it will effect them -- the damage 'diameter' is two screen-widths minus 2 squares, centered on the point you raise.) Failing all that, my experience is that the levels do NOT get uniformly more difficult as you go up. Maybe your friend had an easier track. I hit 500, but there was one level in the middle which I never did manage to beat. Eventually, I skipped around it by going back one or two worlds (of the ones I'd played, you do keep a record I hope). Replayed _that_ until I got a different enough score to be sent onto a different next world. (Someday I'll go back to the unbeatable one.) Oh, and having a castle destroyed by a knight costs you LOTS. It saves you lots of mana if you can arrange to keep an eye on his knight, and destroy your castle yourself (raise its center) just before the knight attacks it. I put the shield ('watcher') on his knight in that situation, so that I can skip back everytime the shield display shows the knight walking, to nobble whatever settlement is about to be attacked. -- Paul Smee, Computing Service, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1UD, UK P.Smee@bristol.ac.uk - ..!uunet!ukc!bsmail!p.smee - Tel +44 272 303132
stelmack@screamer.csee.usf.edu (Gregory M. Stelmack) (09/14/90)
Don't forget our ever-popular sink-hole strategy: if water is fatal, just drop all four corners of land around any enemy (especially knights and leaders)...plop! he dies! Great for killing knights, and can really turn some levels around. And the go back and skip over is very necessary to getting all the way through...some levels just can't be beat without good luck... (BTW, my roommate has an ST -- head-to-head Populous is awesome! Also, Promised Lands is worth it just to check out the graphics...) -- Greg Stelmack -- Email: stelmack@sol.csee.usf.edu -- USmail: USF Box 1510, Tampa, FL 33620-1510 -- Amiga: the only way to compute!
dve@zooid.UUCP (David Mason) (09/16/90)
stelmack@screamer.csee.usf.edu (Gregory M. Stelmack) writes: > (BTW, my roommate has an ST -- head-to-head Populous is awesome! Also, > Promised Lands is worth it just to check out the graphics...) We have an A500 and a 386 box with VGA. We tried the head-to-head option using a null modem cable, and it works for a while, but whenever something major occurs (like a volcano or the swamp or rock laying thing) it suddenly pops up "Incompatible landscapes" and puts us back in one player mode. I'd really like to try it two-player. Do you or anyone else have any ideas what's going wrong? We checked through the manual but it wasn't much help.
stelmack@screamer.csee.usf.edu (Gregory M. Stelmack) (09/18/90)
In article <ZDTLP3w162w@zooid.UUCP> dve@zooid.UUCP (David Mason) writes: > >We have an A500 and a 386 box with VGA. We tried the head-to-head option >using a null modem cable, and it works for a while, but whenever something >major occurs (like a volcano or the swamp or rock laying thing) it suddenly >pops up "Incompatible landscapes" and puts us back in one player mode. I'd >really like to try it two-player. Do you or anyone else have any ideas >what's going wrong? We checked through the manual but it wasn't much help. Sorry, I can't help here. I would never consider hooking my poor Amiga up to an IBM -- it might throttle me, or worse start random Guru'ing :-). -- Greg Stelmack -- Email: stelmack@sol.csee.usf.edu -- USmail: USF Box 1510, Tampa, FL 33620-1510 -- Amiga: the only way to compute!
dve@zooid.UUCP (David Mason) (09/22/90)
stelmack@screamer.csee.usf.edu (Gregory M. Stelmack) writes: > > Sorry, I can't help here. I would never consider hooking my poor Amiga up to > an IBM -- it might throttle me, or worse start random Guru'ing :-). > > -- Greg Stelmack > -- Email: stelmack@sol.csee.usf.edu > -- USmail: USF Box 1510, Tampa, FL 33620-1510 > -- Amiga: the only way to compute! Thanks for the incredibly intelligent comments.