Super League 2024: Round 4 - Populous

[Total Eclipse]

Badacon: 10,297

[lifeschool]

Well done Total Eclipse, top of the table.

[Total Eclipse]

One more try...

BADACON: 10,234

[lifeschool]

Good stuff.!

[Total Eclipse]

Originally Posted by lifeschool

Good stuff.!

I saw your comment on the LA thread, so thought I'd explain how I play Populous (and indeed Populous 2). There's no "long game" involved as such.

I've always played with the aim of increasing my population as quickly as possible, as presumably more people = more mana. For these games however, where lower scores are better, I avoid using any effects.

On the Genesis level, I start by flattening the territory to get castles as soon as possible. Once a castle has been there for a while, I raise a corner of it's land so that it becomes a smaller tower. This will usually cause a person to spawn out in a couple of seconds, and so by doing this often, you can increase the number of your people walking around looking for a place to establish a new building. All the while, I'm flattening more land, so that very soon it's possible that new buildings will immediately appear as castles. I wanted to experiment with getting a big population walking around and me possibly using the gather command, so that I end up with a load of walking people that have a lot of hit points.

I tended to move into the enemy territory by placing the papal magnet in the middle of their buildings, then instruct the followers to go to the magnet. Once they reach it, I swapped their orders over to fight or create buildings. This usually gives me a foot into their area, and once I have a couple of castles in their land, I can continue to use the corner-raise technique to hopefully build more castles and take over more territory.

By instructing your people to go to the papal magnet (and again, by corner-lifting), you can get enough people to gather so that your leader is very strong. Then by carefully moving the magnet around and swapping between "go to magnet" and "fight", you almost have a knight that you can control.

The reason for me flattening a lot of the map is that I'm just waiting around for my people to fight, and my OCD doesn't like to see lots of little buildings where, with a bit of land levelling, there could be castles


Now, for Badacon, the strategy is a little different. Again, my aim is first to get a castle. This can take a couple of minutes, as the land where you start is a lot less flat, so there's a lot of levelling to do. This means that available mana keeps dropping to zero. However once the first castle is established, there's nearly always enough mana being generated so that I can raise and lower land whenever I need.

On this level, it's not so wise to use the papal magnet. Once the enemy realises you've got a leader, it'll try and place a swamp over him. As soon as you hear the sound of someone falling into a swamp, the button to go to the magnet will usually take you to where the swamp has been laid. So, I completely avoided moving the magnet, and last time around I tried to rely on flattening the land in the direction of the enemy, to try and encourage the movement of people in that direction. This generally works, but again, if I see that my people have built houses on the coastline, I'll go over and raise some land so that they make castles. The point here is that to get a low score based on the competition rules, It's necessary to win as many fights as possible, so again, the focus is on having a lot of people that can take on the enemy.

As for flattening the map, on my final attempt this is exactly what happened. I hadn't moved the magnet at all, and my people were wandering around looking for the last few enemy houses. Towards the end, enemy buildings weren't showing up on the map. I knew there must be a few, because the enemy population bar was still showing, but I couldn't see them on the map. So I filled in as much ground as I could, just for the hell of it, and for the first time ever I think, I'd completely levelled the whole map. Eventually I found a couple of small red houses hiding in a corner. In order to encourage my people to fight, I raised the centre of a couple of castles, removing the building completely and revealing the person inside, ready to look for a fight.

It's not how I'd usually play Populous, but wanting to avoid using any effects in order to keep my score low means that there's a different way to playing this time around.

FWIW, I think that both levels took around 45 minutes from start to finish.

[lifeschool]

Everyone remember to get your votes in for the next round!

[lifeschool]

Total Eclipse - Thanks for your story. @) I'm sure everything is fine, although I'm struggling to type at the moment as my KB is f***

[el_pasi]

Genesis: 8,690 (58800-50000-110)
Badacon: 15,379 (65450-50000-71)

Never played Populous properly, so it's nice to try this too. Populous 2 is ace game also, with that I'm more familiar
Hopefully counted points correctly.

[lifeschool]

Thanks El_pasi.

I only played this game for the first time during this round, and I always found the second game a bit daunting. I'm sure now I'm more familiar with the game, Pop 2 would be welcome, especially in the compo!

I finally got my A1200 keyboard working again, so now I can type more than short lines!

[lifeschool]

It's the last few days to play Populous.

So far, almost everyone has gained the completion star. If you are struggling, there is a flood of hints [perhaps a swamp?] over on Lemon.

[lifeschool]

Due to some milking, max battle score is now set to 500.

[capehorn]

Hmmm, not certain I understand the scoring system... here is the Genesis level without using Armageddon. How did I do?

[el_pasi]

Originally Posted by capehorn

Hmmm, not certain I understand the scoring system... here is the Genesis level without using Armageddon. How did I do?

Hi, looks like 19,189 points :
69300 - 50000 - (136-25) = 19,189

Correct me lifeschool, if I counted wrong

[lifeschool]

All good stuff!

Yeah, just remove 50k and the difference in battle score.

[capehorn]

Thanks, so the strategy to get the lowest score is to ultimately win, with as many battles as you can, without using any spells? So it's a long game to spread your settlements over as much of the map as you can, taking as much time as you can?

[lifeschool]

Originally Posted by capehorn

Thanks, so the strategy to get the lowest score is to ultimately win, with as many battles as you can, without using any spells? So it's a long game to spread your settlements over as much of the map as you can, taking as much time as you can?

Yeah the rules arn't perfect for this one. I changed them at the end of week 1 from + battle difference to - battle difference, hoping that this would mean those who are good with battles get more score. But that only works if everyone goes to the enemy with equal determination, and slow pokes can get a bigger score, leading to a longer game, and milking. Perhaps lowing the maximum battle score difference to 300 would have meant a much faster game?

[lifeschool]

This round is over!

Populous:

1st - pasquale (LA)
2nd - blizzard (LA)
3rd - volvomatt (LA)

Once upon a time, a game like Populous would have been deemed too difficult to score in the competition. I don't think the round was a huge success, but quite a few seemed to enjoy it.

No late score from TrapShot this time, so volovomatt leads the championship, with pasquale 1 point behind. Juanma moves up 8 places to 9th.

On to a double round.