Populous Amiga 1989

Developed by Bullfrog Productions and released in 1989 for the Amiga microcomputer, Peter Molyneux's Populous is a real-time strategy god game famous for formalizing the feature-set of the god game genre, thereby paving the way for PowerMonger and RTS games in general.

Via its sculptable terrain (terraforming), 8-way screen-scrolling and brightly-colored tile-based field of play, Populous also influenced the design of X-COM and Civilization, which means that Populous is not only the seminal god game but also one of the most influential releases in computer game history.

As a Divine Being...
You have a group of followers from whom you derive your power. The more followers you have and the greater their achievements, the more power you wield. Unfortunately, there is another group of people who follow a different deity. Since there's barely enough room in the world for your own magnificence, two won't do. You must rid the world of the opposition. To do this, you will use your great power to move the earth and your devout followers to crush the misguided. -- Bullfrog, 1989.

The Object of Populous

In assuming the role of an undefined deity the object of Populous is to impose dominion on the world by guiding one's walkers, priests and knights (a populous) to destroy the bases and forces of the opposing deity, since a god without a following is no longer a god. In Conquest mode the Populous campaign has no fewer than 500 levels.

Guided by commands of Direction, Behavior and Divine Intervention, the walkers are little human follower sprites that wander about the world in real-time, constructing castles, multiplying in number and generating divine power for their deity. The player does not directly control the walkers as "units" but rather guides their actions indirectly via command icons that surround the playing field, which is presented like a military sand table.

Populous Playing Field

Populous employs an isometric field of play that scrolls in eight directions over contoured terrain made up of discrete, 64x48px tile-blocks. Most impressively, the terrain is sculptable; that is, tiles can be incrementally raised into mountains or lowered into seas by mousing-over them and clicking the left and right mouse buttons.

The way the Populous engine seems to effortlessly shift around and substitute multiple tiles is exceedingly impressive.

Populous terrain features seven levels of verticality. A mountain range is not a static object but rather a stack of terrain tile-chunks that can be dynamically modified in real-time, à la LEGO building blocks.

Such terraforming is rightly cited as an advanced feature in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri of 1999 -- well, Populous featured isometric terraforming one decade before SMAC.

The object of Populous terraforming is to sculpt 5x5 contiguously flat tiles upon which followers can build castles, flourish and generate mana reserves, which divine power the deity then draws upon in order to:

Convert leader-walkers into Knights (automated warriors that slay enemies and burn enemy cities to the ground)
Sculpt more terrain in preparation for more buildings, more followers and more mana
Wreak havoc on the enemy by way of destructive terraforming, war, floods, earthquakes, volcanoes and Armageddon (thereby consuming mana).

Settlement characteristics are controlled by terraforming: undulating or rolling terrain results in small and primitive settlements that facilitate expansion but lack defense, whereas flattened terrain results in large technologically-developed fortresses that expand more slowly but are difficult to conquer.

As with verticality, Populous terrain-types are also mechanical, not just included for visual variation or eye-candy. For example, some terrain-types impact the survivability of walkers and others impact the rate of settlement development. Terrain composition varies on a level by level basis.

Populous Gameplay

Basic Populous gameplay consists in guiding the walkers to settle, build and generate mana aka divine power. First the deity flattens the terrain, then the walkers build on the terrain and start generating mana, which the deity then employs to flatten more terrain, which more walkers build on, generating more mana. Rinse repeat for the snowballing effect.

The deity also employs Divine Interventions (natural disasters) that target terrain occupied by enemies and their settlements, which consumes much more mana than terraforming. Therefore, deities must build up aka increase settlement populations and settlement prosperity in order to deepen their mana reserves in preparation for the inevitable conflict with the opposing deity.

One of many strategies: The god elevates the land for the walkers to build on, then floods the countryside to submerge and drown the enemy that has built upon the lowlands.

Flooding is one of eight divine powers gods wield.

The walkers are guided towards enemy locations by terraforming in the direction of the enemy. Though more effectively, walkers are directed to follow the leader (a High Priest) and gather at Papal Magnets which can be placed on any land-based tile, an action that essentially functions as a Go-To command.

Walkers that cross paths combine to form stronger walkers, and Knights can be combined into juggernauts of destruction as well. The combining of "units" into stronger ones was imposed by the coders due to sprite number limitations.

Ultimately, the deity's forces must be guided to invade enemy territory and destroy the enemy but the opposing deity is seeking to do the same, which eventually causes conflict.

Navigation of Populous level maps is conducted in two ways: manually scrolling the playing field via arrow icons or jumping to points on the playing field via the Book of Worlds (an automap).

Since fog of war does not work with gods, enemy actions can be monitored by scrolling the playing field or clicking around the automap.

Populous Praise & Criticism

The design, coding and aesthetics of Populous are seminal and king-tier. However, I have a few issues with the game's design philosophy and execution.

Since I gave my reasons in the PowerMonger review, I will just say that Populous should have been a turn-based strategy game, not a real-time strategy game.

Case in point: while Populous is technically more impressive than Sid Meier's Civilization [1], I can play Civ until the cows come home whereas I mostly play Populous for a nostalgia hit because --- in terms of the all-important gameplay -- classic god games have not stood the test of time as well as classic TBS games have because the former employ kludgy icon-driven commands and indirect control in real-time.

My second issue is that Populous does not take advantage of the Amiga's hardware screen-scrolling even though Populous is an Amiga-first game. As well, there should have been edgescreen auto-scrolling, not icon-driven scrolling.

The playing field (Close-up View) should have been larger and commands should have been menu- and hotkey-driven. To facilitate that, the uninformative Command Icon panel is dumped. If players must memorize what command icons do they may as well memorize hotkeys because hotkeys are more efficient than mouse movement and icon-clicking.

Or just employ OS-style dropdown menus or pop-up menus as well as hotkeys displayed in the menus, à la Civ1. For crying out loud, a text-based sidebar would have been better than the Command Icon panel.

To gain even more screenspace, we ditch the Book of Worlds as well. In doing so, what we lose in aesthetics we gain in screenspace, efficiency and functionality.

In addition, the tile being worked (raised or lowered) should have had a mouse-over bounding box to indicate that it is the tile that is going to be worked (to lessen the chance of misclicks).

Populous Legacy

Those preferences of mine given, Populous is still one of the greatest and most influential games ever made. And its influence can be traced through elite genre, not just RTS. Like the subsequent PowerMonger, Populous evokes a digital creation, not just a game. With these things acknowledged Populous rightfully garners acclaim and reverence 34 years subsequent to its release.

A fun and charming computer game, Populous features:

Solid strategic play
Long-duration playability
A high degree of setting configurability and game customizability
Real-time sculptable terrain
Seven levels of verticality
A high animated sprite count
2-player mode (serial or modem)
8-way auto-scrolling
Destructive AoE "spellcasting"
Atmospheric Amiga sounds and a colorful isometric playing field

-- half a decade before X-COM.

It is game that allows you to move mountains, part seas, raise volcanoes and shake the foundations of the Earth -- half a decade before Master of Magic.

On the micro level, you can build a landbridge across the sea and have your Knight cross the landbridge as his god shapes each landblock.

In 1989.

Populous was a prime mover in the history of PC gaming.

Populous World Editor

The Populous World Editor was released in 1991. Published by Electronic Arts the World Editor was coded by Alexander Kochann and Oliver Reiff. The World Editor allows players to set various parameters as well as edit sprites and landblock graphics; it also adds 2 new worlds and a new 500 world conquest game.

Populous Expansions

There were two expansions released for Populous: Promised Lands and Final Frontier.

Promised Lands: +5 terrain tilesets
Final Frontier: +1 terrain tileset

Populous MS-DOS Version

The MS-DOS version of the Populous is practically identical to the Amiga original version, but it replaces the animated intro with a cool titlescreen.

Populous Manual: 40 pages.

Populous 2: Trial of the Olympian Gods

As its name suggests, Populous 2 (1991) is themed on ancient Greek mythology. Populous 2 features a higher sprite count, more divine interventions (30 vs. 8), cursor-key scrolling and a more tactile GUI with organized command icons.

And while its default GUI still wastes a truckload of screenspace, there is a switch for fullscreen mode that is much better.

On IBM PC MS-DOS, Populous 2 can be run in either 256-color 320x200 or 16-color 640x480.

Here is Populous 2 running in glorious square-pixel 640x480 high resolution mode:

One may say, "Wow, MS-DOS Populous blows the Amiga version away!" Well, yeah. 16 color high-res is awesome. But bear in mind that MS-DOS Populous 2 came out two years after the Amiga version. :)

There are 1,000 maps in the base game of Populous 2 and 500 more added in the Challenge Games Expansion.

Populous 2 Manual: 40 pages.

[1] In terms of raw technical coding, it is. In terms of game rules coding, Civ1 is far more complex.

cf. PowerMonger 1990 Bullfrog.

Lilura1 cRPG

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