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- POPULOUS - PLAY TO WIN
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- By ???. Edited by Parasite.
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- Hold on tight to your souls readers,'cos these hints and tips are of cosmic
- proportions. In Electronic Arts' -- quite literally -- earth shattering new
- game you get the chance to shape the face of the Earth and wrestle with
- good and evil alike
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- BUILDING
- Double click on the same point and then remove the top point, allowing you
- to create an area of nine flat blocks in only three clicks.
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- NOW YOU CAN TURF OR SPROG
- Reduce the area of crop fields that a castle has and the size of the
- building will be reduced. This lowers the capacity of the building to hold
- people and will force a walker to leave if it is too crowded .Use this
- method to force a walker from a large castle. It is important to note that
- the largest castle uses an extra block around the edge of its crop fields.
- This land cannot be used for direct settlement.
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- LAND MAINTENANCE
- Keep your land clean and tidy, remove swamps, rocks, broken and bad land.
- Without a strong clean landscape , your population will not flourish.
- Remove swamps as they are a direct drain on your population - especially
- bottomless swamps.
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- HOW TO DEAL WITH KNIGHTS
- If the enemy starts to use knights against you, you have a number of options
- open. Try ignoring the knight and letting it rampage through your land and
- burn a few houses; but make sure that you clean up the land and resettle
- behind it.Try to drown the knight - the computer opponent will not often
- allow you to get away with this but with practice it can often be achieved .
- The secret is to build a tough leader that can defeat the knight in combat
- .It is possible to use a system of buildings to create an artificial barrier
- to the knight's progress by nippling the land, letting the knight fight
- through the small houses, then removing the nipples to free some flat land
- to resettle.
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- TOUGH LEADERS
- Collect your people in a leader and then use that leader to assault the
- enemy. This is one of the most satisfying ways of playing POPULOUS. A tough
- leader can also defeat opposing leaders, knights, and can form a tough
- knight for your side.
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- PAPAL MAGNET MODE
- Careful use early in the game can move your leader and people away from the
- homeland and into new territory fresh for expansion.
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- WALKERS HAVE IQ
- IQ is determined by the technology that walkers have and the number of times
- which they have been sprogged form a settlement. The degrees of intelligence
- are reflected by the walker's ability to locate new land etc. A low IQ walker
- will waste valuable time circling a large castle trying to find some fresh
- unsettled land, whereas the high IQ walker will spot the land five or six
- squares away.
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- TECHNOLOGY
- The technology which a person has directly affects the outcome of any combat
- that they are involved in. The weapons factor acts as a multiplier - and so
- weak people with swords are often a match for stronger club-wielding walkers.
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- FIGHT MODE
- This mode is very good for passive expansion. Your people will move towards
- the enemy and will tend to settle as they go . This mode is most useful
- when you are close to each other at the start of the game.
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- THE FIGHTING LEADER
- You can use your leadre as a direct and controllable weapon, by placing the
- magnet in the building that you want to attack and then going into 'goto
- magnet' mode. Your leader will charge off and attack the building, occupying
- it after the combat. But move the magnet and off he charges. In this mode
- you are not settling anything except the buildings that you are fighting
- over, so beware of depopulating your lands or being out populated. Your
- leader is constantly being supported by your walkers who are drawn to him.
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- HOW TO WIN GAMES
- The most gratifying way of finishing games is by direct use of your leader. A
- couple of tough knights certainly knock the stuffing out of weak opponents.
- Aided by the leader you can quite quickly finish the opponent off. Armageddon
- will draw the game to an instant conclusion, but try swamping just before your
- armageddon if the score is close on population.
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- COMPUTER STRATEGIES
- Learn the tactics and strategies that the computer uses. Look at the opponent
- it is allowed and decide which effects it will use. If it can only flood then
- build higher; if it can only quake then get ready to be shaken about. Learn
- to be shaken about .Learn the way the computer builds and take advantage
- of it.
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- ADVANCED TECHNIQUES & STRATEGIES
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- NIPPLING
- Turf people from castles by lumping or nippling the land around them. Don't
- remove the lumps and let the walkers settle amongst the smaller castles. Do
- this to a large area around your castles and then remove all the lumps. This
- will have a knock on effect that should produce a number of new castles at
- the edge of your land, and then you can expand out from these. This tactic
- also shortens the time taken for a walker to settle after being turfed - a
- vital thing to do on landscapes where the environment is harmful.
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- MULTISPROGGING
- This is similar to nippling - and is designed to create as many settlements
- from one as possible. A large castle that has a reasonable population in it
- will reduce and produce a walker, so as soon as that happens reduce it again
- so that another walker is produced. The first walker will have settled & also
- can be reduced to produce another. From one castle, four settlements
- can be created. Flatten the land and you can create four castles from one.
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- DETERMINATION
- The best way to win any game is to out-build the opponent. Against the
- computer at higher rates this is often quite hard; however you can keep
- building after the computer has alteredits priority to attacking rather than
- building. You must weather the attacks and continue to build as fast as you
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- can - eventually you can win through.
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- POOR MAN'S VOLCANO
- Get someone into the enemy's land and then settle them. Scroll the map to the
- furthest point from the flag of your building then raise the land, upsetting
- as many of his houses as possible. This is a cheap way of creating a volcano.
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- SWAMPS
- These are quite simply the most lethal weapon that you have. He who swamps
- first swamps hardest. Swamp his leaders and his people. Swamps will
- significantly reduce his population and can often keep the computer
- player down while you are building.
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- THE HANDY SWAMP PLATFORM
- To counteract the effect of the computer swamping your leader, you can place
- the magnet in any area of land that is lumpy and not susceptible to swamps.
- Collect your leader here and release knights into his land. The computer will
- try to swamp and have no effect, thus wasting manna.
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- BUILD HIGH
- If the computer has flood and a few other options, it is a good tactic to
- build at two or three levels high. You can simply ignore the flood and
- let it affect only its own people
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- DOUBLE VOLCANO
- If you build a volcano, try to do it on another volcano, either two together
- or on the site of another. Two volcanos together have more of an effect
- then two seperate. A double volcano is very time and manna consuming to
- remove.
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- CHARGE
- Getting your buildings in amongst the opponents gives you the chance to drown
- people, upset buildings and generally start attacking where it hurts - his
- home. You will also have the advantage of being safer from swamps and other
- effects. The computer will start to clean up the land which your people are
- settling.
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- ZEN
- Try building lots of settlements without bothering about turning them into
- castles. This gives you are larger number of walkers, but they are weaker
- than the castle-sprogged walkers. Zen allows you to ignore the special
- effects and concentrate on spreading and leading your people with your
- leader. Building through the hills tends to stop enemy knights, since they
- spend all their time destroying small and worthless huts and tents rather
- then the important houses and castles. This is called the soggy mountain
- tactic, and you should also build castles at the back of your land with this
- buffer of tiny settlements before it.
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- EXPANSIONIST POLICY
- Learn the patterns of crop fields which are required by the various
- buildings. Learn the fastest building techniques and learn how to multisprogg
- and nipple.
- Then keep your land clean and build. Build some more, you can win very tough
- games this way. Keep doing this until you have out populated the opponent and
- have enough energy to armageddon. Do so and win!
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- LOUISIANNA
- If it moves swamp it, if it doesn't move swamp it anyway.
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- TWO PLAYER GAME TACTICS
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- DROWN PEOPLE
- In the two player game the other player is less likely to notice the drowning
- people. If water is harmful then leave the people drowning in puddles, you
- will find that the people die very quickly in water!!!
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- HOW TO SWAMP OFF PEAK AREAS
- Swamp an area that is at the back or in an out-of-the-way place, & the other
- player will take longer to find it and may not remove it as quickly. This
- will allow more people to fall to their deaths. Swamping after the other
- player has just swamped causes a confusion (and if possible also earthquake
- well away from your swamp). The result will be that it looks like your
- retaliation was like a quake - and that the nasty sounds are your people
- drowning in their own swamps.
- Don't forget to tidy up after you with reference to these.
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