Introduction
Populous 3 is a full 3D war/god game from 1998 that's a prequel to the first two Populous games, the ones to coin the god game genre in 1989. In those games, you were a god that influenced the land to help your followers build and grow armies to destroy enemy tribes, all in glorious isometric 3D for the Amiga. The more followers you had, the more spells you could cast. The second game has a Greek mythology backdrop, as well as new spells and 1000 levels. They're very well received, but alas, I have played neither.
Populous 3 starts you as a shaman questing to become a god and wreak havoc upon her non-believers using a variety of follower classes and spells in 24 different levels, as you build up your tribe (with no name and colored blue) and destroy the Dakini (red), Matak (green) and Chumera (yellow).
It has a minimalist story, the only resource is wood and there are no unique benefits to each tribe. You can complete levels in a large variety of ways and I have sank hours upon hours just sitting in levels, making a huge settlement and listening to the sweet new age music. It can be fairly repetitive, but also therapeutic, though sometimes the enemy AI gets very frisky if levels go on for too long. And believe me, the AI is frisky enough as it is, something we'll see as we go across the various planetary scenarios in our quest for conquest.
A year after Populous 3 was made, it had an expansion, Undiscovered Worlds, that loosely follows on from this game. I will be covering that as well, as there's a lot of interesting levels and ideas contained within.
(Alternatives with DirtyDeedsDone)
(with DirtyDeedsDone)
(Main with DirtyDeedsDone)
Need more Populous? Then forums user OliveBranch did an LP a few years ago, where he also did thread challenges. He only got to Level 19 and is a muuuuuuch better player than me, but still, check it out: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?li...A3DE937BA405B58