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CD Player's Site Hints, Tips, Strategy and FAQs for playing Populous III online

Two on Two
Craters
Dead Sea
Face Off
Pressure Point

This map is usually played as two vs. two (surprise, surprise) and the key to victory is to get control of the heads. Assuming that you share an island with your ally (ie. that the teams were chosen as top vs bottom in the preceeding screen where the options are set), you need to work together to get to the AOD head first. Start by converting the groups of wildmen; the main concentration will be on the coast, in the opposite direction to your allies Circle of Reincarnation. Get them building your village, with an FW training hut (and preacher hut, if they are enabled). Charge 2 landbridge and then start charging lightning. If you are blue or green, get 3 villagers to take 3 wood to the coast nearest the AOD head and have them stay there patrolling. As soon as you have a landbridge charged, get your shaman to where the wood was left and start building a bridge out to the head. If you and your partner have both charged landbridge, you should be able to do it with 3 or 4 spells between you. As soon as you get there, blue (or green) should lay a guard tower plan next to the head and use the three patrolling villagers to build it using the wood they had cut. Then get your shaman into the tower as soon as they've finished and you're home and dry. Your partner can now use his FW's (with a preacher or two if enabled) to worship the head and generate AOD's to destroy your enemies while you keep your shaman defending from her tower and keep your spells charged.

Why does this work so well? Because, once you have a shaman in a tower next to the head, you can reach the other head with a lightning strike, thus preventing your enemies from worshipping there, but the enemy shaman can't reach you because she doesn't have the extra range given by the tower. Similarly, it's very hard for them to attack directly, because they have to landbridge out first, and that is a short-range spell. So as long as you keep vigilant (and are a reasonable shot) you're pretty much invulnerable. And all the while your partner can be unleashing one AOD after another on the enemy, while you both build up massive armies and full spell charges ready for the final assault.

Is there any defence against this? Well, one possibility is to cast Magic Shield on a bunch of followers and get them to worship the other head. They will be protected against lightning so you will get the spell (unless they get attacked by troops). Ok, so it will only be teleport, but if you teleport your shaman to the other head, you should be able to lightning the enemy shaman in her tower before she can react, eliminate her worshipping followers, and landbridge down to your territory where your waiting followers can storm up to demolish the enemy tower, build yours and worship the head. Oh, and don't forget to remove the enemy landbridge with flatten. Tables turned (unless of course your amiable host disabled shield at the start - so watch out for that on this map.) The key to this is to have everything in place before you do the teleport, so the enemy can't get back to the head in time to stop you.

If, on the other hand, the teams were chosen so that blue and green are playing against red and yellow (ie. 1 and 3 vs 2 and 4 in the game setup screen), then you will be sharing your island with an enemy, which completely changes the gameplay, although control of the heads remains the key objective. In this case, you will need to defeat, or severely weaken the nearest enemy, so as to prevent him reaching the head, and to create space to allow you to reach it. The blue and green team have an advantage, in this situation, as they are nearer to the AOD head. For red and yellow, it may be better to go for the teleport head first, even though it is less immediately useful (tho' not to be dismissed) so as to deny the AOD head to the enemy.

If you are playing a 3 vs 1 game, the strategy will be different for each player, according to her position on the map. If you are the one playing on your own, chances are you won't need any of this advice anyway, or if you do, it will be a short game.

Incarcerated15 has sent me in a good tip: "A good strategy against the teleport is to put firewarriors in huts, or to just have them patroling back and forth all over the place, the enemy teleports and is shot before she can cast."

Do you have any alternative strategy ideas for this map? Why not email me?

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The limiting factors on this map are building land and trees, so it's a big help if forge world is on at the start. Make sure you lay down as much flat land as possible during the forge period, and place the trees in useful places - ie. where you can get at them but you won't have to build over them. Edges of cliffs are good. Remember also that, in forge world, you can use alt + and alt - to raise and lower land a bit at a time. This is useful for getting rid of pockets of water so that you can pack your buildings in tighter.

Once the game starts, you have a breathing space, as each of the players is on a separate island. Use that time to build your village, convert all the wildmen, and charge your spells. Turn off all spells at the start except convert. Once you have finished converting, turn off convert, charge up one or two lightnings (depending how good your aim is) then switch it off and charge landbridge. Get your shaman onto the hill nearest the stone head you are aiming for, and bridge across to it as soon as you can. The heads are important, because there are extra trees there, and you can easily bridge back towards your island to make more building land. It's probably not worth worshipping at this stage, because your enemy will doubtless do what I'm advising in the next paragraph. Manage your trees by sending three braves to cut wood from each one and deliver it to the building sites. That leaves a small tree to regrow, which will be much faster than if you allow your braves to clear-fell them all.

If your enemy gets to the head first, get on to the hill and you should be able to reach the head with lightning, so wait till the parties all there and then hit them! Being surrounded by water, there won't be many survivors.

That's about it for my ideas. I have to do a whole lot more losing on this level before I will be able to get the rest figured out.

CD Player

Now here are some tips from someone who actually knows what he's doing. Arnie009 (also known as C.M.Burns, VoodooChild and F5-Twister) is probably one of the top 5 players at the present time.

Introduction

• This is with NO forge.
• Red has a different strategy.
• This is not guaranteed to work for everyone. This is just an approach to building and defense that works for me.
• This is just setting up the base and defense, does not go in-depth with attacking.

For blue, yellow, or green:

• At start turn off blast, charge only convert. Place 3 huts near your reincarnation site and put guys to work on them.
• Once you have 18-25 men or have used 4 or 5 convert spells, turn it off and charge Landbridge only.
• Keep building huts; make a guard tower or 2 on the opposite side so that you can access that land. Make a Firewarrior hut.
• Landbridge up to the hill and build a guard tower there. Once you have 3-5 firewarriors use a 2nd Landbridge to connect to Firestorm statue from the hill (check Shakey's map for the location). Place your firewarriors on the hill for defense while you build more towers on the hill (3-5 towers). (take wood from near Firestorm statue or dismantle the guard tower(s) you made to use the other side of your base)
• If your opponent has connected to you charge a lightning or 2 for defense and then resume charging Landbridge.
• Build Preacher and Warrior huts; use 3 or 4 more Landbridge to extend the back of your land.
• Fill your guard towers on your hill with firewarriors and keep extra firewarriors on the hill for defense.
• If your opponent is attacking you, empty braves from the huts closest to your opponent(the ones he/she would get to first) and place 1 or 2 firewarriors in them for extra defense.
• If you have enough wood, build more huts on the extra land you have made for yourself. When you feel your defense is good, charge attack spells. (Earthquake, Tornado, Firestorm)
• Never stop training Firewarriors and always have a lot of them.

For Red:

Basically the same except at beginning landbridge to the firestorm statue from a guard tower instead of landbridging to your hill. You can use the hill later for putting a few guard towers on it. Red requires more skill to get a large population and it also requires a longer period of defending before any major attacking can be done.

General tips

• Never place a hut plan on top of a tree. Fit them in without building over a tree.
• Landbridge in the lava in your base so you can build there. do it before making your base bigger by extending the back.

Arnie009

Here is a short and sharp suggestion from james_blond:

If I am Red and Green is may ally, I convert all the wildmen that I can. Build Huts quickly, including one Warrior Hut. Then I Train Warriors and charge up all the Land Bridges and one Flatten, and then Lightning. After I have 2 Lightning, I landbridge to blue and attack. If you are fast you can do this in the first 10 minutes and blue has no chance!

james_blond

Do you have any alternative strategy ideas for this map? Why not email me?

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This guide to Dead Sea has been contributed by Killer Sheep - founder of the TA clan and long-established shaman. I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of this one!

Okay first off get your ass outa that crater ASAP!! If you're using forge world raise the reincarnation site to the highest level possible by using the raise hill twice then flattening. REMEMBER DON'T DIP THE SITE!!!! you will trap all your men. Now as for building get men setting up Preachers and Warrior hut around your reincarnation site. Start converting like mad and get all the people you convert to set up Towers near the critical points of the map. These are :

• the Angel of Death head (centre)
• the Earthquake Head (back of reds base)

Also set up some watch towers near bunches of trees. This strategy is a little risky since it take about 2 minutes until you can start building your huts, but if you've got your preachers and warriors hut set up they should provide a little defence till your towers are ready.

As soon as each tower is up, start building huts like mad. You should have set up about 5 towers around the map. Also build another preacher, warrior and fire warrior hut away form your reincarnation site. This is backup and also means you can train much quicker!

When placing your huts make sure to space them out quite a lot, this helps against Earthquakes which is the main destructive spell used on this level. Also keep about 25 Fire warriors scattered around your base then, when a shaman comes, tell them to rip her up! 25 is a minimum, the more the better! Then all you got to do is keep control of the two heads (Angel of Death and Earthquakes). If you ain't that experienced just try and keep one of the heads. While you do this keep a nice sack full of lightnings. once you got 2 lightnings at the start, it's a good idea is to charge Tornado and get to an enemy and cast it on there preacher hut. it just slows them down giving you time to breathe or attack.

All you got to do is remember to keep building all the way through the game - build huts after huts. Also try to scatter some Guard Towers around your base and remember to keep fire warriors in them.

A good plan when you get quite big is to have fire warriors in your huts: they stop shamans and preachers for moving around your base. When you decide to attack take your shaman in first and beat their defences down (if they have any!). When you've done that, make her cause some chaos with Earthquakes etc. and then send your troops in! Only send them in while your shaman is there. Make sure you have killed the enemy shaman or she will kill your troops very fast.

Don't send preachers on their own, send Preachers and Warriors. 5 preachers and 5 warriors can kill 15 preachers if you control them right (just practice).

As the game goes on, keep a good ratio of attackers. Don't stop training men when you got 10 of each. Keep training as you grow.

That's all the advice I've got for now! Just remember keep the braves busy!!!!

Killer Sheep

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Starting off
Face off consists of four CoR sites, kind of like Pressure Point, but has an ancient volcano with a head stone in the middle. The headstone contains a powerful spell: volcano, but be warned, if you gain the volcano spell from the headstone the ancient volcano (the thing your worshipers are standing on) will erupt itself damaging anything in that area.

Firstly, when u incarnate for the first time, uncharge fireball and move your screen upward to the middle, where the headstone is, QUICKLY convert the wildmen around that area before the enemy does. Whilst you convert lay your training huts down and put 2 men on each.

Defence
Build towers at the entrance of yours, and the enemies village where the huge volcano and headstone is (the middle), usually I put two towers for each enemy, and send 1 or 2 (depending on how many spare) braves to the plans to construct them. To do this quickly send the braves to collect wood first, then to construct the towers, you can do this automatically by holding down CTRL button and clicking a tree, then the tower plan.

While these are working, build huts as quick as you can, and use 1 – 2 braves for each plan. Get a couple of firewarriors and command them to enter the towers you built, they will not zap them with lightning very often because mana is so scarce on this level, spells like lightning on early stages, will take a while to charge so they won´t bother.

Attacking
For early attacks train around 5 warriors, sending them one by one at the enemy shaman, this way I charge earthquake instead of lightning, warriors will take care of any annoying firewarriors too. Send around 5 preachers to each of their huts, to convert his/her men. Charge lightning if you prefer to zap the shaman as soon as she reincarnates, it´s up to you. Whilst this is going on keep training a couple of warriors and preachers and send them in, this should be enough to take the first village out.

By the time you get to the second (if he/she is not dead) you should have a good range of spells and men to take them out, or a nice volcano from the headstone will slow them down *a tad*, but keep in mind when you receive the volcano, any defences you had will be burned a little, so get ready to replace them quickly.

This is just one of the many strategies, just like every level, there are many possibilities, but I find this works best for me… just practise!

Sai-Tanko

In addition to the volcano head in the middle, there are four small offshore islands which each also have a head. Two of them give the spy training hut, and the other two give the boat building hut. We were playing 2 vs 2, had knocked out one of our opponents and were closing in on the other. He (or she) had however obtained the boat hut, built 3 boats, filled them with braves, plus the shaman and moved the whole lot offshore and out of range. Stalemate! Of course, there was the second stone head, and we had great fun trying to get it worshipped whilst he swooped in and lightninged our followers, but the end was never in doubt, so it only delayed the inevitable.

A good idea that I performed a couple of days ago goes like this. You are in between the 2 obelisks (boat house and spy hut), so make a small landbridge across to one of them and send about 10 braves across, and a firewarrior, or more. Stand next to the obelisk, and charge up flatten. Now, flatten outwards into the sea, and start building huts fast. By now, the enemy shaman will have sent across a few firewarriors. Do not worry about volcano in the centre, as the shaman will take a while getting that spell. Turn everything off, and charge up blast and keep it on for the rest of the match. Then, when the Shaman and/or some other people come, wait until they get on the bridge, and use blast on them. They will go flying everywhere, and 9/10 times, will all die. This is hilariously funny, and very useful for when your ally dies, if he does. You can then charge up your attacking force, and pick them all off!!

This map is awesome and isn't for campers.

First, turn off blast and charge convert only. Convert like mad, and convert 'enemy' wildmen too - even if they get killed its 1 less brave for them.

After there are no wild men left, charge blast, and blast and blast the enemy shamen. Slap down plans like crazy, then build a firewarrior hut and train 2 firewarriors. Bring them to the central hill and try your best to gain control of that head. There are a few obesks on the small islands, but i wouldn't bother with them

After your fw's are on the hill start charging earthquake then place more hut plans and 1 warrior plan (build in rows to save space).

After you have about 6 huts and about 25-30 people, train 5 firewarriors, 5 warriors and bring your shaman up. Then, once earthquake is charged up attack one of your enemies using the shaman plus 3 firewarriors and 3 warriors and earthquake the village. If she survives, stay and guard (using ctrl + alt + left-click). Keep using earthquake on the enemy soon as it charges until they're dead. Do the same to you other enemy or tell your ally to (if 2 on 2).

Defence:
Build alot of towers around your entrace with a hut on top of your entrance with firewarriors in all of them - that should be fine.

Remember:

1. Capture and keep the central hill
2. Attack with earthquake
3. Don't pray at the head if you have a huge village nearby - it will erupt and destroy it
4. Dont camp

Do that and it should be a win :)

Kurtangle

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UKC's guide to Pressure Point

The key to pressure point is the initial 5 minutes in the opening of the game. If you lose out in the wildmen stakes then you are a goner, that is unless you are very skilled at defence, and keeping the enemy attacks limited and restricted until you are able to build enough to gain the same population level as them.

Its important to click off the blast spell immediately :) if u didn't already do that, u should, every level :) Right, if you're going to have any chance whatsoever you are going to need at the very least to have converted over 30 wildmen in the opening 2 minutes. If you haven't, then scan the map in world view VERY quickly to find some wildies and get them. An ideal start would see you getting around 50+ wildmen. Once you've finished converting turn blast on (leave convert on incase you see any stray wildies), then start charging ghost, swarm and eq simultaneously.

At the start move your shamen immediately to the thin stretch of land where you feel most vulnerable - convert all the wildmen from here, then get the wilds on the central stretch, next go for the wilds on the flank you feel most comfortable with, then there should be a few more wildies hiding at the back of your territory. Whilst converting lay a preacher and fw hut and send about 60% of your men to build these, then lay about 3 huts and send 1 man to build each of these huts, then lay 4 towers around the entrances to your base, send 1 man to build each of these, and keep a lookout for rushing shamen - try to blast them into the water, then you can counter-shamen rush them (thats perhaps the most amusing tactic, especially when they bitch afterwards about being rushed... gotta love those hypocrites). Once the trainers are built train 5 fw and 1 preacher. Get these in the towers, especially the preacher if you are being rushed by troops. Then begin to build up your base, placing as many hut plans as possible, sending 1 (or two, depending on your preference, I'm a slow converter, so I normally have to delegate the building to maintain speed with the opposition) man to build each hut. At this point (about 5 mins into the game) you will want to expand your defences, the most effective way to do this is to build towers down the thin stretches of land linking you to your enemy, another good defence is to dominate the centre head. You can build towers on here if you like but personally I prefer to place warriors and preachers on guard mode around the bottom step, and then cover it in fws on the upper levels - this may seem vulnerable to firestorm, but usually it works quite effectively, and think of the mana cost - a few troops against a whole firestorm!

Once you have an eq charged (3 mins if you are top player speed, 6 mins if you are slower) send your shamen to the enemy base and quake away! If their base is well fortified with towers or troop defence then use ghosts and swarm to distract the enemy defenders, once they are distracted try to penetrate as far into the base as possible, and damage the huts of the enemy - this will hinder their mana production, and will be more harmful than merely quaking a few towers to upset their perfectly placed defensive set up.

If the game develops into a very long one then be prepared to be always repairing your defence and being hard pressed at times. Remember though, this is no definitive guide and will not necessarily bring success, often you must develop other strategies on pp to defeat your opponent (namely through the 'back bridge' if it is a stalemate style of game).

Hope this helps some people, good luck and remember to experiment!

UKC

Walhalla's guide to Pressure Point

Pressure Point is next to Craters the most commonly played map in online populous for four players. The reasons for this fact no doubt lie in the fact that its fairly symmetric, giving equal chances for all players. The landmass is large and there are abundant trees and plenty of wildies. There are so many wildies that each player should be able to start with lets say 50 braves after converting. The battleground is four high islands with CoR's and a small island with a head (giving Armageddon), altogether they are placed like the five dots on a dice. Each of the islands is linked to its neighbouring island by a lower landbridge. This results in each player being directly linked to two other players, mostly of which one is his ally, and to the little island-hill in the middle.

Starting

Like on all maps, the foundation of victory lies in a good start. Starting is the single action that is completely independent of the actions of your enemies. All that follows should be placed in a context of action and reaction. The advanced player should program himself to do some actions in chronological order at start. Keep an eye on your enemies because as soon as they 'move', the stage of starting is over and the stage of battling has begun. The important thing about battling is that it distracts you from properly laying out your village and that it drains resources, not to mention that it can result in you losing. Smart readers of my strategies noticed that 'moving' makes us skip 2 phases (building the village and taking positions). And trust me, enemies will move extremely fast because an eq is easily charged with so many braves around. Once you experience an eq in your base while you are still in the starting phase, you are as good as dead (for multiple reasons which I shall not elaborate on now)

OK, so about starting now. Before your shaman has fully incarnated you can have switched of blast, converted the nearest group of wildies, assigned 5 braves to build a tower on high ground on the side of your enemy and ordered the rest to build a fw hut tightly to the CoR but as far away from the entries as possible. Yes this is possible before you can even move your shaman. Practise this, because as soon as your shaman can move you have to pay attention to her and forget about the rest, setting you back compared to quicker opponents. Right away, move here to where you build that tower (towards the enemy) and convert all wildies in reach of your enemy. After that, you convert all wildies that are your own. I advice to do this from the tower you built, giving you impressive reach. In time it will take less time to charge convert, so it is important that you use the time you have at start wisely by placing hutplans tightly together and around the FW hut. Personally I assign 2 braves to each hut and as soon as a hut is finished I place more plans next to it and order more braves to work on that.

Building the village

Yes I got a little carried away with the starting phase. Now part of the village is already built. But hey that's a good thing. If you did a good job in the starting phase you can now finish it off giving you an edge in the coming phases. Since all the wildies are converted, start charging eq. (blast, convert, eq). It is very important that you build some forward towers. Why, I shall go into later. The core of your defence are as many towers as the four highest spots near the entries can carry. Try to fit a hundred towers on them, but more likely is ten or twelve. Your opponent will try to take them out and the more towers he has to take out the harder it is for him. Yes it really is that simple. And oh, of course you will fill these towers with fire warriors. The order by which you fill them is up to you, but make sure you have thought about it. I see plenty of noobs that build maybe one tower, or just have a group of fws hanging around doing nothing. That's hilarious defence.

Make sure you build one of each training huts somewhat safely in the back of your base, to make them less vulnerable, less likely targets for greedy shamen. Basically the rest is easy. Just use all you land for huts. In this stage there is no need to make extra land as you have enough. Use groups of 2 or 3 braves to build a hut. No need for harvesting trees on this level. Despite the fact that battling begins soon, don't stop until ALL you land is built on.

Taking Positions

Good defence is excellently described in Dante's Defence Guide, but I shall point out some things. On PP it is important that you build your core towers as high as possible. But equally important is that you manage to claim the land between your enemies and yours. If you control that land, it gives you more wood, safer ways for your shaman and the safer your base is for close-range, heavy spells such as eq's, fs or erode. For your opponent this is all exactly opposite, he has less wood, cant walk up to your base safely and possibly loses a few braves gathering wood. Generally, he needs to sacrifice more eq's to get to the vital parts of your base. Therefore, build as far forward as possible. I completely agree with UKC's strategy of how to control the centre. (warriors/priests at the bottom, fws spread out over the top) Personally I like to support this central defence with towers on the path to my base, and plenty of them. If you carried all of this out, you should have more than excellent starting position for the rest of the game. Maybe the most important part of taking positions is that you manage to damage the land of your enemy. Virtually all of the actions you have done so far aimed either at getting defence done, or getting an eq fully charged. Once this eq is charged, try get it in his base as far as possible before he gets his defence sorted out. If you succeed, the enemy loses men, wood and buildings (not to mention the psychological effects), must spend mana, attention, wood to undo the damage and eventually rethink his strategy (and if he doesn't, it seriously fu**s up his logistics) This all gives you a good start, and a very good laugh.

Winning

For 'winning' I assume players are roughly equally strong and none has fu**ed up in the earlier chapters and the lands are still undamaged. There are a lot of things to be said about winning. Rule #1 is that you practise a lot. But as I found out during my populous career, if you don't know the techniques, you never win. First of all you need to understand and master the interface. Know all the buttons and their functions. Because if you don't know all the possibilities you have a serious disability relative to your enemy. It took me ages to find all of this out and I'm quite sure there is still some hidden stuff, even for many shaman players. The rest of the rules are scattered over little bits of knowledge that I have and I will try to share that with you.

Always keep your defences as if they were brand-new. Repair damaged towers immediately (send a few braves),  keep them filled with fws or the occasional priest. If possible, repair your land, but only if it is worth the manacost. You don't want to end up in a vicious circle that all your mana goes into undoing the latest attack of your respected opponent. Make sure you have enough of trained men. From my own experience I can say that its damn nasty if you see the enemy coming again only to find out that you forgot to train fresh troops and all you have left is 1 fw and 3 dizzy warriors. Use shift+insert to train braves from a distance. Defend your base on all sides ! Watch for backdoors (check out what your enemy is doing with his lb's)

Most players rely heavily on their shaman. Once she is dead their base is very vulnerable. Practise playing and defending with troops as well. And most of all, keep your shaman alive (!) more advanced players manage to do this very well and are capable of executing hit- and-run attacks. Best is to cast an eq and get out. Unless you have a chance of breaking his defence, keep your shaman alive.

Good defense is spread out over a large area. Start with locating easily defendable spots on the map and have some fws patrol there (ctrl+alt). Before the enemy has removed them all a lot of his followers might have died. If you are really good at this you can pin an enemy shaman down at continuingly clearing the area, thus not having the time to attack your base. An important part of defence is making the enemy incapable of attacking your base, or giving him other priorities to attend to, such as a sneaky attack, an endangered ally or reparation of his land, ghost shamen walking around his base and there is no end to the list of possibilities that you can do to keep the enemy busy.

Furthermore, good defence is more than just towers. It involves patrols of mixed troops to protect the towers. Never leave troops standing by, always have them patrol. Never have them patrol in large vulnerable groups. Make it hard for your enemy to kill lots of your troops without wasting fs or huge quantities of mana.  It involves the repeated (shift)attacking of alive enemy shamen that walk around outside their base with tiny groups of 2 or 3 fws and warriors. Sometimes they kill, sometimes they don't. But any kill is one that gives you more control over the game.

A really hard aspect that deserves attention is rhythm. A dazzling game of PP with more or less equal contestants has a vibe of its own, a vibration, and you need to feel it and allow it to enter your body. This vibration shows itself in the repeated attacks and counter- attacks of ambitious shamen, and the time they need to reinc and move across the level. In brief, and I cant explain it really, you need to feel it for yourself, you need to make the rhythm work for you. Kill his shaman and strike, but in a way that if you die, you reincarnate before he can get to your base. If you strike, ignoring the position and timing of his shaman, you will die and leave his shaman all options. Then you will feel that the rhythm will work against you and feel very uncomfortable in the game. You feel you lack the 'grip' on the game. That's one reason why camping feels comfortable, because the game's vibe doesn't affect you as much. Players with knowledge of martial arts will recognise that its all about feeling what your enemy is going to do. You step forward, then he steps back. If he steps forward, you move with him in the rhythm of the game, eventually you will 'dance' around eachother. Also keep in mind that you need to charge the right spells, it sucks when you killed his shaman and have a free ride on his defence only to find out that you don't have the right spells such as eq charged. If you feel the game's rhythm from head to toes, then you can plan the charging of eq in a way that its just finished when you arrive at his defences. Equally important is that you have no heavy spells charged incompletely when your shaman dies. That gives your enemy more mana than he deserves. These and more aspects should give you plenty food for thought on your quest to excellent defence.

Attacking.

Defence however is merely reactive, it's a way of staying alive as long as your Attacks need to kill and extinct the enemy. According to Von Clausewitz, war is politics with other means. The main goal of a war therefore is to make an enemy defenceless by going after his armed forces so you can force him to do (politically) what you want him to do. In Populous Geneva conventions are non-existing and the one and only goal is to commit genocide, to extinct your enemy, and that includes ALL of his population. However Von Clausewitz' list of priorities is correct and you need to go after his troops first, take the land secondly and finish of last. Most people grow to roughly 3 or 4 times the size they were at start. That means that growing is really easy and maintaining a population is also. It is therefore essential that you manage to push your enemy into a vicious circle, a downward spiral. This can only be done by keeping pressure. As soon as the pressure is loosened the enemy can repair his base, train troops and charge fresh spells (grow). You don't want him to do this, you want to keep him on his toes. You need to make sure he hasn't the mana to undo your latest attack. Therefore it is advisable that you repeatedly hit his defences with eq. Keep removing towers with tornado. If possible, damage his land with eq or erode. Damaged land is a big problem for him. If possible, change the direction your coming from, be unpredictable. Send warriors to remove towers, while at the same time you distract him. Send your shaman the other way around. Landbridge your way around his defence. Give him no chance to control large areas of land (that's YOUR land ;)). Ok so when your shaman strikes, check what towers are empty and what aren't. Don't waste lightnings on empty towers. Cast ghosts on the foot of the remaining towers to distract them, then penetrate his defence (if needed cast fs, but be aware of his towers) and damage the land, lower the high spots and aim for traininghuts. If you see your shaman will be dead soon, cast eq on the first target you see. Try to take out whatever is possible. If the enemy is advanced he will strike at your base (if he gets there before you reinc that is dangerous), if he is in trouble he will repair first, giving you time to reinc and strike again. Then, you make the rhythm work for you. If you succeed in removing the realm of his defence, send in troops. Do this in many small groups, not by sending in one group of 50 wars. Spread them out over the base and chop away.

Walhalla

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Cog (UW)
Clockwise (UW)
Walls (UW)

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