Populous is a great game that was made by a company called bullfrog, It is the third and currently final install made on the series that was made inside 1998. Compared to the lacking control over your people the previous games offered you have much more control about what's going on. One complaint I am not the first to mention is that the game has excellent texture quality for the time but all the people are made of two dimensional people with around eight sides.
The multiplayer ability has improved since the game began. Now there are many populous matchmakers and level editors to help make the multiplayer experience much better than it was before. Although the EA matchmaker has gone out there are two player based matchmakers that work quite well the resurrection and the reincarnated matchmakers.
This installment of the series takes place before the rest where you are a shaman who is going to become a god. There are three other tribe shamans that want this position as well. So you order you villagers to build huts and train warriors to fight the enemy shaman. There are six different classes of people. Four of them: The warrior, preacher, spy, and fire warrior have to be built special huts to train your followers into them.
The brave is your normal follower he can worship idols, build huts, chop would, enter huts to magically (using the shamans mana) to make more braves.
The warrior is the second type of person you get. He just fights and destroys enemy things in close combat very well.
The fire warrior is the populous version of an archer. They were like bull helmets and shoot fire blasts with there fists.
The spy can make itself look like an enemy brave and then if not being watched (or he loses cover) will sneak behind a building and light it on fire. He can then enter the damaged building and pretend to fix it but really destroy it. Always be careful the enemy shaman can right click to see if you're a spy or not because you don't follow orders.
The preachers can preach all enemy units except other preachers to fight for there cause. They have to be close enough to a unit though, fire warriors will attack you from afar enemy preachers can attack you and the people being preached will join the shaman can kill your preacher with a spell or you order your preacher to do something else and the will get attacked by the people getting preached.
The shaman can reincarnate in a circle usually at your base and can cast many spells from hypnotize to volcano. Most of the spells involve nature. In some games the shaman does not reincarnate or if she dies you lose.
All in all populous is a great game that I would recommend to anyone one looking for a real time strategy game.
