Level 9 of Populous, named “Fire in the Mist” was the introductory level for the Fog of War concept. It actually functions a bit differently in Populous, compared to your typical RTS. At the start, you can see the terrain under the fog, but no movement or buildings. Once you uncover an area, though, no line of sight is required to keep it uncovered – from that point on, you can see everything as if there was no fog of war to begin with.
Other than the fog of war, the level also introduced the shipyard, which allow you to build your own boats. The Chumara tribe used this ability several times, attacking me from sides I didn’t expect them from. At one point, they even managed to drop a Volcano spell on me, destroying a big part of my village.
Once I repelled that attack, I decided to have some fun with base building. I used the tall mountain created by the eruption to start creating a huge mesa for my village with Land Bridge. This took me a long time, but eventually, I had a huge mountain I could build on, with very little threat from the Chumara. Once I built a few guard towers on the edges, no one could even get near me. As I said, this took me a very long time to do, so I actually played this level for nearly two hours before I completed it, but I had fun, so I really didn’t mind the time spent.
As I said, I created a huge mesa.
Eventually, I had to complete the level the way it was intended to be beaten. I stole a single boat after repelling one of the attacks and used it to take my shaman to the peninsula on the edge of the Chumara village. This is where I their vault of knowledge was, so I was able to learn the plans for the shipyard without much trouble. Once that was done, I made a few of my own boats and sent braves around the map to pray at the various stone heads. This gave me a charge of Earthquake, Tornado and most importantly, Volcano.
With this, I used another boat to sneak my shaman into the back of the Chumara village and climb on a nearby hill. The three spells destroyed most of the coastal village, so over the next ten or fifteen minutes, it was easy to clear out the rest with my army of fire warriors, priests and warriors.
The shipyard is a pretty cool looking building.
Side Note
I’m kind of missing the voiced narrator from the PlayStation version of Populous: The Beginning. For those unfamiliar with this, the PlayStation version used an actual, real narrator for all the messages the game sends to your sidebar. He had this great, dramatic voice which I absolutely love. Sadly, the PC version uses text messages only.
What I’m not missing, though, is a save system that uses up an entire memory card for just a single slot save. I actually had to buy a whole memory card for just this one game. If I remember correctly, the old Constructor game did the same thing. I think both games were worth it, but it was still a pain, especially considering how long saving and loading took. Back then, I could select “Load Game” and go make myself a sandwich or something.
