Level 24, Journey’s End, feels like a culmination of all the stages so far. You start on a small area of land, with established Green enemies to the North and Yellow wrapping around the world to the East and West. All other tribes are well established, and very soon after starting the level the Greens cast a land bridge to start attacking. As soon as you’ve seen them off, the Yellows come across the existing causeway to the West and attack from another side. And while that’s going on, very often Red will sneak in from the other side – although sometimes Yellow will have stopped them before they get to you. Basically, you spend most of your time fending off attacks and not actually building proper defences, let alone expanding and preparing to attack.

I had to restart the level a couple of times because I was finding I just couldn’t get established quickly enough. My first task was to build some training huts for preachers and firewarriors, who I then stationed up on the North coast, waiting for the Greens to make their first move. I turned off all spells other than swamp, and once I had one of those in my pocket I turned on lightning and swarm. At that point Green made their move, so I cast swamp just at the top of the landbridge they created and waited for their shaman to advance. Her death meant that my buildings survived, more or less, and I was able to station a row of fire warriors across the bridge to fend off further attacks. I built a couple of guard towers to the West, and put fire warriors in those, but again the big defence against the Yellow shaman was a swamp, which I cast as she tried to come into the village.

With both passages bolstered by a few more fire warriors and preachers I concentrated on building huts to generate more followers, with the occasional refresh of the swamps to the North and West. Unfortunately I started to run out of wood and my followers were running into the swamps to try to get to the trees on the other side; I had to move the swamps further away from my village to carry on building. At this point Red decided it was a great idea to attack from the East, but to do so they had to travel through the Yellow village and by the time they got to me there were only a few stragglers to see off.

I continued to build, and turned on the erode spell so I could get rid of the causeways to the West and East, allowing me to properly focus on the Greens. I hadn’t bargained on the Yellows then starting to attack by balloon, or the Reds getting in their boats. Lots of guard towers with firewarriors along the coasts solved those issues, plus I then got to steal the balloons to create even more defences along the North. After the Greens had attempted, and failed, another skirmish, I took my shaman and a few firewarriors in a balloon to the North and used a few earthquakes, fire rains, and the angel of death to reduce their threat. I flew around a few times and destroyed all the training huts, but I couldn’t quite finish them off before a massive Yellow army started to attack and I needed to return.

This turned out to be fortuitous, as Yellow had overstretched themselves and I was able to load up their newly-emptied balloons with my own firewarriors, with a few preachers, and journey over to their village and wreak havoc. At the same time, Red were attacking them from the other side, and Yellow seemed to be spending more energy decimating their numbers, so it was a relatively easy move to then just fly south and kill off Red through liberal use of swamps and earthquakes.

And then back up to Greens, who were building quite an army up. Angel of death, volcano, earthquake, fire rain, and swamps placed all around the shaman reincarnation site, and the level was done.

I actually replayed this level to try out a different tactic, destroying the Yello balloon factory first and then concentrating on the Greens. With no balloons, and the paths eroded, Yellow and Red spent most of their time attacking each other, and I finished Green off relatively quickly. This might be one of my favourite levels of the game, with the different ways it can be played.

And so to the final level. There was a cutscene, showing my shaman passing on the mask to a female follower, and then becoming a god. The last level no longer has a reincarnation site, and you can cast spells anywhere, with no distance limit. You still have to build up mana, and you have to create your village and train warriors and preachers and fire warriors and direct people to do stuff, but it’s a nice bridge to the other Populous games where your power comes from above. You can see the idea of the beginning here, a prequel in every sense. There are differences, of course – in the first two Populous games you don’t have the same control over building placement or follower actions, but maybe that’s just something reflecting the seniority of the god.

Anyway, you would think that infinite range and starting with a settlement of 50 followers would make the final level easy, but no. The other three tribes were intent to fight each other, but my village was in the middle of their settlements. I was attacked by wave after wave of enemies, and I restarted the level with the intention of resisting just a little longer. I trained up some preachers and fire warriors immediately, to repel the attacks, and then I set up guard towers to allow the fireballs to hit before the enemies got near. Once I’d fortified enough, I built up the erode spell so I could cut off access to a couple of the tribes, allowing me to again focus on just one. I eroded the pathways close to the opposition villages, meaning that all the trees growing on the route could be harvested for my buildings.

The Reds were first to fall. I probably attacked them before I was really ready, since I had relatively few warriors trained and my spells were only half charged. I destroyed their temple and fire hut, and they were left rather disorganised. I withdrew quite quickly as they were attacking my little army, but I could see they were also getting beset by the Yellows on the opposite side of their settlement. In fact, the Yellow army must have finished them off, as their reincarnation site collapsed while my people were nowhere near.

Given this third-party war, I scrolled over to the Greens to stop them sending forces to bother me. I cast some volcanoes and earthquakes, very pleased that I didn’t need to worry about getting my people anywhere near. I killed the shamans multiple times, laughing at my omnipotence. The Yellows were next on the list, with me converting a bunch of preachers in the middle of their village to sow discord and mistrust. All this time I was expanding my village, training up specialists, and getting ready for attack. Having survived the multiple incursions at the start of the level, and built up my forces, the end of the game was just a lot of fun. Half my armies stayed behind to guard against the Greens, and the other half went to fight the Yellows.

I laid waste to the Yellow town before most of my followers got there. The shaman ended up in a volcano, then in the centre of a fire rain storm, then falling into the crack of an earthquake. The Yellow buildings were destroyed by tornadoes, ground eroding beneath them, and the angel of death. It was a rout.

And then onto the Greens. No need for anyone to stand guard at home any more; the full might of the army marched to the Green town and flattened it.

An amazing game, 27 years after it was first released; possibly – no, probably – the best game ever. I’m glad to have finally finished it, though I will, of course, be returning. In fact, I have noticed that I have the official expansion pack, Undiscovered Worlds, as part of the package I bought on GOG, so I’ll be trying that out very soon.