Level 12, An Easy Target, is the first level in which you have three opponents. This is paving the way for levels such as Bloodlust, where you are constantly attacked from all sides, but in reality the easy target here is the yellow tribe, who starts in the middle of the map with easy access from everyone else. You do need to occasionally intervene to prevent boat excursions from the reds and greens, but generally you can rely on them to fight the yellows and among themselves. This would be fine if it weren’t for the fact that the island you start on is tiny and hilly, with limited space for a village and training huts.

So I decided that the yellow base looked far too tempting. I cast raise spells around the edge of my settlement, creating a wall to prevent attacks from the South, and funneling any enemies into a single bay where I created my boat shed. I set up many guard towers, staffed by fire warriors, along the perimeter, and then built more on top of a hill facing the yellows. With my shaman in one of these guard towers I could cast lightning spells to kill the yellow shaman, over and over again, and I could destroy the temple and warrior huts as well. After building up a smallish army, I set off and quite quickly it was all over, with the yellow land now mine (although mostly unusable due to the smoking ruins of the buildings).

That meant, of course, that the greens and the reds were both heading for me. I made sure there was a landbridge connecting the two other tribes, then cast lots of swamp spells to block their access to me. There was already a natural ridge blocking access between me and the greens, so I built a ramp up to that and constructed a row of guard towers, to prevent access but also as a base from which my shaman could set fire to parts of their settlement.

Having reinforced against the greens, I turned my attention to the reds, but the swamps I had put down were a bit too effective for me to make an attack. In the end I had to build a land bridge around the swamps so I could access the vault of knowledge and overrun the red village from behind. Two down, one to go.

Finally, I launched an offensive with 40 warriors, 40 priests, and 40 fire warriors at the greens, and while the shaman there initially put up a fight, I used my hypnotise spell to convert the group of priests and warriors surround here to be blue-aligned, meaning a quick dispatch.

I may not be the fastest at this game, but that’s because I like reinforcing my village at all times.

A new computer, and starting from the beginning of Populous the Beginning, again. This time I could have imported my previous save, and I still might, but with the increased graphical prowess of the new laptop I thought the game deserved a full showing. This coincided with an update to the game on GOG, which has made it run much more consistently and stable on Windows 11, and I’ve been running it through GOG Galaxy rather than the multiverse launcher which had previously been needed. To be honest, the quality improvements through the multiverse mean I’ll probably revert to that at some point, but for now I’ll up my time played counter on GOG.

PC gaming is still mostly about configuration.

None of the first levels gave me a problem, of course, although I had forgotten the best strategy for Death from Above and spent a minute or so bumbling around the world in a boat. I still passed it first time, though, after gathering multiple warriors and preachers and surrounding my shaman on her trip to the statue.

I finished with quite an epic battle on Building Bridges. The green tribe opened up the passage to my peninsular quite early, so I was having to fight them off at the same time as fending off yellow raids. It was only after I reinforced the three entry points with multiple followers, and set my shaman on top of a hillside to concentrate on lightning spells, that I was able to amass enough force to take the totem and open the bridge between the two tribes, sparking a conflict between them.

The next level to play is one of my least favourite – Unseen Enemy. I’ll tackle that when I’ve got some time and patience.