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It would be cool if you could play a little bit longer after you're done with your mission. Either that, or for finishing the game you win a free play mode where you can fight, build settlements, etc.
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You really nailed the feel of Populous. A few things I feel could be improved though: one is the cursor placement. A lot of times I had problems getting it exactly where I wanted it, especially when terraforming. I think the cursor should snap to the nearest node to the mouse, currently it heavily favors snapping to lower elevations. I also think that the islands where you only need to collect a totem need to be tweaked as well. It was too easy to just run in a grab the totem.
That said the game as a whole is great, especially the art.
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I think it's great and agree with Rykuth's and Raethyan's comments. I loved Populous in my day, but both clarity of view in the isometric tiered landscape and cursor manipulation were big problems in the original Populous. These things aren't corrected here. With these old issues fixed you have more than a homage to Peter Molyneux's brainchild, but a proper update. Oh, and I definitely dig the Amiga-style chiptunes. Kudos to Eric Skiff.
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I just spent about an hour building an enormous, perfectly square, perfectly flat island. I feel strangely fulfilled.
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My strategy for the later levels, which I call 'The Flood':
1) Build as high a mountain as possible with terraforming near your starting position.
2) Once you can't go any higher, build so that the top of that mountain is 3x3 squares.
3) Set a waypoint there. Make your people walk there.
4) Build settlements again.
You now have a city at the highest place of the map.
5) Expand your low-laying cities. Continue untill you have 500 mana.
6) Water storm!! Most of the enemies will drown, but some of your people will survive.
7) Repeat water storm if needed. At the two last levels, I had to do 3 untill everything but the mountaintop was drowned.
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For most levels, build flat ground just above the water level to build large towns; when the enemy reaches you, switch to Fight and use Fire spells on the enemy towns, then return to building flat ground. For lvl 19, build straight down to the island, then to the right, and back up; may need to call to a Waypoint; when a path reaches the totem, run for it. For lvl 29, build high and use the last Water spell. For lvl 30, Pause and Resign Island to get the Badge; you can win by building high and using the final Water spell several times, but the game freezes when you win.
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Just a few hints that might help others:
1. While Terraforming, click-and-dragging will create level land. Always do this to create the largest settlements quickly! Remember that raising land costs 10 mana while lowering land costs 20 mana.
2. Fire Column totem can immediately destroy a settlement if you cast it on the bottom vertex of the square in the middle of a settlement.
3. Fire Column and Terraforming is a cost-effective way to keep enemy settlements from reforming. It's like a Fire Mountain totem, but doesn't cost 500 mana.
4. On totem-capturing maps, you don't need to fight the enemy. You can often win the map quickly through smart use of multiple Waypoints. Just make sure you don't run into enemies or enemy settlements!
5. You can force your people out of settlements by terraforming the base of the settlements. This can be helpful when you want to get more people to attack immediately.
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It's interesting but the cost of spells is too high to make them really worth using much. By the time you can afford to use a Hero, you've been able to win the game for several minutes just by clicking "Look for fight".
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Agreed on the Fire Hero level being a very sharp and abrupt increase in difficulty over the previous levels which were so easy that they gave very little opportunity to learn skills to deal with this kind of difficulty. The first eighteen levels you could virtually get through by flattening all the land within sight of your people and doing little else. That difficulty increase combined with the outdated controls makes for a more frustrating experience. Populous was a very good game for its time, but this imitation inherits some of the more awkward control and interface elements. Things like the lack of zooming, awkward isometric controls, and so on.
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I missed the part in the tutorial where it said you need flat ground to build things, so I spent like half an hour trying lvl three and failing. For everyone trying to get the botd: WHEN YOU FLATTEN GROUND, YOUR CITY GETS BIGGER. When you have a big city it automatically makes soldiers.
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1) Build flat. 2) Avoid attack until you reach population limit. 3) Once you get Wave totem build high as possible then spam it once you have a good mana recharge - the AI never builds high. 4) Swamp is VERY effective, and Whirlpool is great in the early levels.
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Villager: "Oh, exalted leader! Thanks to your divine power of terraforming, we have a giant village full of several houses!" Leader: "Right, destroy the village, we're building a castle instead."
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Step 1: Pick a hieght and make it your ONLY height. Step 2: Cut all bridges leading to your island (if it involves on big island just skip this). Step 3: See where your guys build and amplify that construction. Step 4: Check on the mofo's, they probably at war or something. Step 5: Repeat 1 to 4 until nowhere else to go but enemy territory. Step 6: Choose "Pick a fight". Step 7: Profit.
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For a game about leveling land as fast as you can, the tool seems inadequate. For easy victory in the last few levels, use water storm.
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Just to thank very one for their feedback and playing Reprisal. I didn't think my first game would do so well so that's been great, really chuffed. Will be releasing tweaks soon.
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The last few levels can be easily beaten by simply terraforming to a high elevation, holding down the fort until you reach 500 Mana, then using Water Storm to sweep away the competition. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.
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Great game, some things that would make it even better; 1) A fast forward button. 2) Allowing our cursor to affect more than one tile at a time, it gets kinda tedious when you want to make a huge base, leveling each piece of ground one at a time. 3) Some way to rotate the camera or move it
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Little known fact: the only thing stopping primitive civilizations from becoming sprawling empires was very small hills.
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Pro tip: In the options menu change the mode from "Artistic" to "Basic" This will make everything easier to see and all in all make the game more enjoyable.
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Not sure if this is a bug, but at some point my people just refuse to build more houses. I have vast swathes of open land around them, and they just wander over it even tho' my "colonize" button is clicked.
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Never mind about the glare. You can switch the graphics mode in the options. I'm glad I tried it; it runs more smoothly and is easier to see.
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I've noticed that the shoddy AI for the warriors is part of the difficulty - getting them to do what you want requires cleverness, and I understand that this adds to the game - but when they eschew battling the enemies less than a screen away to go after enemies far further off that aren't even connected by a landbridge, I think their decision-making and pathfinding might need some work.
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Very nice. Altough there could be a key combination for raising/lowering a whole area of terrain, instead of just having to click at each grid individually.
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Really enjoyed the game but terraforming is too OP! I just finished any level by terraforming into massive empires and overruning everyone