Populous 2 - a question

[Panzar75]

It was some years since I last played this game but every so often I start thinking about it. The reason is that I cannot figure out how to beat this particular map. I have spent probably 100's of hours thinking about it and at least 10 hours combined trying to find something on the web to help me explain how on earth you are supposed to win. (There seem to be nothing to find.)

I (sometimes) assume it must, somehow, be possible to win this map that is somewhere in the middle of the campaign (there is obvioulsly a number of them with similar setup or you could skip it) but I cannot for the life of me figure out a strategy that would work. While I don't know the name of the map it is one where you have no powers except papal magnet and the enemy has access to Helen of Troy.

The problem is obviously that the computer soon enough makes a Helen of Troy and with accesss to nothing offensive to take her out (the water is shallow so you cannot drown her or even make a meaningful dent in her energy) she soon has everyone following her around losing energy and then you lose the map. There is seemingly nothing you can do. I have tried every concivable strategy I can think of. I have tried playing aggressively settling towards the enemy (with and without the use of the papal magnet) and take them out fast. I have tried to focus on maxing my growth rate to be as strong as possible. I would guess I have tried about 100 times in total but nothing I do gets even close.

What possible strategy could there be to win this map? Is it really impossible after all and nobody in the entire world has gone past it to the end of the campaign? Having tried many many times I can with reasonable confidence say there is no way to win before Helen is in play, there is no way to take her out and there is no way you can grow faster than she takes your followers away. All this seems to imply the map is impossible to win. And yet I have kept thinking about it every few months for many years now. Surely they would not put an impossible map in the middle of the campaign?

So if you happen to know what to do (even if I'm unlikely to ever play that game again) you could save me a lot of headache thinking about it.

 

[caravaner]

It was hard.

I tried to google tips for it and only found this post.

It took me four tries to win it. Almost rage quitted the whole game after first attempt as it seemed so impossible

Correct strategy is to rush as you can not do anything else or you lose. Don't turtle or build full castles at your starting location.

At the start keep someone always on the move towards the enemy while others camp and grow stronger. Don't move too far or your people will die. At first I thought it would be good idea to rush attack the enemy leader, but it did not work. Don't worry about it and first attack the enemy's weakest points, grow stronger and repeat.

You must regularly sprout more troops towards your front lines from your houses. Use the magnet. Good strategy is to move your troops on the enemy side and then use the band together button, after couple of seconds use the attack button and you should be able to take many houses simultaneously if your magnet was in a proper place.

I had even another strategy but did not get to use it. Instead of sprouting raise the land and make the whole houses population move towards the enemy. This was not necessary but could have worked well at some point.

Also make sure that your game speed or dos box cycles are not too high as I think it might then become impossible.

This was necro post, but I would probably otherwise asked the same question and there was no answer to it yet.

I wonder if they designed that mission on purpose or if it is just generated by the game code?

I have also seen missions where you don't have the raise/lower land spell and you can still use it if you first just right click on any tile. Not sure if it is a bug.

 

[cheetar]

the map is called UHWIAF (number 239)
password to get there KKPPOHIHHLCLBHIPIACA

as long as the enemy doesn't have a leader he won't do any spells, and he definitely cannot summon helen.
so it seems the key to success is ownage of the enemy papal magnet.

you should get your ppl down there asap (maybe by continuously destroying your own houses by lifting the land (toggling between "go to magnet" and "build house") - in small steps though as your settlers won't survive long) and then try to build a lot of fortresses around the place - be sure to have a big fortress centered there.
as soon as you got hold of the enemy magnet, the foe will switch to 100% "go to magnet" mode - so you need to constantly sprog ppl from surrounding houses and run to the magnet so you can fight the enemy hordes. eventually when the flag of the house there is on top, you can shortly switch to fight mode and sprog a few settlers to expand your territory.
i'm currently struggling as i (unlike the computer) sometimes make a mistake and trash a house rather than sprogging ppl out of it (by clicking not exactly into the center of a house).
if i don't succeed this time, maybe my next approach will be to wait a bit longer to kill the enemy leader so i have more time to destroy his building before he goes into full "run to the magnet" mode.

 

[cheetar]

it seems one can directly enter the map names, so the password is not required (it's just for the god i'm playing).
according to a cheat list of maps[1] i found, one could skip the map by entering the name of the next map (240 PEQUAT) - you won't get any experience points that way though.

[1] http://www.cheatbook.de/files/pop2.htm

 

[cheetar]

just finished the battle with my original tactics after 300 days.
this time i was able to kill their leader and guard their magnet earlier in the game plus had more fortresses nearby and a bigger population so i managed to switch to fight mode often, instead of just keeping the flow of ppl to the magnet to fight off the intruders. eventually when my leader was fully charged i temporarily pointed my own magnet to a nearby enemy settlement, crushed it and headed back to their magnet.

btw, the next map i'm now being taken to is not 240, but "245: CCMEAD" (missing in the list from the previous post, as well as this map itself).

P.S.: when i was nearly finished (foe had only like 15 settlements left), he suddenly started a sh1tload of magic, devastating nearly half of my area...). but until that time he didnt use his powers at all.