Armageddon

Armageddon

Armageddon

Mana Required : 10,000

Shots : 1

Range : 16

Duration : Depends

Incantation : Ta-ka

The Armageddon spell makes an arena out of the land in game, deleting all huts and all trees that may be in the arena. The four shamans and all their followers are transported to this arena and all appear one by one. The shamans, for the only time in the game, have Magical Shield around them and occasionaly cast blast on each other while the followers all fight to the death. The remaining tribe wins and their shaman gets to lightning the other shamans.

This spell boasts perhaps one of the most spectacular, bloodiest and certainly the most final fight scenes you'll ever see in the game.

Armageddon Tactics

While they do tend to be rare because many people choose not to have their fate determined by chance, there are ways to obtain victory in Armageddon.

Purely Soldiers

One of the best strategies to make use of in Armageddon is to convert your entire Population to Warriors and Firewarriors; have as little of any other follower as possible.

Training Huts

The best way to do this effectively is to build several Training Huts and then start training as soon as possible. In this particular scenario, it would behoove you to have two or maybe even three Warrior and Firewarrior Training Huts each. Remember to keep spells handy as training soldiers will only use up an allocated 50% of your total mana, which is then divided among all the troops currently being trained. In Armageddon, any time you are not making troops, (this includes the time of when one trained troop leaves the training hut and the next follower walks in to receive training) you are wasting mana.

Dismantle Huts

Since the number of completed Huts in your base adds one brave to your population in the Armageddon arena, and only 199 followers may fight in the arena (plus your shaman) at once, any Hut you have will result in one less soldier being available and one more brave to weaken your army. As a result, it is imperative that you dismantle your Huts before going into Armageddon. This will ensure that you have the maximum number of troops available to fight for your cause.

Cheap and Quick Victory

One of the most interesting things about Populous is that the game is full of bugs; some can be considered cheats while others are used as strategy in today's games. The following tactic is a bug which can be used to kill off an entire tribe before the Armageddon arena is even formed.

Explanation

During the initialization of Armageddon, the game teleports all of the tribes' followers to their respective start locations (the center of their Shaman's Reincarnation Site). Once the arena is formed, the game will teleport all of the followers to the arena, one-by-one.

The Tactic

In order to kill off the tribe, it is your task to send these followers "to the depths" during the Armageddon Initialization process. To do so, you must submerge the entire tribe's Reincarnation Site (Pillars and all) into the water. Make sure you can do this and cast Armageddon before the enemy shaman either rises the Reincarnation Site or Reincarnates, else your efforts will be wasted.

The Effect

As mentioned before, the effect results in the complete elimination of the tribe who is on the receiving end of this trick. When the arena begins to form, that tribe will die off and they will be out of the game. It should be noted, in some instances, Populous will exhibit some unusual behavior after performing this trick.