Powermonger

Powermonger builds on the success of Populous, but abandons the role of deity and places the player in the position of an earthly commander who tries to unite fragmented villages under his rule in a shattered, quasi-medieval world. Instead of casting spells directly, the player here commands squads of soldiers, negotiates with local leaders, builds supply lines, and figures out how to gradually conquer the entire map, divided into hundreds of small territories, with limited forces, while villages can also be won peacefully through gifts and negotiation.

The game places emphasis on logistics and planning, as units need food and weapons that must be gathered from the surrounding countryside or conquered villages, and changeable weather and seasons affect both resource availability and terrain passability. On the Amiga, Powermonger offered isometric visuals as smooth as Populous, just with a considerably larger number of units and objects on screen at once, which was a decent performance demand for hardware of the time, so the game required more memory than its predecessor and could slow down slightly during large battles on weaker setups. The campaign also branches individual missions depending on how the player performs, so the resulting shape of the campaign differs for each player.

The atmosphere is completed by austere but functional sound accompaniment and a sense of constant pressure from circumstances, where one must balance aggressive expansion with the sustainability of one's own army amid changing seasons. Powermonger was praised at release for its ambitious scope and depth of simulation, though its somewhat slower pace and steeper learning curve place it more among games for more patient strategists. Today it is seen as an interesting, lesser-known sibling of Populous, one that shows how Bullfrog knew how to play with its own game formula and expand it in new directions, even at the cost of losing some of the pace and clarity that made Populous famous.

Why play it: For more patient strategists craving a deeper simulation, Powermonger offers an ambitious scope and an interesting expansion of the Populous formula, even at the cost of a slower pace and a steeper learning curve.