# Tricks & Glitches

Stuff which you can use in your advantage; mostly, abusable glitches. (nothing wrong with abusing glitches if they’re not banned!)
Note: Tricks which have been banned at the Populous: Reincarnated multiplayer service are marked BANNED. If you use them while playing on that service, you could get banned. Tricks marked PATCHED are either either not possible or disadvantageous to use in the Populous: Reincarnated service due to the anti-cheat.

Blast “no damage” #1: Cast blast with a certain timing after being blasted – you won’t take damage.

Blast “no damage” #2: With your shaman selected, and no spell selected, repeadetly click on the enemy shaman. A lot of the time when you do this and get blasted, you don’t take any damage.

Walking through “unwalkable” paths: Cast blast out of range to walk your shaman through unreachable paths (especially useful around the hill on Face Off), or with other units put a fireplace and constantly click it or use ctrl+alt.

Ubers: Ubers are units with an abnormally high health. Because the damage an unit causes depends on its health, ubers cause a lot of damage, usually instantly killing enemy units. However, they die if thrown in the water or are struck by lightning. Making ubers requires a considerable amount of effort and they are typically not cost-effective at all, except if the map is shaped in such a way that a suitable pit already exists. Basically, when units are thrown into a small pit in Populous, they get stuck in there and roll. While rolling, they lose health. Eventually their health goes so low into the negatives that it rolls over to the highest possible value of health, then starts going down (while they’re still in the pit). However, their health will show up as zero while it’s in the negatives. You’ll need to make a very small pit on the highest possible land height, then blast followers into it, and blast them out of it when their health is really high. (use the bird eye’s view – minus key, not on numpad – and right click them to check their health).

Dead on armageddon: If the (center?) of someone’s reincarnation site contains water, and a player then casts armageddon, the player whose reincarnation site is “submerged” will instantly lose. This is due to the fact that, before armageddon, all units are teleported to the reincarnation site then one by one to the armageddon arena; if they’re teleported to water, they’ll drown. Note that when a shaman incarnates, she creates land on her reincarnation site if there’s water!

Object overload: When there’s more than a few thousand objects in game, no more objects can be created. This means that casting spells (some of which take up more objects than others) will malfunction. Although in a game of low skilled players it may be down to luck (as with a bunch of other things) whose spells work, an expert player knows how to handle this, when to cast his spells, and when not. The best way to prevent getting hit by object overload is to not cast your spells at the same time everyone else cast a bunch of spells; you should wait for them to finish taking their effect, and then cast yours. Know how to make object overload work to your advantage and to your opponent’s disadvantage. The most frequent abuse of object overload is, after the opponent casts a volcano, intentionally creating more objects (often by using long range landbridges) so that the volcano can’t spawn the lava and it “freezes”.

No reincarnation site PATCHED: If you cast a spell before your reincarnation site is made and then move your shaman right after then your shaman will be able to start moving 1 or 2 seconds earlier (and thus get the wildmen convert advantage). However, if you don’t time it right, there’s the risk of getting stuck, and you’ll need to kill your own shaman (the easiest way would be clicking on a spot where she is unable to move to, including the edge of ANY land, and then wait two minues) to be able to move. In the original version of the game, your shaman reincarnates even with no reincarnation site, but in Populous: Reincarnated this has been changed so that if you use this trick, you’ll be unable to reincarnate. (however, you are able to build on the space where your reincarnation site should be after dying for the first time)

Tower stop patrolling BANNED: if a tower is placed in a certain spot near where an enemy follower or shaman is patrolling (it’s a certain spot, if it doesn’t work then you haven’t placed it in the correct spot, try adjacent squares), the follower or shaman will stop patrolling, and attack the tower plan. A good use for this glitch is placing a tower in the middle of warriors patrolling in a circle, and then cast lightning on the warriors when they all group together so that one shot kill shtem all. Note that units can be patrolled in squares not suitable for placing towers to safe guard against this glitch.

Force disembark BANNED: Place your cursor over a balloon or boat which you expect the enemy to enter before they actually enter it. When they enter it, click the disembark button before they move. You can prevent your opponent from using his own balloons and boats!

Force dodging BANNED: When units are attacking your shaman, cast blast out of range with ctrl held several times in order to not take damage. Push other units several times (possibly into the water) by repeadetly pressing G. Stop an unit from dying by selecting it and repeadetly pressing G. A brutal abuse of this is doing it with fire warriors selected; one fire warrior can potentially kill ten warriors without taking any damage if a player selects him and keeps pressing “G”. Pressing G only works when your shaman is alive; however, ctrl+alt+clicking (every 8 clicks, put a click without ctrl+alt in between so it gets unselected) in the ground or repeadetly shift+clicking into a hut icon in the buildings panel has the same effect. A good use of force dodging is, when your shaman is not in a fight, to cast blast out of range (not more than once in a second or it won’t push) when a lightning is about to strike your shaman to cause your shaman to move away and thus dodge it. Populous: Reincarnated ban exceptions: if more than one of your units is attacking the same enem unit, it’s allowed to force dodge with a partial amount of them (NOT all of them), if it causes your unit to simply back away from the fight. Blasting out of range to dodge a lightning is almost universally accepted and nobody has been banned for it.

Deleting tower plans BANNED: Place a tower plan over someone else’s tower plan to overwrite it. Doesn’t apply to other building types.

Dismantle enemy huts BANNED PATCHED: With one of your followers selected, attack an enemy follower which is about to enter a hut or training hut, right click your own follower, right click the attack icon, and then click on the dismantle icon. The hut he was about to go into will be dismantled.