The Populous Vault

The following page is a series of generalized opinions on what the etiquette for Populous Online should be. All players, old and new alike, should read through these so they know what is truly legal and what is not in online play. Anything not covered in this is an unwritten rule that can be carried out as long as it does not fall under one of the following categories.

Winning/Losing

It is a very common event these days to find the sore loser of the crowd. "How can you tell?", one might ask, but it is really quite simple. The sore loser type has always been there and it is pretty much impossible to avoid flawlessly. No matter what game you play online or with someone, there is always a sore loser in the crowd. Generally these are the people who start rants in the lobby saying thinhs like "OMG U NOOB U SUXOR U LUCK... whatever." This is useually the immature dialect you frequently see in the lobby which is practically a trademark to a few people who shall remain nameless. Basically its direct translation is "Oh my God, you suck you (insert random profanity here)." My point is, playing with these people is just not very much fun. People like this are simply immature and cannot even begin to understand that somewhere on the internet, there is someone who is superior to them in skill. Just ignore these people at all costs; these are the type of people whose age they are acting shares the same number as their IQ. My advice is to simply ignore these people if they act this way around you, and to stop acting immature and grow up if you are acting as I described. You will be surprised at how the overall mood in the lobby changes when a few people actually start acting nice for once.

Another annoying type of player is the sore winner. These are the people who go around ranting "OMG I PWNED U!!!" As before, this show an immature person who not only cannot spell correctly, but obviously has no manners. Basically, that previous text translates to "Oh my God I just owned (dominated) you because you suck!" Now don't get me wrong, it is OK to be proud to win, but it is not OK to boast. The only thing you need to say at the end of the game is "Good Game"; if everyone did that, then I wouldn't need to be writting this now. My point here is this, bragging turns people off. If all you do is make fun of newer players then they will become discouraged and never come back, then Populous will surely die. Don't brag; try to ignore the people who brag. The block feature is a nice tool, utilize it whenever needed.

Cheating

Cheaters, though extremely rare, are an annoying brand of gamer who seems to find it honorable to utilize special features not avaliable to other players so they can feel good about themselves when they win. Due to anti-cheat measures being implemented into the matchmaker client, is is pretty difficult for a player to cheat in game. It is also important to note that nothing is 100% foolproof. There are many types of cheats to look out for, but it generally isnt an issue meaning that you shouldn't really have to worry about it. Some players complain that some people use cheats to gain an extra boost of mana to charge spells more quickly, this is a myth, not true and there is nothing proving it as true. Many people are just good about keeping their followers busy in order to gain the extra mana. It is important to note that the standard in-game cheats for singleplayer mode do not work in multiplayer. Some obvious cheats are: God Mode (having an unlimited range to cast spells), resync (causing the game to go back to a certain point), and crashing the game. Bug abuse is also a cheat, but it will be covered in a later section. Unless a person can bypass the matchmaker's anti-cheat protection, God Mode cannot happen as a cheat. There are certain situations in which the game will run out of sync with itself (making it seem like two different games are bieng played) which makes it appear that one person has God Mode. When this happens, that person actually sees in his game that he is within range to cast the spell, while you may see their shaman way back in their base. Resyncing cannot be done because of the anti-cheat filter as well. Normally if this happens, there is a network problem. In temrs of cheating, this may be a symptom of someone attempting to use a trainer or any other such cheating program. Crashing the game can also be considered a cheat. This one is very difficult to figure out because the game itself will crash on its own many times without a cheat even being in mind. Usually you can figure out if it is a cheat by seeing the game crash on the same person repeatedly, especially if things never seem to go their way.

Cheating shows signs of immaturity in the ability to accept the fact that someone might be better at something than you. It shows that people care too much about competeing and less about having fun, which is the entire purpose of playing the game in the frist place. If you have to cheat to win, you are sad, that is all there is to it. If you happen to be unfortunate enough to encounter a cheater online, then this is what should be done. Take a screenshot of the cheater's actions. Kindly and quietly and in private, inform the other player of the cheater's deeds and just silently quit the game. You should then silently show the picture to an administrator of the lobby so that they can see this. Do not, under any circumstances, stur up any arguement in the lobby, doing so will show how immature you are over a simple game, and it will make the administrators not care so much about you having problems. After all, no one enjoys helping a whiney three-year-old.

Bug Abuse

Bug abuse in Populous is when you use game glitches to help gain an advantage over your enemies in Populous. These are considered cheats for the most part. So far there are about four glitches that many people do not seem to like. The most annoying and destructive glitch is the dismantle enemy buildings glitch. This can be utilized to trick enemy followers into dismantling their own training huts, which is definately an unfair advantage. Another annoying glitch would be the "Uber" Brave Glitch. This glitch involves giving your braves super health and super strength. It allows them to kill enemy followers in one hit and far exceed the maximum health limit. This one is easy to spot and consumes a significant amount of resources and time. There is a glitch which makes use of the teleport spell to cast a long land bridge which can span at most only half of the globe. A glitch that some people use to save time prevents their shaman from going through the sequence of creating their reincarnation site pillars so she can get moving more quickly. There are also some serious side effects to this if done incorrectly.

Rushing

Rusing in Populous is when you attack a perosn with several converted braves (and mabye a few trained men) within the first two minuets of the game. This is a tactic, not a cheat. An experienced player can fend off a rush and put the rusher at a severe disadvantage. Rushing is totally fair and you should not whine about it. If you get rushed, ask your ally for help or overcome it.

Back Dooring and Side Dooring

Back dooring and side dooring is when an attacker sends an attack to someone through an area which is not the main entryway of their base. This is not a cheat, if you get killed by this, defend better, it is your own fault. Don't start whinning about it because you will just make yourself look more immature than ever.

Doubling and Tripling

Doubling in Populous is when two people attack a person simultaneously with their troops, their shamans, both their troops and shamans, or any combination of the preceding. Trippling replaces the word two in the previous statement with the word three (go figure). Doubling is always legal in Populous. Populous is not tag-team wrestling, all four players are on the map in real-time at the same time. Do not whine about doubling, instead use it yourself and win. Sometimes a player gets so big that the only way to effectively defeat them is by using teamwork. According to Joe's and Keith52's strategy guide, they say that doubling is not teamwork. This is wrong, doubling is a pure example of teamwork. In a double one person can attack a person from the east side, while the other attacks from the west. The enemy shaman can only pick one of the opposing shamans to attack first in such a situation. The offending team can make a set of objectives to help be more successful. For example: one player could focus on keeping the shaman busy while the other takes care of the person's training huts. If the perosn being doubled still had an ally, they have an opportunity to do some damage to the doublers if they want to, if they don't it's their own fault. Trippling can be considered whimpy, but this rarely happens and the people who do it are usually well known in the lobby. Don't complain about either of the two, it is your job to be prepared for the worst, not whine the worst.

Stacked Games

Stacked gams are gamesthat are one-sided. For example: the host sets it up so that the teams are two skilled players against two new players. Another example would be when everyone has decided upon the restrictiosn, then before pressing start, the host changes a setting and quickly launches the game before anyone takes notice. Although it is not a cheat, it is very lame, don't practice habits like this or people will stop joining your games. Stacking teams is really annyoing because it discourages newer players who feel there is no hope for them. If you have the teams agreed upon prior to launching the game, inform the other participants as well. If they stay in the game and you do the alliance after being informed, then it is their own fault. You are only in the wrong if you do such a thing in order to make an easy win for yourself. It is not always easy to pick fair teams, especially if people hide under different names. If it gets to a point where you don't know how skilled anyone is, suggest a free-for-all game in which everyone fights on their own. If you can't get anyone to agree to this, just do the best you can. The point is, makie fair games so everyone can have fun. Having fun is what games are all about.

Quitters

Any more this doesn't seem to be as much as a problem as it used to be, but the point is, quitting is annoying. People quit for many different reasons and as a result it not only ruins the game, but the player who quits has also put their ally in a position to be doubled, now tell me, does that seem fair? In short no its not fair at all. I don't know how many games I've been in were my enemies ally quit, and then it ended up being a twi versus one. Here are some of the classic reasons that people quit: they say that they just have to go, they'll say that they have to eat dinner, they'll say just about anything that works, and the funny thing is that you'll find that they mostly say it when you're about to finish them off. Another form of quitters are the people who are new and decide to quit when they get hit by one earthquake. If they are new, tell them not to quit and finish it out, and if they aren't new or they continue to persist, just don't play with them anymore.

For those of you who are telling the truth when making an excuse about leaving a game here is a suggestion. Instead of starting a game 5 minutes before dinner, why don't you just wait until after dinner, the Populous Lobby will still be there when you get back, don't worry. I do understand that if you play a game for two hours and you have to leave, that is fine. In short, my point is, make sure you take care of everything that could cause you to quit the game, before you start playing. Doing this will save a lot of players a lot of grief.

Pausers

This is almost as annoying as a person who quits. I'm not saying it's a bad thing to pause, but only do it if you really need to. It's also okay to pause in the beginning of the game to fix your screen resolution. When doing this, just type in, "res" in the chat menu and press enter, then pause and fix your settings. Aside from little things that you may have to do, this is the only reason I see fit to pause the game over. What is really annoying about people who pause at random is, it ruins your train of thought. I hate it when people pause saying they have to use the bathroom, that is the main offender of my grief right here. For these people who pause to use the bathroom I have a question, why didn't you take care of the before you started playing. It's really annoying to pause in the middle of a game ruining everyone else's concentration because you didn't do something that should have been taken care of either before or in between games.

Here is what you can do about these people who like to pause so much, since they pause, that usually means they'll be away from their computer so that means you can take a look at the world while there away and develop a plan of attack. If they pause consistently for short periods of time, I think it's okay to unpause on them because if its really a short period of time, then you shouldn't really be able to do too much to them in that time.

For those of you who are pausing, here's some advice, if you have to pause and the others unpause, then that means you need to give them a reason, and if they still unpause, you'll either have to put off what you are doing, or just except the fact that you village may look different by the time you get back to your computer.