Powermonger holds the record for "Game I've owned the longest without actually playing". Back in mid 98 I bought a collection of Populous 2 & PowerMonger. PowerMonger crashed when I tried to play it and the manual has more French than Swedish or English in it, and the French just seem to be install instructions.

Now I've started playing it, but I don't really know what the goal of the game is. I send my troops around, fight the villages and then what? There seem to be no enemies on the map, and I've conquered all the villages (that I know of).

Powermonger is one of the most obscure games I've ever played. Goofed around in might be a better description than playing. There wasn't much in it I understood...

I found the strategy guide at a garage sale.
Fun to flip through, I did not get any of it.

Every time I've tried Powermonger, I've stopped after at most 15 minutes, because I hadn't a clue what I was supposed to do, or even how to do anything meaningful.

I just learnt that the game does not actually tell you when you've won a map, you need to watch a scale in order to figure out how things are going.

I wish I had known that before. All those hours in front of my Amiga 500 scratching my head and randomly clicking on the map and various buttons hoping to finish the maps without even having the remotest idea of how to do it and what to do.
I feel a new delayed childhood trauma coming. :(

When the scale is all the way in your favour, you hit "retire" (diskette icon->game->retire. Intuitive, I know), and then you win the level. I discovered this by mistake. There are apparently different weapons in this game and such, but I have no idea how to get them. Also, what do the 3 different aggression levels do? I take it that they represent in what radius the troops will care about enemies, but do they do anything more (or even that)?

Aha! That's how to do it.

The only thing I remember was somehow taking over a village, having the villagers working in some way for a long time, clumping them together in a big amoeba like mob and sending them to other villages where they shot what I guess was enemies with arrows.

Man, I have GOT to get this game.

That seem to be the winning strategy. I've beaten several levels in a row now, just taking over villages, and recruiting all the villagers into huge mobs. Any attempts to use multiple generals just makes the main army weaker, and there is usually some large villages/towns that needs these überblobs (though I guess you could just send multiple armies at one village, why complicate things?)
The game is already starting to get repetitive, every level has been roughly the same, just with more and more big villages to take over.
I love the level of detail the game has to offer though. You can find information about every single person by clicking on them, and orders between generals seem to be sent through what I guess is pidgeons (or at least 5 pixels big flapping lines). Had they expanded upon this games concepts it might have turned into something great. I suspect that people fell in loves with this games concepts, not the game itself. I can't really see anything inside this game that would make it "great", but it has plenty of good ideas.

It's coming back to me now. :)
Yes I remember now that the details and concepts was what made me try so hard and long to learn to play it. One of the first games where the world actually felt living.
Just that I think I used to have a lot of pigs or something following me around I had to slaughter for food now and then.

Now I want to play it again. I don't have it for PC and my Amiga 500 is at my parents house. :(

I seem to remember that it's all about making weapons. There's the option to set the villagers to ploughs, I think that *should* increase population, but it looked like a long term strategy that really didn't float.

Basically, take a town, set to make weapons, make them attack the next.

Ah. That's probably how I got them to use bows.

Great game but hard to figure out. I also got it from the bundle CD that contained both Populous 2 and this one. You really have to read the manual to fully understand how it works but once you get it it's an awesome game (and I think the manual can be found on the CD). Sadly I was unable to find a DOS version of the expansion pack which changes the setting to a WWI scenario with rifles and tanks.

What amazes me to this day is the love for detail and how advanced the technology was.

Powermonger GOG vote!