In Populous, you play as a god, either the evil red one or the blue good one. Stereotypical, but hey, if it works, it works. Other than that, the evil/good are just labels as both have the same powers and capabilities. Hell, even their worshipers are the same despite the colored cloth they wear.

But what is your goal? Well, the thing that finishes the game is destroying the opposing worshipers' civilization. How, you ask? That's where Peter Mol's magic fairy dust comes into play. The game is designed such that you can be free to do anything. Want to be a stereotypical good guy and flatten the land for your civilization to grow? Sure you can! Want to go full pacifist and avoid violence by making a river between good and evil? Go ahead! Want to go full Roman Empire and expand aggressively until every corner of the map is filled with your color? Be my guest!

This freedom was not exclusive to Populous, but the game gave so much power that you could really do much of what you wanted. Of course, the opposing god usually had the same tools, and the AI god can be a pain in the ass sometimes, but that could be disabled as well. In fact, the game is massively customizable, which is always a big bulky YES for me. In the custom game, you can make it so neither side can do anything but watch their worshippers try and survive. Boring, but it is an option! Or you can enable only terraforming upwards, so that unnaturally large parking lot style plains are no longer possible, or maybe only enable earthquakes, meaning terraforming is RNG based! What a hoot, wouldn't you agree?

And I hear you scream: "But what about the worshippers!" and yes, the worshippers are essential to your victory. They are dumb as bricks, and hit just as hard, do you need to balance terraforming to expand your reserves to invade new lands, use mana on stronger powers to destabilize the enemy, maybe even unhinge the very foundations of that opposing village.

All in all, however, the main thing that made Populous popular is that you had freedom. This should inspire future sandbox/strategy game designers as one of the things that make a game fun, yet flexible, for the player, no matter how many times it is played