Populous Skirmish or PopSkirmish is an abandoned application TedTycoon wrote in C# in the summer of 2008. The application allows the user to play Populous in single player mode with new maps and AI scripts. The user can specify the rules of the game similar to how they can in multiplayer however the levels specify attributes which can limit the number of custom things there can be. For example some levels have a set alliance as the AI script will only work with those alliances.

The program allows the user to choose three types of maps that change the settings slightly.

Skirmish maps are pre-created maps that allow some changes in the settings. They also normally come with varied AI scripts such as an easy, medium and hard for each tribe and different scripts for specific allies.

The skirmish is designed to call the Random Map Generator 2 dll to create a random map which also create AI scripts that will work effectively on the random map. This was done using markers with the RMG2 placing the markers in the right place which the AI scripts could use with little changing of the actual script.

Scenarios can also be played on the skirmish by the level being set with fixed restrictions and allies and then the user just simply starting the game.

PopSkirmish replaces levl2001.dat with the new skirmish level as well as adding the right scripts and changing the levl2001.hdr accordingly. It then launches Populous and changes the playing resolution to the one specified on the settings dialog as well as applying an optional texture fix. After that it then renames the word 'Tutorial' with the word 'Skirmish' so that when the menu loads up, you get a menu item called Skirmish which the user is meant to click on. The last other memory offset the Skirmish changes is the level it loads when you click on the Skimish menu item, from levl2079 to levl2001. This then works nicely without the user having to create a new game and go through the pointless solar system and cut scenes. The only annoying feature is that when you start your skirmish game, it leaves you in the world view as it would in tutorial where as normally you would want it to start by going into the normal view fixed onto your shaman's location.