[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Molyneux
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populous_II:_Trials_of_the_Oly...
It was especially interesting because in order to train the creature what behavior was or wasn't desired you had to catch them in the act doing that thing. Since the creature was an independent actor who you could only influence, you had to rely on the randomness of the AI to do certain things so you could teach them what was good and what was bad. E.g. you can't teach it eating villagers is bad unless you catch them in the act and smack them around. Such a shame they almost completely did away with that teaching-through-doing part of creature-training in favor of simplifying down the creatures behaviors to basically sliders like "good vs bad" and "friendly vs aggressive" in BW2. Still waiting on a proper spiritual successor to BW1... what a brilliant game.
The attempt to manage a dungeon and direct all your minions at a certain goal, compined with the idea to automate your defence (through traps and alarms) somehow evoked a similar joy to programming for me. It's especally ironic on how many misbehaviors of the creature agents I tried by locking (ha!) doors in front of them.
Also, the general game style (aesthetics, soundtrack and the narrator) remains unmatched to this day.
Similarly to DF, you just allocate tiles to be excavated, and can paint allocations on rooms, but never issue direct orders to minions. (Though you can possess them and take a first-person perspective, which is an interesting twist).