Spore Guide SPORE. A guide by Feng Kevin Gu (version: FINAL) <> This is a no nonsense guide that will instruct the reader how to complete the game of SPORE. SPORE is a very innovative game produced by Maxis, but with breadth comes a lack of specificity, and each stage has quirks that can be exploited to make your life easier. You may search for a specific section using the find keys located next to your section of interest. ***BEFORE YOU READ: THIS GUIDE DOES NOT CONTAIN PART LISTS, ACHIEVEMENT LISTS, OR BADGE LISTS AND WILL REQUIRE BASIC KNOWLEDGE OF HOW TO WORK THE GAME*** TABLE OF CONTENTS {To use a find key, search for the number including the brackets} [1] Introduction [1.1] What is Spore? [1.2] Why should I read your guide? [2] Cell Stage [2.1] Starting your Cell [2.2] What carried over? [2.3] Stage Logistics [2.3.1] Movement [2.3.2] Progression [2.3.3] Obtaining Parts [2.3.4] Attacking [2.3.5] Survival [2.3.6] Evolving [2.4] Completing the stage [2.4.1] Herbivore [2.4.2] Carnivore [2.4.3] Omnivore [2.5] Consequences of Cell Stage [2.6] Tips for cell stage [3] Creature Stage [3.1] Starting from your cell [3.2] Starting at creature stage [3.3] What carried over? [3.4] Stage Logistics [3.4.1] Movement [3.4.2] Progression [3.4.3] Socialization and obtaining parts [3.4.4] Attacking and obtaining parts [3.4.5] Pickups [3.4.6] Survival [3.4.7] Rogue & Epic Creatures [3.4.8] Freak occurances [3.4.9] Evolving [3.5] Completing the stage [3.5.1] Social [3.5.2] Predator [3.5.3] Adaptable [3.5.4] Switching Sides [3.6] Consequences [3.7] Tips for Creature Stage [4] Tribal Stage [4.1] Starting from your Creature [4.2] Starting from Tribal Stage [4.3] What carried over? [4.4] Stage Logistics [4.4.1] Your Tribe [4.4.2] Your Tribesmen [4.4.3] Movement & Actions [4.4.4] Gathering Food [4.4.5] Buildings [4.4.6] Being friendly [4.4.7] Being mean [4.4.8] Progression [4.4.9] Evolving [4.5] Completing the Tribal stage [4.5.1] Friendly [4.5.2] Aggressive [4.5.3] Industrious [4.5.4] Switching Sides [4.6] Consequences of Tribal Stage [4.7] Tips for Completing Tribal Stage [5] Civilization Stage [5.1] Starting from your Tribe [5.2] Starting from Civilization Stage [5.3] What carried over? [5.4] Stage Logistics [5.4.1] Your Nation [5.4.2] Your City [5.4.3] Your Vehicles & Supply [5.4.4] Preferred Vehicle Types per Civilization [5.4.5] Income [5.4.6] Your Special Abilities [5.4.7] Survival [5.4.8] Relations [5.4.9] Religious Capture [5.4.10] Military Capture [5.4.11] Economic Capture [5.4.12] Progression [5.4.13] Evolving [5.5] Completing the civilization stage [5.5.1] Religious [5.5.2] Economic [5.5.3] Military [5.5.4] Switching Sides [5.6] Consequences of Civilization Stage [5.7] Tips for Completing Civilization Stage [6] Space Stage [6.1] Starting from your Civilization [6.2] Starting from Space Stage [6.3] What carried over? [6.3.1] Your Ship's Evolutionary Special Abilities [6.4] Stage Logistics [6.4.1] Your Ship [6.4.2] Your Empire [6.4.3] Space Flight [6.4.4] Your Ship's Basic Tools [6.4.5] Your Colonies [6.4.6] Relations [6.4.7] Getting Credits [6.4.8] Expanding your empire [6.4.8.1] Terraforming & Colonization [6.4.8.2] Conquering other systems [6.4.8.3] Buying other systems [6.4.9] Special Items [6.4.10] Non-spacefaring civilizations [6.4.11] Missions [6.4.12] Progression [6.5] "Completing" the stage [6.5.1] Setting up your empire [6.5.1.1] Grovelling for money [6.5.1.2] Trading Spice for money [6.5.1.3] Beating people up for money [6.5.2] Expanding away from your homeworld [6.5.3] Heading inwards [6.5.3.1] Peace with the Grox [6.5.3.2] War with the Grox [6.5.3.3] Mad dash for the center [6.6] Consequences? [6.7] Tips for Completing Space Stage [6.7.1] Terraforming & Colonizing [6.7.2] Relations with NPC Empires (and your other saved games) [6.7.3] Income [7] The Story of the Quinor (Read about my limbless space slugs!) [8] Legal Stuff? (If you have a heart, read me too) =============================================================================== [1] Introduction This is my second attempt at writing a faq, my first faq was a no nonsense guide for the sheep class in trickster online. The goal of my faqs are to provide very straight forward and down-to-earth advice for the game in question. My faqs are all provided by a civilized gamer for civilized gamers. [1.1] What is Spore? SPORE is a culmination of 5 different games, although some may argue it is only 4. It is a simple eat-em-up, it is a rpg, it is a base/unit-management RTS, it is a macro-management RTS, and it is a space trading/conquer simulation game. Since they mashed together 5 games, each individual game is not very well done in terms of balance, and thus it is easy to exploit. This is not a particularly challenging game, yet it retains its fun value. [1.2] Why should I read your guide? This guide will provide information that is straight-forward, and written in a manner that isn't mentally taxing. It will tell you exactly how to get from the start to whichever end you wish to have in SPORE. Please keep in mind that lists such as parts, missions, badges, and achievements are not included in this FAQ. People tend to get ornery over "stolen work" when it comes to lists. At a later time, I may supplement this guide with such lists as an appendix. However, that is unlikely. If you want to look at lists while perusing this guide, you can open a separate window. =============================================================================== [2] Cell Stage The cell stage is analogous to the flash game "Fishy" or the PSP game "flOw" ________________________ [2.1] Starting your Cell From the galaxy view menu, select a shining star with a yellow aura to view its T3 planet. If the planet is to your liking, click on cell stage to begin the game from the cell stage. If this is a fresh install or you have not completed any other stages, cell stage is likely to be your only choice. Now select your initial diet, your theme if you have one, and your difficulty level. Lastly, name your planet or click the dice to have the game randomly generate one for you. *YOU CAN PAUSE THE GAME AT ANYTIME IN SPORE BY PRESSING TILDE (~)* While paused, you can still issue commands and manipulate your camera. ________________________ [2.2] What carried over? Upon entering the cell stage, that is, exiting the galaxy view into a NEW game, the following things are carried into your game of SPORE: *Your diet - your selected diet will have profound differences in your game play during this stage. *Your cell - that little picture of your cell right at the beginning is what your cell will look like when you first start. *Planet color & continent scheme - What your planet looked like when you were making a new game is what the planet will look like in all future stages besides the cell stage. This planet is now a permanent fixture in the entire game of SPORE, that is the game installed on your computer. If you travel here with another civilization during space stage, this planet will look exactly like this. *Planet name - While you have no control over your STAR's name, your planet's name is now a permanent fixture in the entire game of SPORE, this name is persistent between different games of SPORE on the same computer. *Your location in the galaxy - Your creature now permanently claims exactly one star system in the galaxy. Other game files (other civilizations you create) may visit this system but may not attack it. __________________________ [2.3] Cell Stage Logistics GOAL: Collect DNA points by eating to progress to next stage Your Progression is measured in DNA points, the progression bar is always at the bottom of your screen for any stage. To the left of the bar is the amount of DNA you have to spend for parts. To see how you've progressed so far at any point in the game, click the button on the bottom right of your screen. Take note that you can not view your progression if you are on the verge of advancing to the next stage, because this button is used for that as well. During this stage, your cell's picture as well as its Health is displayed in the bottom right corner. ________________ [2.3.1] Movement To move your cell, simply click on the location you want your cell to move to. Alternatively, click and hold in the direction you want to move. ___________________ [2.3.2] Progression To progress in the cell stage, you must fill up the DNA bar on the bottom of your screen. To obtain DNA, you must eat food based on your diet. Food choice is solely dependent on the mouth type you have, the diet choice simply gave you the mouth respective to your choice. Herbivores eat algae, these come in green. Move your cell so that its mouth is in contact with the algae and it will eat it, providing you with progression and DNA points. You can NOT attack with this mouth. Carnivores eat meat, these come in red. Move your cell so that its mouth is in contact with the meat and it will eat it, providing you with progression and DNA points. This mouth also provides an attack. Progression on your evolutionary path is determined solely by what foods you eat, you can fight all you want and not go into the red. _______________________ [2.3.3] Obtaining Parts To obtain parts, kill or witness the death of a cell that contains a part you do not have. They will then drop a part in the form of a plaque. Pick up the plaque to unlock the part in your editor. _________________ [2.3.4] Attacking To attack a creature, have one of your attached parts with attack capabilities contact the target's body. If you make contact with an unprotected area of the target cell, you will do damage to it. Usually it takes 2 hits to kill a cell your size in normal mode and 3 to kill in hard mode. Larger creatures will take multiple hits. If you make contact with a protected area, such as a spike or mouth, you will clink and bounce off. If an enemy's attacking part makes contact with your cell, you will take damage. When anything takes damage, its HP bar appears momentarily above it. The green portion is HP remaining, red portion is damage taken from last attack, black portion is HP lost. ________________ [2.3.5] Survival If you are damaged, eat something to regain health. The amount of health regained is determined by your difficulty level. As you grow, things bigger than you may become your size, and eventually smaller than you. If something looks like it'll fit inside your mouth, you will eat it whole. However, the same applies for other creatures, if you look like you'll fit inside an enemy's mouth, it'll likely eat you whole. Swim away from predators, upgrade your cell with more movement parts if you deem it necessary ________________ [2.3.6] Evolving Hit [backspace] at any time to call a mate, even before the "mating call" button shows up on your UI. You must then travel to your mate to enter the creature editor. The first time you evolve, you are forced to name your creature, this option is available at all times. __________________________ [2.4] Completing the Stage To complete cell stage, fill up your progression bar by eating and gaining DNA points. As you eat, you will grow, and the stage becomes increasingly more difficult as you vie with other creatures for food. However, it is not a race, so take it easy. _________________ [2.4.1] Herbivore As an herbivore, you eat green plants. This path is particularly challenging because you are restricted to looking for food, and sometimes it is contested by other herbivores. Controls are sometimes a little sluggish, and usually you'll be out-competed by other creatures. Begin by consuming your required 5 pieces of algae to progress to the next growth level. As you play, continue to search for green foodstuffs to eat. Upgrade your creature with spikes if you want to defend yourself against attackers. Keep in mind that the location of the spikes matter, because you can only protect a portion of your body with a single set of spikes. Upgrade your speed with more flagella if you can't get away from predators. There is no point in actively attacking anything because you can't eat them anyway, run away from stuff that are mean and look for green plants. Giant plants in the water are usually good for 3 growth levels. That is, they are a source of food for 3 different "zoom" levels. However, they are sometimes highly contested by other herbivores, some with defensive weapons. If you even just accidentally run into them, you'll take damage and be flung away. It is advised to grow some spikes so that you can at least clink with other creatures' spikes as you try to grab the limited food supply. Killing them is also another option. _________________ [2.4.2] Carnivore As a carnivore, you eat red meat or other creatures smaller than you. This path is fun if you are aggressive because you get to go around stabbing things. Controls for your creature are not very reflexive, so you must take into account the time it takes for you to bring your weapons to bear. Begin by consuming your required 5 pieces of meat to progress to the next growth level. As you play, collect meat that's floating around to grow. Alternatively, you can eat other creatures that are much smaller than you in one bite. These provide the same amount of DNA progression as a piece of meat. If there's a creature your size, you can engage in a fight with them. Usually creatures will run away at the first sign of damage, forcing you to chase them down. If you defeat a creature your size, he will "pop" into 3 pieces of meat for you to eat. Spikes make good melee weapons, as is poison when attached near the back of your cell. Cilia are almost required if you aren't completely coated in spikes for protection. As a carnivore, it is advised to be aggressive in your attacks, creatures that run out of your screen instantly heal to full hp, so make sure to chase down something if you want to kill it. ________________ [2.4.3] Omnivore As an omnivore, you can eat other creatures or green plants. This path is good if you just want to complete the stage quickly. The probiscus mouth later on is very good for stabbing things and provides a wide arc attack wherever it is placed. Begin as an herbivore, you usually get 5 extra DNA points right off the bat in the form of an extra eye. Get to 10 DNA points, and immediately jump into the editor and sell the extra eye and stick on a carnivore mouth. Suggested placement is to put your carnivore mouth in the front and move your herbivore mouth to the side. This lets you have a more guided attack. Play through the stage normally, making sure to eat a balanced diet of meat and algae. Since your filter mouth is on the side, brush up against algae to eat them. Check your evolution progress every now and then to make sure you are staying in the blue. When you get the probiscus mouth, swap that in for both of your mouths. The only catch with this mouth is that you can no longer eat red meat, you must actively pursue other creatures. When you attack a creature with this mouth, you do damage to it but also get some food and DNA from it. As an omnivore, just make sure you stay in the blue. You can eat almost anything because of your mouths, and this stage should fly by quickly. ________________________________ [2.5] Consequences of Cell Stage Cell stage has some of the most profound changes on your game, and decisions made here will be felt the entire way through the game. Note all PBAoE abilities used by the chieftain during tribal stage have a short reach, so make sure your chieftain is close to wherever you want the effect to be. *Herbivore Creature: Siren's Song - a PBAoE (personal based area of effect) charm ability used by your creature which doubles the effect of all social abilities used on the target. This lets your creature befriend other creatures easier, and will soothe creatures that are already in the aggressive stance. Tribal: Refreshing Storm - a PBAoE environmental ability used by your chieftain which causes all plants in the effected area to instantly regrow fruit AND cause them to fall to the ground. This lets you re-harvest a patch of plants closer to home AND allows your tribe to harvest them faster. Civilization: Healing Aura - a ground-targeted AoE ability launched from a nearby city that heals all friendly units in the area. Space: Social Suave - Gives you a discount on all social tools (anything that goes in the green tab) *Carnivore Creature: Raging Roar - a PBAoE fear ability used by your creature to cause all effected enemies EXCEPT YOUR CURRENT TARGET to run away in fear. Useful for isolating a specific creature for you to kill. If you have no current target, then everything runs away. Tribal: Traps - an environmental ability used by your chieftain to lay down a trap containing food which lures creatures to it. You can kill and harvest the creatures for food. Civilization: Invulnerability - a ground-targeted AoE ability launched from a nearby city that renders all friendly units in the area invulnerable. The area of effect has a small radius and so should be used tactically. Space: Power Monder - Increases the damage of all your weapons, including the power of your turrets. Pretty good I'd say. *Omnivore Creature: Summon Flock - an environmental ability that summons a flock of creatures to help you either fight or socialize. Their fighting ability is somewhat weak, but makes for good cannon fodder. Their social ability is weak as well, but they do have every socialization ability and the extra boost helps. They will only follow you for a short period of time. Tribal: Flying Fish - an PBAoE ability used by your chieftain that summons a sea creature at all nearby fishing holes that will propel fish onto the ground. Similar to Herbivore's Refreshing storm ability, this allows your tribe to collect food quickly from a single location. Civilization: Static Bomb - a targeted AoE ability launched from a nearby city that shuts down ALL vehicles, buildings, and turrets in its effected area. This includes your own units. Space: Gentle Generalist - Gives you a minor discount on almost all tools. _________________________ [2.6] Tips for cell stage * Your body shape matters, if you are thin in one place, it is harder to hit you there. If your spikes are giant (use the mouse wheel) then they can hit farther out. However, bigger spikes tend to get caught on environmental objects. * Putting a poison on your back will prevent attacks from chasing you, if anything it slows them down when they cough. * If you are equipped with poison, you can spin your creature quickly in a circle to lay down a patch of poison, effectively creating a PBAoE which will damage all creatures nearby * If you have spikes near the back and pointed outwards, certain enemies will have trouble eating you in one gulp because you'll stab them when they try * There's a creature with 4 jets and a probiscus that will make strafing runs at enemies. Copy this if you can, it is actually quite a good strategy. * Don't use electricity, it has a charge up time and you have no control over its attack. However if you somehow manage to get more than 1 on, the attack might kill things in one hit, which then its okay. * You can not advance without a mouth, make sure you have a mouth * If you have no eyes, you become restricted in vision =============================================================================== [3] Creature Stage The creature stage is analogous to a certain mmorpg... __________________________________ [3.1] Starting from the cell stage When you progress from the cell stage, you have one last chance to modify your creature and have the option to grow legs. Your editor is now in full 3-D. you can lengthen your spine by clicking on the spinal cord and then dragging the arrows that appear. This is your last chance to equip CELL stage parts, if you want to keep certain cell stage parts for aesthetics, this is your last chance to put them on. If you take them off at any point during the creature stage, they are lost forever. Abilities from parts in this stage do not stack, so there is no point having two parts that provide the same skill. If you have two parts with the same skill at different levels, you get only the higher level version. Evolve whatever parts suit your fancy and continue onto the creature stage. ________________________________ [3.2] Starting at creature stage If you have already reached creature stage in a previous game, this option is available right from the galaxy view menu. The same things carry over here as they did during cell stage in regard to the entire galaxy. Since you did not play through cell stage, however, you do not get a special ability from that stage. ________________________ [3.3] What carried over? Upon entering the creature stage, you adopt the following from your cell stage: *Your creature - you get to decide what your creature looks like, and what skills it has. If it has eyes, it will be able to see, if it has legs, it'll walk on them. To check your list of abilities, go into your creature editor or just check what attacks/social skills are available to you *Your diet - Depending on where you ended up on the evolution trend, your diet AND the types of mouths you can unlock in this play through is set. *Your special ability - You gained a special ability from cell stage! Use this ability with [F1]. *Your planet - In your entire game of SPORE, this planet is now marked as a creature stage planet (paw print instead of a leaf) ______________________________ [3.4] Creature Stage Logistics GOAL: Collect DNA points by interacting with other species to "level up" to level 5 and move onto tribal stage Your HP and hunger and your pack's HP will always be displayed at the lower right corner. ________________ [3.4.1] Movement To move your creature, use WASD or click on the ground to move your creature there. ___________________ [3.4.2] Progression To progress in creature stage, you must collect DNA points to fill up your progression bar. You gain DNA points from befriending individual creatures and entire species, and also from killing individual creatures and entire species. As you gain DNA, you "level up" and gain extra health. Since you have more DNA, you can always evolve additional parts that will aid you in socialization or fighting. If you find an egg of a non-ally species, you can kill it for DNA points, but that'll really anger that specific species. _________________________________________ [3.4.3] Socialization and obtaining parts To socialize with a creature, click on the green socialization button on the mid-bottom portion of your screen and it'll open up your socialization skillset. The target creature will gather up some buddies if he is able and then do one of four socialization abilities, you have to match that ability with your own. Each time you perform, it fills up the socialization bar at the top of your screen, your goal is to fill your side (left side) to the top before the target does. If successful, you will befriend the targeted creature. Befriend 3 creatures from a species to ally with the species. Befriend an ALPHA creature to obtain a part from him. The part "level" available from that alpha creature is displayed in a star plaque next to its name when you put your cursor over it. _____________________________________ [3.4.4] Attacking and obtaining parts To attack a creature, click on the red aggressive button on the mid-bottom portion of your screen and it'll open up your attacks skillset. Target a creature and use your attack abilities. You always have a simple bite move if you have a mouth which recharges quickly. Certain attack abilities such as dash has a minimum range, which means you must be outside of this range to use this ability. As in cell stage, when anything is damaged, its lifebar appears over its body. Convienently enough, now it also shows their HP in number form. Defeating a certain number of creatures of a species will make them go extinct. The number is listed at the top left of your screen as a mission objective and is proportional to the "level" of the creature. Defeat an ALPHA creature to obtain a part from him. As before, the part "level" is displayed next to its name. A creature's level is proportional to its HP, and you have the about that amount of HP as well. HP progression is as follows: level 1: 10, level 2: 15, level 3: 25, level 4: 40, level 5: 100. Alphas tend to have 20% more hp than a normal, while a baby has 40% less. _______________ [3.4.5] Pickups Strewn around the continent are lots of interactable objects: *Fruits - As an herbivore, you eat these to heal and restore hunger *Sticks & Stones - These break bones. Pick them up with hands if you have any and you can throw it at other creatures to get their attention while in aggressive stance *Fossils - These contain a random part. ________________ [3.4.6] Survival Your main creature (your character) now has a hunger bar along with its health. As you travel or fight, you will get hungry. Socialization has no hunger cost. Depending on your diet, eat kills or fruit to restore your hunger. When you eat, you also recover a portion of your HP. HP recovery depends on diet and level. As an herbivore, you are restricted to fruits, which provide an instantaneous heal to both health and hunger. As a carnivore, you are restricted to dead animals (presumably, your kills), which provide a heal over time as long as you remain eating. As an omnivore, you can eat both, but the effect is reduced for both. You can also heal yourself (not hunger tho) at any allied nest OR defeated nest. Leveling up also refills your health and hunger bars. When you level up, you are allowed to form a pack with allied creatures and those of your species. To do so, use your socialization skills on an already allied creature. You gain one additional pack slot for every level beyond the first. Your allies will do whatever action you are performing at the time. If you are fighting, they will attack targets of opportunity and use abilities as needed. Although you have no control over them, they can usually hold their own unless they are focus fired. If you are socializing, they will just follow you and do whatever you do. ______________________________ [3.4.7] Rogue & Epic Creatures Rogue creatures are larger than normal versions of one of the creatures in your game database. Any creature stage will have at least 3 of these creatures running around, although it is usually hard to find them. They run solo, which means they won't get assistance if you fight them or try to socialize them. Killing a rogue creature nets a large boost in DNA, while socializing nets you a powerful ally. Rogue creatures are quite strong and will assist you like any other pack member when they are part of your pack. Epic creatures are MUCH larger than normal versions of one of the creatures in your game database. Any creature stage will have at least 1 of these creatures running around on your continent. They are easy to spot because they have a much farther view distance than the typical creature, and they usually cause mayhem wherever they are. These guys are guarenteed to one-shot anything, and they have a tendency to hate you more than the other creatures. You can not ally with these creatures, only run away or attempt to kill. A rogue or epic creature will NEVER attack a nest of their kind. Although the chances of it occuring are rare, there may be a non-epic version of an epic creature on your continent. The epic creature will assist in defending its smaller species, but killing its species will not kill the epic creature. The same applies for rogues. ________________________ [3.4.8] Freak occurances A few quirks and occurances of interest will happen during creature stage. *Deep Water - Don't go out into water of any sort, staying in water too long causes a sea monster to come out and eat you, even if its a small pond. *Meteor Showers - You will most likely run into at least one of these. The chaos created by such an event is beneficial for you if you are aggressive, and not so much if you are social. Monsters will run amok and break social attempts, but they will get scattered which makes it easy to exterminate them. Also monsters will leave their eggs unguarded. *UFO - An UFO may appear at some point and abduct a small number of creatures from a nearby nest. If you were trying to kill them, the UFO may not leave you with enough to fulfill the extermination. The same holds true for socialization. Generally, they don't start abducting for awhile, so you have some forewarning. *The Water Bug - Sometimes you'll spawn at the end of cell stage in the middle of the ocean. This game is bugged because you can not reach land fast enough before you are eaten. The only thing to do is scrap this particular game. ________________ [3.4.9] Evolving Press [backspace] at anytime to call your mate. You must then travel to your mate marked with a marker on both your game screen and minimap. Once there, click on your mate when your cursor changes to a set of hearts in order to enter the editor. Unlike the cell stage, part placement do not matter, only the abilties they confer do. You can have a hand on your head pointing backwards and it'll provide the same level of skills as the same hand attached in an otherwise normal position. Abilities will not stack, so you technically only need a skill provided just once by any of your parts. Any extras is purely for decoration. ___________________________________ [3.5] Completing the Creature Stage To complete the creature stage, achieve level 5 on your progression bar by collecting enough DNA points via whatever means you choose. As you level up, creatures around you tend to become tougher, and the further you move away from your nest "inland" (that is away from where you started) the creatures also get tougher. However, The highest level an npc creature can attain is level 4, which means you have quite an edge when you do get to level 5. Your nest will move throughout the stage, and it is up to you to catch up with them. Wherever your LAST visited homenest is determines where your tribe will be during the tribal stage. Make sure to end the stage with a homenest in a strategic location. Because this will last through civilization stage. ______________ [3.5.1] Social If you ended cell stage as an herbivore, the social path is the easiest path for you to take because it allows you to take advantage of the ability gained from cell stage. However, any creature can be socialable, even the carnivores. To progress as a social creature, befriend and ally other npc creatures. The hard part of being social is that it is not a war of attrition and skill, and thus it gets frustratingly boring. If you were an herbivore, the Siren's Song ability will let you make friends with creatures when you have inferior abilities compared to them. Social "interactions" take place in the form of several social skills that you will use with npcs. When an npc creature uses a social ability, you are supposed to mimic that ability with your own version, and thus increase your social status with that creature. Use the hotkeys 1-4 to trigger your abilities or click on them at the bottom of the screen. If you use a different ability than your target, you won't get as much of an increase, and often it will make or break your current attempt to socialize. Socialization is a fight of numbers. The npc's social skill level is compared to yours for the purpose of increasing the bar, as are yours. Usually, if your skills trump or equal theirs, you will have no problem making them your friends. Sometimes it takes a bit of luck when only a portion of your skills are better than theirs, and you have to hope they use those particular skills so you can get an edge. If you have a pack, each pack member's skill is added to yours, but the npc's pack members also contribute towards their side. Generally, an npc will try to immediately recruit their maximum allowed number of pack members before beginning the socialization attempt. If you can isolate a member somehow before they start and you end up outnumbering them, then the attempt usually will succeed. Since its a direct comparison of skill levels, keeping your skills up to date is vital. As you get new parts, make sure to swap in parts that will yield higher socialization skill levels. These are displayed at the top right corner of your creature editor. Remember, skills don't stack from parts, so you only need the best of each skill just once. Socialization takes no energy to do, and food is only used for travelling. Thus eating really isn't a top priority, although you still don't want to forget it. *Social Skills: (1)Sing - requires a mouth (2)Dance - requires feet (3)Charm - requires doodads of some sort (4)Pose - requires hands...usually *NPC Level progression: Level 1 - All creatures have sing level 1 and only sing level 1. Level 2 - All creatures have 2-3 social abilities, and is superior at one of them (they have a higher level of that one) Level 3 - All creatures have all 4 abilities, and is superior at two of them Level 4 - All creatures have all 4 abilities, and have level 4 or higher in at least one of them. *You may also see your own creations! These creatures have exactly what abilities you ENDED creature stage with that creature. (And other people's creations too) ________________ [3.5.2] Predator If you ended cell stage as an carnivore, the predator path is the best path for you to take because it allows you to take advantage of the ability gained from cell stage. All creatures can become predators, although herbivores will not be able to consume their kills. To progress as a predator, kill and exterminate other npc creatures. Unlike the social path, this is a war of attrition and does take some skill. Power in numbers and superior tactics is generally the best way to complete the creature stage as a predator. If you were a carnivore, your Fear Ability is nice for scattering enemies during a fight. To attack, walk up to a creature within range of your abilities and use the skills. Abilities are not queued on keystroke and can only be used when they are ready. To move towards predator on the evolution trend, you just have to kill things, although making them go extinct will get you bonus DNA points. As you progress into higher levels, enemy creatures will become more socialable and will attempt to call for support from its nearby buddies. During a fight, your allies will usually pick targets of opportunity after the initial target dies. That is, they will no longer assist you and will engage whatever creature is beating on them. Thus it is up to you to assist your pack mates, and not expect the same treatment. Try not to lose pack mates, because they are sometimes difficult to replace. If YOU die first, you get your entire pack back when you are reborn, but if your pack mates die, you have to physically go get them again. When you are in a large fight, Watch your HP because enemies can easily focus fire on you which will kill you very quickly. If your HP drops past the point of comfort, you can try to disengage by running away using sprint [shift] then stealthing [Z]. This of course assumes you have those abilities. If you don't want to disengage, you can attempt to perform a mid-battle heal by eating a nearby fallen corpse or running to a bush with fruit. If you are a carnivore, you can usually heal faster than what a single enemy can hit you for. However, since your allies are preoccupied with the fight, the only way for them to disengage is if your character runs from the fight far enough for them to run to you instead of fighting. Mid-battle heals only work to some extent for your allies, some will choose not to eat even if they are badly wounded. Fighting takes up energy while socializing does not, but since after each fight, there will be many corpses, hunger shouldn't be a problem. If you somehow die, you will be reborn in the last homenest you claimed, which means if your general species has moved on, you won't be joining them until you walk over to the new nest. Completing the stage as a predator is a straight-forward bloodbath. Keep yourself healed in between fights and know when it is time to tuck your tail between your legs. *Attack Skills: (1)Bite - a basic attack with short cooldown, requires a mouth. Higher levels result in more damage (2)Charge - an attack with a long minimum range. Usually associated with the feet. Does little damage but does stun if it connects. Higher levels result in longer charge time, longer stun duration. (3)Strike - a basic attack with a long cooldown, requires either hands or that spiky ball doodad. Higher levels result in more damage. (4)Spit - a ranged DoT attack, requires a spitter of some sort. Higher levels result in more damage per tick and longer duration. *NPC level progression: Level 1 - creatures only have bite level 1 and will not get assistance from friends if attacked. Their attack rate is also somewhat reduced, which allows you to kill alphas. Level 2 - creatures have bite, and may or may not have one of the other 3. May or may not get assitance from friends if attacked. Level 3 - creatures usually have all skills, although spit is solely based on if they have a spitter or not. Will get full assistance from nearby friends when attacked. Level 4 - same skill setup as level 3, although they will hit harder. If engaged near nest, the entire nest may come help. _________________ [3.5.3] Adaptable If you completed cell stage as an omnivore, you may want to consider the adaptable path, although you are allowed to change course to any other path you want. This path is readily available for herbivores and carnivores, although their special abilities will only assist in half of the interactions. As an omnivore, your summon flock ability comes in handy whatever the situation you need them for. Just keep in mind that the flock takes a bit to arrive, so it shouldn't be a mid-battle decision. As with the omnivore, keeping an eye on the evolution trendline isn't a bad idea to make sure you are staying in the blue. Kill things to shift downwards to red, befriend things to shift upwards to green. You can either adjust parts as you go or equip parts with both social and aggressive skills. Just be warned that those skills are often not as high leveled as their specialized counterparts. As a general rule of thumb, befriend those that aren't aggressive, and kill those that are aggressive. This will give you a proper balance to the friend/kill ratio while yielding nests along the way for you to heal at in the case of an emergency. An good method of being adaptable is to befriend things for the first half and then kill things for the last half. It is usually easier to befriend things during the beginning phases of creature stage, and in the later phases, you will have a pack which greatly increases killing efficiency. ________________________ [3.5.4] Switching Sides. It is possible to switch sides during the creature stage, changing your evolution trend greatly. Food is the general problem during creature stage for the purpose of switching sides, as your actions are not necessarily backed up by your diet. Since blue is between red and green, it is assumed that you can reach or leave blue by following whichever set of directions you need. *Red -> Green To switch from carnivore to social, you simply have to befriend everyone you meet. If you socialize your way to level 5, you should be well into the green. However, you need to eat meet to survive. Although socializing doesn't take energy, the travelling will eventually get to you. When it does, attack a nest and use your fear AoE ability, this'll let you kill your target and eat it to restore hunger. You shouldn't really ever need to do this, if you are good enough, simply leveling up and evolving a lot will keep you fed, without the need to kill for food. *Green -> Red The slightly harder switch, since you have to kill, yet can only eat fruit. The idea is the same as the predator path, only to heal after fights, you have to retreat to fruit bushes. Mid-battle heals are also limited unless you pick your fights near food sources. Even then, fruit doesn't heal all that much. ____________________________________ [3.6] Consequences of Creature Stage The creature stage also has a large impact on your space-faring civilization later on in the game. Since it is the second stage, it is second most important decision you'll make for yourself. Remember that all PBAoE abilities used by the chieftain in tribal stage have a short range and long activation; so you have to make sure the chieftain is in position before using them. Also, where your LAST homenest was is where your tribe and eventually your first city will reside. If this is in a strategic location, your tribe will be easier to defend, easier to feed, and your city...might not be restricted to land. (Hint: End the stage with a homenest near the water!) *Social Tribal: Fireworks - A PBAoE ability used by your chieftain which instantly boosts effected tribesman's tribe's relationship with you to blue Civilization: Diplo Dervish - A targeted ability launched from one of your cities which gives you a large boost in relations with the nation who owns the targeted city Space: Pleasing Performance - Reduces the likelihood of revolts in your colonies. This allows you to dip into the negatives for happiness to increase spice production. *Adaptable Tribal: Beastmaster - A PBAoE ability used by your chieftain which causes effected creatures to become your allies. These creatures will follow your chieftain and fight rival tribes. They do not assist in making friends with rival tribes. Civilization: Bribe Bomb - A targeted AoE Ability launched from a nearby city which causes all enemy vehicles to fire upon each other. For the duration, your vehicles and buildings are no longer valid targets for effected vehicles, while their allies are considered valid targets. Space: Speed Demon - Increases the travel speed of your ship both between stars and planetside. Useful for catching up to enemy ships on planets or running across the galaxy for whatever reason. *Predator Tribal: Fire Bombs - A PBAoE ability used by your chieftain that does minor damage per explosion to targets near the explosion. Does extra damage to buildings Civilization: Mighty Bomb - A targeted AoE ability launched from a nearby city that severely damages all vehicles and buildings (including your own) in the area of effect. Usually not powerful enough to completely destroy buildings from full health. Space: Prime Specimen - Increases your ship's HP by 50%. Useful for increasing combat time by 50%, increasing zero-energy travel by 50%, and generally being quite useful. (really good!!) _____________________________ [3.7] Tips for Creature Stage *Keep it simple, since you can change how you look at the end of creature stage, you can complete it while looking like a hodgepodge of parts, and then making yourself pretty later. This'll save DNA for higher level parts. *Check defeated nests for eggs, they're a nice free boost of DNA. *Be aggressive, be the first to attack, strike at stragglers. If an aggressive creature is growling at you, chances are it has already had the mind to attack you, so you need to jump the gun and get the first hit in. *Babies count towards kills, they have like no hp, although they like to run around a lot, which will "pull aggro". *You can ally with your mate to put them in your pack. Target them from far away and then use a social skill before you run into "mating range". Call another mate using the call mate button and the game will spawn a new mate for you. You can use this to bolster your pack if there isn't enough of your guys around. *Your pack members do not have a hunger bar, they don't need to eat. This means you can have them fight if you're hungry and you can just sit there. But they might die without your guidance. *Use freak occurances to your advantage. Creatures generally will not assist each other during a meteor shower. The shower is centered on you, so when it starts, run for some tough guys to take them down. *Killing rogues is faster than allying them in terms of stage completion. Although their fighting power is unrivaled, the 100 DNA boost generally gives you a nice push towards finishing the stage. *Lure epic monsters onto other creature's nests. Epic monsters like to aggro you, but they'll aggro other stuff if they are closer than you. Pull them onto other creatures to drop their aggro. *You will usually receive higher level parts of parts you are already wearing before other parts. So if you want better wings, make sure to equip the initial ones. *Remember that you can only get one set of mouths and that depends on the cell stage, if there's a mouth you really want, you'll have to end cell stage on the right type. *This stage determines your strategic advantage during tribal and civilization stages. Ending the creature stage with a homenest near the water will provide you with a closeby fishing hole during the tribal stage and a protected flank, making it easier to defend. During the civilization stage, since your city is where your tribe was, it will become a coastal city, allowing you to have ships right off the bat. *Since this stage determines a key ability of your space civilization, you'll need to decide wisely. =============================================================================== [4] Tribal Stage The Tribal stage is a base and micro-management real time strategy game. Since the highest number of units you can control is 12, micromanagement will be key in keeping your guys alive. _________________________________ [4.1] Starting from your creature If you went onto tribal stage from your creature, you will be allowed one last time to change how your creature fundamentally looks. Beyond this point, you can no longer change the body parts of your creature. Make sure your creature is to your liking before moving on. Whatever attack skills you have at this point will be the base attack skills your tribesmen will use. Social skills carried over from creature stage has no effect in this stage. ______________________________ [4.2] Starting at Tribal Stage If you have previously reached tribal stage on a different game, you will have the option of starting a new game directly at the tribal stage. By doing so, you forfeit both your cell and creature stage traits. You will be allowed to design a creature, or choose a pre-made creature, and name your planet. ________________________ [4.3] What carried over? Upon entering tribal stage, you adopt the following from the creature stage: *Your creature - this is the last chance you get to change how your creature looks. *Your diet - Your creature's diet which propagated from cell stage continues to be a factor in the tribal stage. *Your creature's skills - All attack skills and basic skills carry over to tribal stage. Their respective levels carry over too, meaning if you had strike level 5, your tribesmen will be able to use strike level 5. Same applies for stealth, sprint, jump, glide, bite, spit, and dash. Also, any health bonus and movement bonus from parts are also seen in this stage as well. For all intents and purposes, your tribesmen are exactly your level 5 creature at the end of creature stage. *Your rogue allies - Any rogue allies you had automatically become an egg producing pet in the tribal stage, giving you a boost in food production right off the bat. *Your tribe's location - your tribe's location is determined by where your LAST homenest was when you advanced. This has implications in both tribal and civilization stage. *Your planet - Your planet will now be permanently marked as a tribal stage planet, along with a picture of your creature, marking it as claimed. Any visiting civilization game file will find that the planet is occupied with however many tribes you had when you last saved this game. Each with its respective tribesmen. ____________________________ [4.4] Tribal Stage Logistics GOAL: Befriend and/or destroy the other 5 tribes that appear. During this stage, you can use WASD to pan your camera. They don't tell you this. You can NOT use control groups during this stage, but you only have 12 guys anyway. __________________ [4.4.1] Your Tribe Your tribe consists of an animal pen, a main hut, a totem pole, a food stockpile, a fire pit, and room for 6 buildings. Initially you have a maximum population limit of 6, although that increases throughout the stage. You start off with two buildings that can be constructed, one randomly selected from the social buildings, and one randomly selected from the aggressive buildings. This lets you set your evolution trend right from the getgo. All buildings cost 25 food, regardless of purpose. ______________________ [4.4.2] Your Tribesmen In the outfit editor, you can bestow tribal skills to all of your tribesmen through outfits. Like in the creature stage, abilities do not stack, so it is not beneficial to have multiple parts giving the same ability, other than for looks. Abilities are as follows: Social/Combat - Gives a small multiplier bonus per level to its respective interaction. Social bonus increases amount of acceptance per ability use during a concert. Combat bonus increases amount of damage dealt by every attack. Gathering - Each level in gathering increases food carrying capacity of tribesmen by 1, from a base of 5. Note that this isn't how much the tribesmen pick, its how much they bring back. If it takes a tribesman 2 turns to deplete a bush, then with no gathering, he'll yield 10 food, with 5 levels of gathering, he'll yield 20 food. Health - Each level of health increases tribesman HP by 2. A tribesman's inital HP is based on how much health your level 5 creature had during creature stage. Your chieftain has the same HP as an alpha version of your creature. Every Tribesman created is identical, except for your chieftain. You equip tribesmen through your buildings. This is what differentiates them. Each tribesman costs 10 food and starts off as a baby which takes time to grow into an adult you can actually control. __________________________ [4.4.3] Movement & Actions Left click a tribesman or his picture on the bottom right to select him. Right click a target location for him to move there. Right click a target interactable object and he'll interact with it based on the cursor and his current stance. A social stance will usually cause him to domesticate animals and socialize with other tribes. An aggressive stance will usually cause him to attack and then auto-harvest animals, as well as attack other tribes. Right click a tribesman's portrait to center your camera on him. Your camera will follow him as long as you don't do anything else. Left click on "tribe" to select your entire tribe. You can box select a group of units to issue group commands. ______________________ [4.4.4] Gathering Food Herbivores and Carnivores are fundamentally different in food gathering methods. Omnivores simply share different traits from each of the other two. Herbivores - Right click small plants to harvest fruit from them. When a plant is harvested, it will take some time for it to regrow the fruit. Regrowth time is exactly the same as that in creature stage (awhile) Right click fishing holes to gather seaweed from them. Right click, in social stance, animals to spend 15 food and domesticate the targeted animal. If successful, the tribesman will then lead the animal to your animal pen where it will produce eggs which you can gather for food. You can only have 3 animals in the pen and they must all be different species. If you had any rogue allies, they are automatically placed as a pet in the pen at the beginning of the stage. Carnivores - Right click animals to kill and harvest their meat for food. Nests will replenish animals over time and will never go fully extinct. The animals do fight back, it is as if you were fighting them in creature stage. Right click fishing holes to gather fish from them. Hunt epic creatures for an almost endless supply of food. As carnivores, you can also domesticate animals to have them produce food for you. Stealing - In aggressive stance, right click another tribe's food stockpile to attempt to steal food from it. Your tribesman will sneak up to it, stealth if able, and grab food and make a run for it. Expect other tribes to hate you and attempt to kill the infiltrator. If successful, you gain food equal to your maximum carrying capacity Gifts - Once you have allied with a friendly tribe, they will bring you food in the form of gifts. When they've dropped it off, right click the package and your tribesman will pick it up. Spoils of War - Once you have defeated an enemy tribe, their food stockpile is yours for the looting, right click it to have your tribesman move food from that stockpile to your own. Cell Stage special abilities all have to do with food gathering. _________________ [4.4.5] Buildings Nine buildings are available to you through the course of this stage. You start with 2 of them and gain 2 others everytime you defeat or ally a tribe. You should have all the buildings by the time you are on your last tribe. Social Buildings - Maracas, Didgeridoos, Wooden Horns These all do the same thing. Right click one to equip selected tribesmen with the respective instrument. During a concert, press the hotkey (1-3) of the instrument to play it for the other tribe. Weapon Buildings - Axes, Spears, Torches Right click a building to equip selected tribesmen with the respective weapon. Each weapon has a special ability associated with it: *Axe: Tribesmen will sometimes perform a spinning attack, dealing melee range AoE damage. *Spear: Activate the spear ability by pressing [2] during a fight and your spearmen will scatter away from the fight into maximum range. This takes your spearmen out of melee and forces enemies in melee to chase down your spearmen, spreading them out. *Torches: The tribesmen's attacks do extra damage to buildings. Support Buildings - Fishing Poles, Gathering Canes, Healing Rods Right click a building to equip selected tribesmen with the respective tool. Each tool has a special ability suited for what it does. *Fishing Pole - increases the rate in which your tribesmen gather fish. *Gathering Canes - increases the rate in which your tribesmen gather fruit from bushes and trees. *Healing Rods - turns the tribesman into a shaman, capable of using a channeled heal over time on their target. However, they do not automatically use this ability, and must be micromanaged. ______________________ [4.4.6] Being friendly To be friendly with a tribe, equip your tribesman with all the instruments at your disposal. Split them as equally as you can among your tribe. Take your tribe including the chieftain to a tribe that is at neutral (yellow) or higher friendliness and right click any tribesman of that tribe in social stance. To play music, push the hotkey that corresponds to what the other tribe wants to hear. The other tribe will never request an instrument that you do not have unlocked. Usually, you are allowed to mess up once from yellow to blue, but must play perfectly to reach green. Once a tribe reaches green, they are permanently friendly with you and will periodically bring gifts to your tribe. If a tribe is red or orange (as most of them are), you will have to bribe them with food first. To do so, have your chieftain selected and right click the other tribe's foodpile while in social stance. Bribing costs 10 food. Note that your chieftain doesn't actually have to go back to your own tribe to pick up the food, it just magically appears in his hands, which means you can move your entire tribe over first and then bribe them. Until a tribe is in the green, their relationship with you will slowly deteriorate over time. If you completed tribal stage as a social creature, you can use fireworks on the tribe to increase that tribe's relationship with you to blue. When there's multiple tribes on the continent, its best to keep them all neutral while allying them one by one. The neutral relation prevents them from attacking you and gives you some buffer time to get to befriend them. If you are peaceful and you hear that a tribe is launching an attack, you can immediately send a bribe over and the attack will be called off. Being friendly means you need to have lots of food for bribing. You need to be effective at gathering food while keeping other tribes happy. __________________ [4.4.7] Being mean To attack a tribe, equip your tribesman with weapons (if you want to), and right click anything belonging to an opposing tribe that has HP while in aggressive stance. To destroy a tribe, you have to raze its main hut, which has a lot of HP. A blunt rush with all fire torches usually can get it pretty low, but not enough to kill it. You can destroy enemy buildings to deprive them of the cost to construct the building and disarm all their units that are using the tool provided by that building. You can attack enemy units anywhere on the field (such as two fishers at the same hole). As with most RTS games, focus firing with a well rounded force of melee and ranged is the best method of downing an enemy tribe. If your tribesmen die, they are dead forever and must be replaced with a new baby. If your chieftain dies, he will respawn at your hut after a short period of time. It is better to preserve tribesman than let them die, so it is in your favor to micromanage your tribe and move heavily wounded ones out of the battle. The AI is generally pretty bad with targets of opportunity during this stage. If a tribesman is heavily wounded, you can move him away and run him in circles around the fight while your ranged tribesmen take pot shots at the guys chasing him. If you can, tell the wounded to return to your tribe and have them eat. If the fight is taking too long, it is best to retreat the entire force for reasons explained below. Day and night play a role. During the night, computer controlled tribes will actually go to sleep, leaving only a small handful of people out in the environment. This leaves only a small force for you to handle, but turns their main hut into a bunker which will spew units if attacked. Attacking during the night is best if you can take down the outside forces first, which effectively breaks their tribe into two groups, each of which is easily defeated. Alternatively, attacking during the day is nice too because most of the tribesmen are out gathering or hunting, leaving their tribe hut open to attacks. If you have outresourced them however, this will not be the case, they will just lounge by their base because there is no way for them to get food. During a fight, the enemy tribe will continuously pump out more babies. NPC babies take a substantially shorter time to mature than your babies, so it is in your favor to kill babies as they appear. Babies take 2x-3x more damage than a mature adult, and go down very quickly. NPC huts sometimes are capable of spitting out 3-4 fast-growing babies all at the same time, so make sure you are watching closely. ___________________ [4.4.8] Progression To progress through tribal stages, conquer or befriend (or a mix) the other 5 tribes that will eventually appear. Once you have done that, you will continue onto civilization stage. ________________ [4.4.9] Evolving Your creature will no longer evolve from here on out, but you can change his tribal stage abilities by giving him different outfits. The outfits are changed instantly on all tribesmen wherever they are, so you can actually change on the fly. This is useful if you want to suddenly swap out social pieces for combat because for some reason, shit's hit the fan. This isn't too important this stage as it will be in the civilization stage. _________________________________ [4.5] Completing the Tribal Stage To complete the tribal stage, fill up your progression bar by either conquering or befriending each tribe. After your first tribe, your tribe will increase to 9 max population, and then after the third tribe, your tribe will increase to 12 max. Keeping your population maxed out will be imperative, as each tribesman represents approximately 10% of your entire productivity and combat capabilities. Begin every tribal stage by harvesting whatever food you eat and maxing out your population. You will need to make one full run with every starting tribe member to get the 15 food needed to produce the other three members. ________________ [4.5.1] Friendly Follow these instructions to end your tribe on the friendly evolutionary trait. Spend your first 25 food after you get a full regiment of 6 tribesmen on whatever instrument you got at the beginning. Immediately equip all your tribesmen and have them go befriend the initial village. Then Have all your guys return to food gathering while your chieftain does the necessary bribing on the -closest- tribe that appeared. Construct your second musical instrument building and mature your next 3 tribesmen. Once you have all 9 tribesmen, have 4 equip one instrument, and 4 the other and befriend the tribe you've been bribing. Rinse and repeat for the third one. Repeat this process, build your next social building, get your last 3 tribesman and have these three equip whatever third musical instrument you got. Bribe and befriend the remaining two tribes. Done. This stage should take a whopping 10 minutes on friendly. __________________ [4.5.2] Aggressive To end your tribe on aggressive means you just have to be down a little in the red at the very end. This means you don't have to kill EVERYONE. Although if you want to, that's fine too. The best way to complete this is to mix in a little friendliness with aggressiveness, because it is much -easier- to make friends. (although much more satisfying to raze buildings) I suggest befriending the first tribe. Seriously. If not, spend your first 25 food after you get a full regiment of 6 tribesmen on your first weapon. You will need to act fast because you don't want the other tribe to get out any tribesmen of their own. They started later than you, but I swear they get more food to start. Regardless of what weapon you got, focus fire any tribesman that wanders out of their tribe first. He's likely to be alone and will be an easy kill. Repeat with the rest of the tribesmen. Using a warcraft 3 tactic, take one of your guys that is getting attacked and have him run a lap around the enemy tribe. He'll pull along whatever guys have him targetted, which makes some room in the main fight for your guys to maneuver in and lets you get in some cheap shots with spears if you have spears. This tactic is useful at any point of this stage. If done right, you should not have lost any units after their tribe members are all dead. Once this happens, move your chieftain back to your tribe. He doesn't do so good against buildings anyway. Chances are some wild animals have come to steal your food, they steal at a rate of 1 per 2 seconds, which is devastating to an aggressive tribe because replacing the dead is costly. Have your chieftain guard the tribe while your tribesmen raze their victim's main hut. Make sure to kill any tribesmen that spawned as you are trying to kill the hut. Its never fun to find that your tribe has been killed by a single person because they were having too much fun beating on a hut. When you get the notice that the hut is destroyed, have the 5 tribesmen that are there loot the dead tribe's food stocks. This will be a much needed boost for the next part. Now increase your population to 9 and if you got a second weapon, round out your tribesmen with weapons and gather food. The exception is torches, if you have torches and the choice of a second weapon, discard the torches and have all your guys pick up whatever the other weapon is. Killing other tribesmen is more important than razing their buildings. You can take all the time in the world to kill that hut if there's no one around to stop you. Tribesmen also have an easier time hunting animals for food if they have an axe or spear. Wait for an enemy tribe to attack you. When they do, they will send only a small force no more than half their people over. Annhilate this force then immediately counter attack. Their attack on you has reduced their population and allowed you to have more units than them. Watch for babies and micromanage your forces. If you have spears, use the special ability whenever you can, it gives you a few free shots which could turn the fight. If you lose an unit, start a new baby right away. Defeat the units and then focus the main hut. Again, move your chieftain back to take care of wild animals that may have popped up. Repeat this process for the remaining tribes to complete tribal stage on aggressive. ___________________ [4.5.3] Industrious To end tribal stage on industrious, it is key to watch your evolution trend. If you were a predator, you can only destroy one tribe. If you were a social creature, you can only befriend one tribe. Any more and you might not make it to the blue by the end. The key to being industrious is to switch between buildings as needed, swapping them out to match your current stance. _______________________ [4.5.4] Switching Sides Tribal stage is the BEST stage to switch colors to obtain one of the mixed color special abilities during space stage. Because it is technically possible to go from any color to any other color during this stage based on how you act, your creature and cell stage trends have little effect on you ability to switch. Cell and Creature stage relied heavily on diet, but in this stage, it is easy to get food no matter what your diet is. This gives you increased flexibility to decide what your future will be. That and it is very difficult to switch sides during civilization stage. __________________________________ [4.6] Consequences of Tribal Stage Tribal Stage gives you a set of decent passive abilities during the space stage in the form of discounts. But what's more important is that since it is so easy to switch colors during tribal stage, this is where you should decide what special active ability you want during the space stage. Ending your creatures on a specific trend during tribal stage will determine what type of city you start with during the civilization stage. Friendly will be religious, aggressive will be military, and industrious will be economic. Your tribe's location will determine where your city will be, if its near the water, you'll get a coastal city, capable of making boats. Abilities earned here for civilization stage usually assist in the capture of cities, decreasing the time it takes. *Friendly Civilization: Black Cloud - A targeted ability launched from a nearby city which shuts down all turrets and entertainment buildings in the effected city. This frees up your religious units to focus on converting the city. Space: Gratious Greeting - This ability gives you an automatic +10 to relations with all empires, this effect is reduced for the Grox. Useful for getting alliances without having to run missions for it. *Aggressive Civilization: Gadget Bomb - A targeted ability launched from a nearby city that pretty much demolishes the targeted city, capturing it for yourself. Good for capturing a city that you want but don't want to spare the forces for. Space: Arms Dealer - This ability gives you a discount on all weapon tools (red UI box stuff) *Industrious Civilization: Ad Blitz - A targeted ability launched from a nearby city that instantly fills the buyout bar of the city. Allows you to buy the city right away. Space: Colony Craze - This ability gives you a discount on all colonization tools (purple UI box stuff) ______________________________________ [4.7] Tips for Completing Tribal Stage *If you're not herbivores, look for the epic monster on your continent. If you havn't kill him as a creature, then he's still running around. Usually by the middle of the stage, some poor tribe has already engaged him in battle and worn him down. Lure him to your tribe using hit and run tactics until he's close by then kill him. If you succeed, he makes for a food source that will last you for the entire stage. *Use your cell stage ability when you want to send your guys to go gathering. Don't waste it by "saving it for a rainy day" the food it generates is worth the setup required to move your chieftain into position. *Your chieftain doesn't need to return to the tribe to get food for bribes, which means you can go around and bribe every village very quickly. *If your creatures has good speed, consider doing stealing runs if you play aggressive. *Make sure you're in the right stance before doing something, usually its not nice to attack someone you're trying to befriend and try to befriend someone who's going after your throat. *You can dance around your fire pit. I don't know what it does, but its kinda fun if you got nothing better to do. *You have to tell your tribesmen to eat after a fight to recover HP. They will automatically eat when they complete a harvest run however. =============================================================================== [5] Civilization Stage Civilization stage is a macromanagement RTS. ______________________________ [5.1] Starting From Your Tribe If you started civilization stage by advancing from tribal stage, you will begin the stage with a city of the color type depending on what color you ended tribal stage on. Green will get you a religious city, blue industrious, and red military. You will get to design your city hall as well as your religous/industrious/military land vehicle. ______________________________________ [5.2] Starting from Civilization Stage If you have reached civilization stage in a previous game, you can choose to start at this stage from the galaxy view menu. Doing so forfeits a majority of the space stage special abilities as well as abilities from the previous 3 stages. You'll get to design your creature or select a premade one. ________________________ [5.3] What carried over? Your creature - although your creature's features are stuck, you can still move its outfit around and swap on new "civilized" outfits. Your tribe's location - Wherever your tribe was in tribal stage, your first capital city will be there in its place. If it was near the water, you'll get to start with boats right away. Your evolutionary trend - What color you ended on during the tribal stage determines what city type you get to start out with. This determines the general trend you will set during the civilization stage. It is possible, but somewhat difficult, to change your trend during this stage. Your planet - You now can see your entire planet for what it is. The continent layout was a choice you made when you first started this game. Your planet is now marked as a civilization stage planet in the entire game, and visiting civilizations will see cities in a constant stalemate battle. __________________________________ [5.4] Civilization Stage Logistics GOAL: Gain control of all 10 cities on the planet. During the civilization stage, you can use WASD to pan your camera. They don't tell you this. You can also use control groups. To assign a control group to a set of units, select the units then hold CTRL and push a number key. You can then select the units by using that number key. ___________________ [5.4.1] Your Nation To enter the editor, go to any city and click the editor button. Here you can design your buildings, vehicles, outfit your citizens, and compose an anthem. Your national anthem is a tune that is played on top of the background music whenever your camera is over or near one of your cities. It is comprised of a background beat, an instrument, a melody, and 4 sounds. If you randomize the melody then add a few more notes, usually it comes out pretty good. _________________ [5.4.2] Your City A city exists as a base of operations for repairing and producing units, a source of "supply" for your vehicles, and a producer of spice. Since it is critical to always have spice, constructing a good productive happy city is important. You get to design your own buildings in the city editor. Parts attached to a building has no effect on its abilities and are purely for aesthetics. A city supports a number of turrets and building slots. Turrets need to be placed strategically because a turret's range isn't that great. Building slots are linked by roads that are actually visible on the city template. Alternatively, you can use the guidelines that appear when you go to place a building. Buildings must be placed adjacent to a pre-existing building. The city hall counts as a housing building. 3 Buildings are available in civilization stage, and their linkages determine the effect they give to a city. House: Generates supply for vehicles and is used for linking with other building types Entertainment: Generates 1 happiness by itself plus 1 happiness for every house/city hall attached to it Factory: Generates 1 unhappiness by itself plus 1 unhappiness for every entertainment attached to it. Generates 400 credits per minute for every house /city hall attached to it. The end goal is simple: maximize credit production while keeping happiness at least at neutral. Keeping factories and entertainment separate is necessary, generally placing a house in between is the best choice because it'll generate happiness and credits. A good way to arrange your buildings is as follows: 1. Determine a building slot that has the most number of links coming out of it (city hall included). Place a factory there. 2. Surround the factory you just placed with housing. 3. Now if more than 1 house share an attached building slot, put an entertainment there. 4. Surround entertainment with houses. 5. Maximize factories now in the rest of the slots to maximize credit production. 6. Don't forget turrets on coastal cities. ______________________________ [5.4.3] Your Vehicles & Supply Your vehicles are the primary method of getting things done. To be able to build a vehicle, you must first design one in the city editor or select a pre- made one. When designing a vehicle, keep in mind what purpose you want it to serve. The game forces you to balance between health, ability, and speed by giving you percentages based on what parts you placed. Once you hit 100%, any additional parts will only shift the percentages by a ratio determined by the part. So you can't have a tank that moves really fast and hits really hard and still have the health expected of a tank. You are forced to make some decisions that could effect how your game plays. 3 types of vehicles are available in civilization stage, they each have their advantages and disadvantages. All vehicles can capture cities *Land Vehicles - An all rounded vehicle with decent HP/ability/speed allocations. They can capture spice geysers but are restricted to the continent they were constructed on. *Sea Vehicles - A superb vehicle with high HP/ability/speed allocations. It is possible to trump a land vehicle in every stat with a sea vehicle. They can capture water-based spice geysers only. *Air Vehicles - Not as high allocations as the land vehicle and costly to build. They get a slight boost in speed allocations it seems. (Percentages in speed yield higher speed values) They can only really be countered by other air vehicles because land and sea vehicles generally have trouble getting into range to hit them. For the cost, not really worth it. Fun to have if you really want to spend the money. To produce vehicles, you must have the proper supply to support it. Houses provide 1 supply each, but they only produce supply for the type of city it is built in. A house in a religious city supports 1 religious vehicle, but not an economic or military one. This usually isn't a problem if you stick with the path you got from tribal stage, but if you want to switch colors during civ stage, it is something to consider. ________________________________________________ [5.4.4] Preferred Vehicle Types per Civilization For the purposes of the game, it is clear that each civilization has a specific stat setup that will maximize the goal of the civilization. *Religious: Glass Cannons. The more damage the faster you can convert a city. Since during a conversion, the city has to fight back with its own religion and target only one tank at a time, you can usually micromanage a glass cannon away from the city before it dies. If you disengage a religious vehicle that is being counter-converted, it can not take any more damage from counter- conversions. You can then move this vehicle back to a city you own for repairs. *Military: Death Slugs. As a military army, you have to destroy the majority of a city's infrastructure before you can capture it. Unfortunately, this includes the city's turrets. Your tanks will need to have the HP to withstand being hit, but also the firepower to take down the turrets quickly. You can sacrifice speed for health and power. Just make sure to gather up your forces before you mount an attack. *Economic: Speedsters. As an economic civilization, you thrive in friendly relations. HP can be easily replaced with more ability or speed. Being fast means you can quickly capture a city, so speed is always a plus here. If you get into a war somehow, end it with a bribe. Economic civilizations usually get stupidly rich very quickly. ______________ [5.4.5] Income To be able to mount a global domination campaign, you first need a steady source of income. Spice geysers produce 1000 credits per minute right from the beginning of the stage, but as they are depleted, their credit production shrivels to 100 credits per minute. You can capture land based geysers with land vehicles and sea based geysers with ships. This makes them prime targets at the beginning of the game, and if the game somehow dragged on to the point where they have nearly no production, they make good distractions for the computers. Your cities produce 400 spice for every factory-house connection that exists within it. If a city is happy (at least 1 happiness) there's a chance that it'll celebrate and double its credit production. This is incentive for you to increase entertainment, although some will argue if that's worth it or not. In any case, the highest this writer has seen is 7200 spice per minute from a single city, which was good times. ______________________________ [5.4.6] Your Special Abilities If you played up to here from cell stage, you will have a set of special abilities available to you. For each stage you've played through, you gain an ability based on what your trend was from that particular stage. The first ability is usually pretty good and will help you take cities whatever your current evolutionary trend is. The third ability derived from tribal stage, is an expensive way to almost instantly capture a city. This ability assists based on the assumption that you continued the path your tribed has taken. If you have decided to change trends in the civilization stage, this ability then isn't that useful for you. All civilizations, including those that started civ stage from a new game get the 4th global domination ability. It costs 12000 credits per city that isn't yours, requires 6 cities to use, and instantly wins you the stage. They figure if you already have SIX cities, and you have 48000 credits, that's pretty much the end for the computers, they might as well let you move on without all the fuss. The fastest way to win, clearly, is to get and hold six cities and wait for 48000 credits. ________________ [5.4.7] Survival Turrets are great, but you only need to build them on an as-needed basis. When you see one of your cities getting attacked, go to it and stick a few turrets in the direction of the attackers. You can probably leave it alone after that. Cities will heal their buildings only when the city isn't under attack. This is basically a few seconds after the last shot is fired by anything in its vincinity. Cities also repair any vehicles parked next to it in a very small radius. You often have to squeeze tanks and ships into each other for them to get healed. Planes have an easy time of it by just floating above the city. _________________ [5.4.8] Relations You can chat with any other nation by click on a city they own and selecting the contact option. Here you get a small taste of relation building via some very limited options. You can forge a permanent alliance with a nation if you are in the green with them. Bribing and trading are usually the best ways to get positive relations. Nations will fear you if you get too big however, but a big bribe usually fixes that. When a nation has 2 or more cities, they get a communications tab next to the minimap that allows you to quickly converse with them. If your game somehow ends up with just you and one other ally, your ally will declare global victory and you will automatically advance to the space stage. _________________________ [5.4.9] Religious Capture To perform a religious capture, have your religious vehicles begin conversion of a city by right clicking their city hall and selecting "Convert this city" A conversion will begin with the following effects: *If your vehicles are within range of a turret, one vehicle will devote its attention to shutting down that turret *If your vehicles are within range of an entertainment building, one vehicle will devote its attention to shutting down that entertainment building, causing unhappiness. *All other vehicles will devote their attention to converting the city while the city counter-converts your vehicles. Your vehicles will not auto-attack enemy vehicles during a conversion and its up to you to micromanage this. The city's counter-convert damages exactly one of your vehicles, and slowly at that. This gives you the opportunity to move that damaged vehicle away and back for repairs without too much worry of it dying. Once you begin to move the vehicle away, since its not part of the conversion anymore, the city can not continue to damage it. Vehicles who are devoted to converting the city adds their power to the city's capture progress bar. It is resisted by population and the happiness level of the population. When a religious capture is complete, you will be given the option to keep the city as it was before or change it to a religious city. A religious capture does not damage enemy buildings, and when the city is converted, you get all these buildings for FREE. This means an instant increase in spice production without the initial investment. _________________________ [5.4.10] Military Capture To perform a military capture, have your military vehicles begin capturing of a city by right clicking their city hal and selecting "capture this city" A capture will begin with the following effects: *Your vehicles will focus on all the city's turrets, disabling them by destroying them. In the meanwhile, the turrets will shoot back. *Your vehicles will then focus on the city's infrastructure, destroying buildings and then finally assaulting the city hall. *On the last final push, all vehicles attacking the city hall devotes their power to the city's capture progress bar. This movement is usually unrestricted because everything's been blown up. Micromanagement is generally key here because a military capture is slow and the flare of the initial assault is long gone before the capture of the city. If your vehicles are strong enough and you have a big enough force, generally turrets won't be a problem for you. A military capture usually will demolish an entire city, forcing you to rebuild. If you used a bomb special ability, there may be rubble remaining that can not be cleared. This is a highly undesired outcome because not only does the city have reduced spice production overall, you have to spend credits rebuild the infrastructure. _________________________ [5.4.11] Economic Capture To perform an economic capture, first you must increase your relation with a nation to at least neutral. Have one of your economic vehicles go to the city and establish a trade route. If accepted, you will begin to ferry spice between the city. Once a trade route is established, you can have any number of vehicles go participate in the route. Everytime one of your vehicles reach EITHER city, you will gain an amount of money proportional to the vehicle's economic power. When your vehicles reach the other civilization's city, it will move its capture progress bar forward by a small amount. When the bar fills up, you get the option to buyout the city. Bid an amount you think is fair and if agreed, the city automatically becomes yours. If the deal is not agreed to, the buyout progress bar resets and you have to rebuild the bar. The Ad Blitz ability instantly fills this bar when used, but really should only be used as an "oh god hurry up" ability. When the bar fills up, as long as you don't purchase the city, the trade route continues to flow, providing a good source of money. An economic capture takes a bit of time and money. But since you GET money through the trade route, you'll be stupid rich very quickly. Bribing and trading your way towards an economic capture is well worth the intact city that you get afterwards. Usually, you'll make more money from the trade route than the city will cost. ____________________ [5.4.12] Progression To progress through the civilization stage, you must somehow sway all 10 cities on the planet to your cause. For each city captured, you get one green portion on the progression bar. When you reach 4 cities, you unlock airplanes. This is partially because there is always exactly 4 cities (including yours) that appears on the continent you started on. An alternative method to winning is to ally with the last remaining nation on the planet. When there's just the two of you left, you can declare global victory and automatically advance to the space stage. _________________ [5.4.13] Evolving The method you use to capture cities determines your evolutionary trend. Since you start off with whatever you ended with tribal stage, it is difficult to change your trend during this stage because of the extra effort you have to put in to do so. You may change your citizen's outfits at anytime for no real cost. ___________________________________ [5.5] Completing Civilization Stage To quickly complete the civilization stage involves a very structured method. Although to carry it out differs between civilization types, the same idea exists between the three. It is as follows: 1. Capture all 4 cities on your continent. 2. Capture 2 Other coastal cities on other continents. 3. Obtain 48000 credits and use global domination ability. This method assumes you want to KEEP your tribal stage's evolutionary trend, because the global domination ability is linked to the trait you ended tribal stage on and will heavily push your trend towards that trait. Computer AI is slow enough in this game that you can pretty much concentrate your forces on any one objective at a time without having to spread them thin. In other words, your entire attack force should be clumped together at all times. _________________ [5.5.1] Religious To complete civilization stage as a religious civilization, begin by designing a FAST vehicle. Have all your vehicles immediately go and capture all spice geysers on your continent, before any cities show up. Capture far lying ones first, because they will be easier to reach by the enemy if you don't already have it. Do not upgrade your city at all to complete the "Design a productive city" mission. By doing so, you delay the first city from showing up by a few important seconds. If your city was a coastal city, produce 1 ship along with your land vehicles. Have the ship capture water-based spice geysers. Once you have captured all the land-based geysers (if your vehicle was fast, you should have), switch your vehicle to a glass cannon and begin your assault on the city closest to your own. To switch vehicles, go into the vehicle editor and design a new vehicle. Once you've taken the city, you can now upgrade your capital. Pump out as many vehicles as you can at the moment and assault the next city. Do not wait, just take what you have. Micromanage your force as needed. Usually this third city is the hardest fight you'll have to encounter. Take the 4th and last city afterwards and upgrade all cities to have them produce as much credits as possible while staying happy. Now box select all your land vehicles and hit [delete] to sell them instantly for half-price (take a few for hp damaged). Now buy as many ships as you can with the money you got. Pick 2 closeby coastal cities and capture those. If you maximized money production at all times, by the time you take the 6th city, you should have 48000 credits. Hit your global domination ability and be done with it. ________________ [5.5.2] Military To complete civilization stage as a military civilization, also begin by designing a FAST vehicle to capture all the geysers. If you have a coastal city, also make 1 ship to capture water-based geysers. Once that's done, switch your vehicles to high HP and damage and assault the closest -military- city on your continent. These are your hardest contenders, taking them out early makes your life easier. Once that's done, repair your units and build up your cities. You should have enough credits by now to be able to build both cities decently. Make do with what you can and double your army size and assault the third city. Military victory is based on a cycle of assault- repair-rebuild. Since your units have to kill turrets before they'll capture, you need a strong force that's at full health when you engage. Take it slow and you'll be fine. Once you have all 4 cities on your continent, scrap your tanks and get ships. Assault 2 other coastal cities then protect them from attack while you wait for your 48000 credits. Your ships have good range and can "pull" land based vehicles. ________________ [5.5.3] Economic To complete civilization stage as an economic civilization, it is vital that you capture all geysers right at the beginning. Rush geysers, if you have a coastal city, rush the water-based ones too. Once that's done, have at least 1 vehicle begin trading with a different city. The key is to have trade routes going with every city you can get vehicles to. If you started with a coastal city, set up trade routes with other coastal cities with your ships. Chances are, you'll run into some nations who don't want to trade. Just bribe them a little and it'll fix that. Once you have trade routes going, produce more vehicles and ships and have them all participate in a particular trade route by targeting the city and selecting "trade with city" When a city is ready to be bought out, do so. Usually the 8000 bid is enough for a city that isn't completely built up and the nation is on friendly terms. The higher 12000 bid is almost guarenteed to always work though. Once you've bought your 6 cities, continue to trade and collect credits to 48000 credits. (You should have it already if you did the stage right) _______________________ [5.5.4] Switching Sides To switch sides in civilization stage, you must first capture a city of the side you wish to become, then pretty much forget your capital. Since houses provide supply of the city type they are in, you will need to quickly build up your newly captured city so that you can construct a new army. At the beginning of the game, you might not have much money to both build a city AND construct an entirely new army. However, You must make the decision to switch sides early, because it becomes harder later as enemy nations get stronger. Once you get a foothold with an army of the side you wanted to become, proceed to capture all cities on your continent. Then remove all your land based vehicles and make ships and proceed to capture all the coastal cities on the planet. Once that's done, you can scrap your ships for either land vehicles (if there is only 2 continents on the planet) or planes (more than 2 continents). Continue to take the rest of the landlocked cities. Do not use your global domination ability because it is of the type of your original color. Since you're moving away from that color, you don't want to be thrown back into it when you use it. ________________________________________ [5.6] Consequences of Civilization Stage Civilization stage doesn't add a whole lot to your space stage, it really is just a stepping stone to get to space stage. However, since it does provide a color for you, it's necessary for whatever special ability you wanted in space stage. Space Stage consequences: *Religious: Green Keeper - Reduces the occurance of biodisasters on your colonized planets. This is nice because biodisasters are one of those things you can't just ignore during the space stage. *Economic: Spice Savant - Increases rate of spice production of your colonies. Not a bad ability for the beginning of space stage, but once you get larger, the effect of this ability becomes more and more useless. *Military: Pirat-B-Gone - Reduces the occurance of attacks on your colonies by pirates. Completely useless because pirates can not capture your colonies nor can they do any damage to a colony building if it is protected by 2 or more turrets. ____________________________________________ [5.7] Tips for Completing Civilization Stage *Capture any and all spice derricks. Unless you're economic, capturing the spice derricks is purely beneficial. As economic, you need good relations, so capturing other nation's derricks isn't partcularly nice. As any other civ type, who cares, you're gonna blast them anyway. *Snag Tribes. If you run into a tribe on your continent, have a vehicle interact with the tribe. You will either get attacked, get some credits, or get a new vehicle (random type). *Watch out for epic monsters. Epic monsters now spit fire and will still one- shot your vehicles. If you're religious, you can enthrall an epic monster to prevent it from attacking you. *Use your consequence abilities sparingly, but use them as needed. They cost money, but so does your vehicles. *Keeping other people off your back with a bribe isn't a bad idea, they'll go around blasting each other instead. This buys you time to gather up the money for a fleet. *Don't bother with turrets unless you need to. Only construct them when a city is under attack. Not only does this guarentee the turret will be near the invading force, it saves you the money of building turrets that never get used. *Switch vehicles as needed, all your vehicles become the new type, regardless of where they are. You can switch to a fast vehicle to move your army, then switch to one with high ability to attack. *4 + 2 = 6. Take your 4 cities on your continent quickly and then concentrate on 2 coastal cities. Defend your cities with boats and wait for your victory when you hit 48000 credits. *Be aggressive. Take the fight to them. *If you're really strapped for cash, you can sell decorative doodads that come with cities you capture from other nations for 25 credits each. =============================================================================== [6] Space Stage The space stage of SPORE is analogous to a space-trader, galactic conquering simulation game. _____________________________________ [6.1] Starting from your civilization When you reach global domination in your civilization, you will have the choice to continue onto space stage. Don't do so yet. First, build up your cities completely and make sure they are well defended with turrets. Any money you collect in civilization stage does NOT carry over to the space stage. When you advance, you will get a chance to design your space ship. Depending on how you progressed through each of the previous stages, you will recieve a special activated ability for your space ship. ___________________________________ [6.2] Starting from the space stage If you've reached space stage with another game, you will have the option of starting at the space stage right off the bat with a new game. Doing so will allow you to design your creature, city hall, and space ship. Since you did not progress through any other stage, you will recieve no special abilities. ________________________ [6.3] What carried over? Your civilization - your cities, vehicles, and planet remain static in the space stage. How you ended your planet on civilization stage is how you will start it in the space stage. Your evolutionary trend - how you fared throughout evolution will have an impact in the form of a special ability for your ship. Your planet - your planet is now marked as a space stage civilization in the entire game of SPORE. Visiters will be able to see your system as a "homeworld" system (solid circle marker). __________________________________________________ [6.3.1] Your Ship's Evolutionary Special Abilities Depending on your evolutionary trend from the previous stages, your ship gains a unique ability. Pure red - "Warrior" Raider Rally - Summons pirates to attack anyone except you at the planet you use it on. You can use this ability to summon a lot of ships that will act as cannon fodder while you capture a planet. You can also use this ability on your own planets against attackers. Pure Blue - "Trader" Cash Infusion - Use on a planet to immediately fill its residing system's buyout progression bar. The system must have a buyout progression bar for this to have an effect. This ability does not alter the amount of money the empire expects you to pay, only fills the bar. Pure Green - "Shaman" Return Ticket - Use on a planet to open a portal that teleports you directly to your homeworld. The portal takes sometime to open, during which you are still vulnerable to attack. If you die while the portal is open, your ship will be rebuilt at your homeworld (so technically once you use it, you're gonna end up in your homeworld.) Red/Green - "Zealot" Fanatical Frenzy - Use on a planet to convert all colonies on the planet. All assets currently placed on the planet is transferred to you still intact. If there is another planet owned by an empire in the system, this ability will only make its target planet "surrender." Breaks Galactic Code (-100 relations with all empires within 20 parsecs) Red/Blue - "Scientist" Gravitation Wave - Use on a planet to destroy all buildings and colonies. This ability will literally wipe whatever civilization is on it off the planet, leaving it open for colonization. No assets are transfered to you because they've all been destroyed. Breaks Galactic Code (- 100 relations with all empires within 20 parsecs) Blue/Green - "Diplomat" Static Cling - Use on a planet to disable all buildings , turrets, and ships. This ability turns everything off and lets you capture cities without being harmed...wait isn't that what the shield is for? RED/blue/green - "Knight" Summon Mini-U - Use on a planet to summon a smaller version of your ship as an ally. Its pretty weak. Cannon fodder...maybe? red/BLUE/green - "Ecologist" Safari Vacuum - Use on a planet to abduct all plants and animals and stick them into your cargo hold. This is advertised to "not screw up the environment" (drop the TerraScore) but I have yet to find anything other than ignoring ecodisasters that will drop the Tscore. Maximum hold for ANY object is 99. red/blue/GREEN - "Bard" Soothing Song - Use on a planet to make the empire that owns the planet like you. Secondly, it has the ability to stop stuff from shooting at you. Nothing (start on space stage) - "Wanderer" Nothing - You don't get anything. But you can still take on archetype change missions to get an ability. ___________________________ [6.4] Space Stage Logistics GOAL: Whatever you want. _________________ [6.4.1] Your Ship Your ship has an HP value somewhat proportional to the parts you put on it. Put more parts onto your ship will increase its HP to a max of 1000. If you have the ability to increase your ship's HP, it will recieve 50% more health. Your ship has an HP bar and an energy bar. When you run out of HP, you will explode. When you run out of energy, you will move slower and not be allowed to activate tools. To recharge your ship's health/energy, visit any system owned by an empire you are not at war with and communicate with them. The option to repair and recharge will appear if your ship is damaged or low on energy. The cost appears on the buttons. Travelling and using tools will use energy. To travel, click on a star within the yellow circle around your ship. The yellow circle is your travel radius and will increase with better Interstellar Drives. Tools that have do not have an AMMO counter uses energy. Tools with an ammo counter does not use energy. If you travel with zero energy, you will lose 200 health per system jump (each time you click a system) ___________________ [6.4.2] Your Empire Your empire begins from your homeworld. On the star map, your homeworld will always have a "home" beacon pointing at it, no matter how far out you zoom. Planets produce spice if they have factories in colonies on them. It is up to you to upgrade colonies to support factories so that the planet will produce spice for you. Like in civilization stage, entertainment centers are needed to keep a city happy. However, cities will never "celebrate" like they did in civilization stage, so it is not vital to have happiness any higher than neutral. As you conquer new systems, lines will connect systems under your control to each other. Systems under your control will have a colored circle around them. Your homeworld has a solid colored circle around it. ____________________ [6.4.3] Space Flight To fly to another star system, mouse over a system to see its name and distance. If you are within range of the star, its distance will be displayed in white. Stars within your engine's range are located within the yellow circle. The yellow circle has an arrow on it that always points towards the galactic core. You can use this to orient yourself on the star map. Generally, things to the left of the core marker, when pointing upwards, are further out on the arm of the galaxy, things to the right are closer towards the core. As you gain better drives, your travel range increases. You will most likely need the level 3 drive to move closer to the galactic core. On an arm, choke points and gaps exist that requires you to have a good enough drive to cross it. If your civilization was near the core-side of the arm, you may not have this problem. As you mouse over systems, some will have a blue aura, this is indication that another star-faring empire has laid claim to the system. When you visit another empire's system for the first time, you will see any other systems connected to this one in the form of a line that represents the empire's color. Usually they will send you communications, the origin of the communication is always their homeworld. (Keep that in mind) Eventually you'll find wormholes, they are labelled with white triangles and distort light passing through them. You will need to have purchased the wormhole key ability to pass through wormholes. To travel through a wormhole, go to the wormhole then zoom all the way in as if you were going planet-side on a planet. The wormhole will spit you out the other end, sometimes all the way across the galaxy. _______________________________ [6.4.4] Your Ship's Basic Tools Your Ship's control console consists of several tabs with 2 rows of buttons. The top row is reserved for energy-dependent tools each linked to a hotkey. The buttons appear in the order that you purchase them and can not be moved once they appear. (Buy tools in the order you want them to appear) The bottom row is reserved for single-use tools that have an "ammo" associated with them. The maximum of any tool is 99. These tools also appear in the order that you have purchased them and will not disappear when you reach 0 nor can you move them. The Scanner starts off with a single target scanner beam and a homing locator. Press 1 with the basic tools tab open to active/deactivate your homing locator. When active, it will make a sound when you are "close" to the object of interest. A higher pitched sound means its closer. The beacon waves coming out of your ship indicates the direction the object is located. If you are searching for a special item, it is the default object being located when you have nothing else selected. To select a particular organism on the planet, go into the planet's terraform menu (the alternate window of the minimap) and select a blue circle to locate. A solid circle means the object is in your sporepedia, a hollow circle means it is not. Scan objects to add them to your sporepedia. The abduction beam takes objects off of the surface of the planet. Objects include: trees, spice boxes, money trays, animals, and special objects. Money is automatically added to your count while everything else goes into your cargo hold. You can upgrade the cargo hold to more objects through earning badges. See badge section for details. The maximum limit for any one thing is 99 and you can not hold a second "stack" of the object. You can lower a cargo object onto a planet by selecting the object in your cargo then clicking a spot on the planet surface. As long as you hold down the button, you'll have a controlled beaming of the object. However, once you let go, the object free falls. Trees and spice boxes have no problem with free falling, but animals will die from it. _____________________ [6.4.5] Your Colonies Your colonies are the economic heart of your space stage experience. Since they are vital for producing the spice you need to earn money, it is key to keep them always up and running. Your starting homeworld produces spice EXTREMELY slowly, so you must quickly become independent of its production by expanding to other planets. Every colony you place or capture on a planet has room for 5 spice. If a planet produces past its maximum capacity, the extra spice is wasted. Colonies produce spice the same way your cities produced credits in civilization stage. Proper placement of buildings is necessary. Make sure your happiness level is neutral. Any more is not beneficial, but if you go into the red, your colonies could revolt. 2 Turrets is minimum for detering pirates. Pirates can not take over a system (cause you to lose the system) but can do damage to or destroy unprotected buildings. Turret position doesn't matter if you choose to ignore the pirate attack. You can double spice storage by placing a spice storage on the planet. It has an HP value and so can be destroyed. Place it under the protective range of turrets to keep it safe. Bioprotectors and Biostabilizers reduce the likelihood of biodisasters and gets your more time if one does occur. Happiness and Loyalty boosters prevent your colony from revolting due to unhappiness. You can also protect your entire planet using an uber turret. This hard-hitting turret has a perpetual invulnerability shield, and will deter all attacks against the planet. _________________ [6.4.6] Relations Other empires will engage in diplomacy with you. Sometimes its just to say how much they hate you and want to blast you to pieces. The initial contact will always come from their homeworld. Travel to it so that it is revealed on your starmap. Regardless of how you play, its always nice to know where a ripe T3 planet with 10 cities is located. An empire's relationship and all its effectors can be seen by mousing over the face on their communications window. You can increase relations with an empire by bribes, running missions, using "friendly tools", trading, complimenting, buying from them, forming alliances, saving their hides, and just generally being nice. If you are of the same archetype (have the same special ability) you'll gain a boost in relations. NPC Economic empires will always have a +30 attached, and military/religious empires will always have a -30 attached. If you uplifted the empire in question, you'll automatically get a permanent +50. The highest relations I have seen is +400 or so. NPC Empires generally sell items at a much lower cost than your own empire, but they will have a smaller selection. Shop choices differ between empires, and all systems of the same empire will sell the same stuff for the same price. Spice prices, however, fluctuate between individual PLANETS (so 2 planets in the same system may have different prices) Improving relations with an empire generally leads you nowhere. For the purposes of just winning, its best to just make do with whatever services they provide without an alliance before blowing them up. Allying with an empire lets you fly through their territory unopposed. If you are at war with an empire, they will send ships out to shoot at you. _______________________ [6.4.7] Getting Credits The only way to get credits in this stage is by selling spice. Note that I don't call it "Trading Spice". To get money, collect spice by travelling to each of your spice producing planets. By simply arriving at the planet, you will automatically pickup the spice produced there. If that didn't work, you can trade with the planet and purchase their spice for no cost. Once you have gathered your spice, you can then find buyers for it. Sell spice to planets for credits. It doesn't matter who you sell it to, your empire and NPC empires will buy spice all the same. Prices for spice at any particular planet fluctuates constantly, so a planet buying spice for 10k a piece may not do so in another 5 minutes. Spice worth is determined by their color. A higher energy color generally will sell more. (Purple > Pink > Blue > Green > Yellow > Red). Even the lowest ranking spice, red, will sell for at least 10k if you take the time to find someone buying it for that much. You can set up spice runs, where you pick up spice and sell at the same time. When you pick up spice, check that planet's trade window to see if they are buying other spice for high prices. A planet will never buy their color spice for anything other than the lowest price. A Cargoful of spice (99 of each spice) can net you 20million credits if you take the time to find the best buyers. _____________________________ [6.4.8] Expanding your empire To get more spice, you must expand your empire. The space stage provides many ways to accomplish just that. _____________________________________ [6.4.8.1] Terraforming & Colonization To colonize and claim a system, it must first be unclaimed by any sentient speices. This means anything from tribal above is considered claimed. If you find a system you want, fly into the system and pick a planet to colonize. Generally, planets with green orbit paths are easier to colonize than those with blue or red paths. Fly down to the planet and use a colony incredi-pak to construct a colony on the planet. If the planet has a TerraScore of zero (T0), you will not be able to place buildings into the colony until you raise the planet to a T1 planet. To terraform a planet, you must first have the necessary tools to alter the climate along two scales: temperature and atmosphere, and a regiment of plants and animals to place onto the planet. If a planet is in T0, it will have dangerous effects that can damage your ship. A Cold planet will have ice geysers, a hot planet will have lava geysers, a planet with thick atmosphere will have thunder clouds, and a planet with no atmosphere will have meteor storms. Contact with any of these will damage your ship. Meteors hurt. To alter the planet, use either the energy-dependent terraform tools or the single-use terraform tools to move the dot on the terraform screen towards the rings in the middle. The tools themselves will tell you which way it'll move the dot as represented by a yellow arrow next to the name. Don't over use your tools because it is possible to overshoot your terraform attempt. Once you reach T1, the planet will flash green and the terra-grid will zoom in to show only the terrascore rings. At this point, you must lay down at least 1 shrub, 1 bush, and 1 tree to stabilize the terrascore. By doing so, you prevent the dot from sliding backwards towards the planet's original position on the terragrid (although you can force it by using terraforming tools). If you don't stabilize the terrascore, the dot will slowly move back towards where it came from once the terraforming tool effects have dwindled. Once you've stabilized the terrascore, place two herbivores followed by a carnivore onto the planet. Omnivores will count for whatever slot needs filling. Once that's complete, the planet will become a T1 planet. Your colony will lower its environmental shield and will allow you to place up to 5 buildings into it. Continue this process, if you wish, to make the planet a T3 planet. For every terrascore, you must place a DIFFERENT set of the plants and animals. The same plant or animal will not work for the next terrascore tier. For every terrascore, you are allowed one additional colony on the planet, up to 3 colonies total. Colonies can not be placed right next to each other, that is, you can't overlap the large circles. The circles must also not contain a spice geyser yet still remain close to one. When the circles are blue, you are allowed to place a colony at that position. At T2, you can place all but 8 buildings into the colony (that's all the buildings but no turrets, or some turrets but not all the buildings). At T3, you can fill the entire colony's building slots. Colonies will produce spice as long as there's a factory. Spice production is dependent on how you've arranged your factories and housing. __________________________________ [6.4.8.2] Conquering other systems Sometimes an empire or sentient species will have laid claim to a system you desire. (Such as someone's homeworld planet *coughcough*) The only way to take the system for yourself is to either buy the system for ludicrious prices, or to force them out of it. If a non-star-faring sentient species is residing in a system containing a planet you want, you can simply blow them up. Go around and destroy every city or tribe that is on the planet and it'll wipe them from the system. Now the system is unclaimed and you can claim it for yourself. If a star-faring species is residing in a system containing a planet you want, you can also simply blow them up. The idea is the same, go around and destroy every colony that is on the planet and it'll kick them out of the system, leaving you to claim it for yourself. However, this time, the planet will fight back. A star-faring species at war with you will always send fighters to attack you if you wander into their territory. These fighters are annoying because you can't shoot back (except with the auto-blaster) at them until you've gone planetside. A planet controlled by a star-faring species will always have a few capital ships protecting it. These ships have much higher HP than the fighters, but their fighting capability is relatively the same...and they have missiles. Fighting is simple. Activate the weapon of your choice and click and hold on your target. For the laser, you must keep your mouse tracked on your target for the laser to hit. This gets difficult when a dogfight somehow starts knocking your ship around. The missile locks onto ships and does decent damage, but they may lock onto targets other than the one you wanted to shoot at. A dogfight is fought solely using the laser and missile. Once you've cleared a planet of ships, you can begin to take the colonies. Fly over to a colony and blast it with whatever weapon you got. Hitting the city hall of the colony will move the capture progression bar, while a city's population and happiness will resist movement of the bar. Destroy a city's houses and entertainment centers to make capturing easier. When a city is damaged enough, it may surrender instead of blowing up. When this happens, leave that city and move onto the next one. As long as you have at least 1 colony in a system that surrendered instead of exploded, you will have the option to capture the system. This button is at the middle top of your screen under the system capture progression bar. Doing so will transfer control of the system to you along with any remaining assets that you havn't blown up. ______________________________ [6.4.8.3] Buying other systems Through diplomacy, you can set up to 3 trade routes with neighboring systems owned by friendly empires. These trade routes will move spice on a 1 to 1 basis between the two systems that the route links. Spice storage is still an issue though, and a planet can never exceed its capacity through trade routes. Over time, the trade routes will move the Buyout progression bar of the system. You will be notified when a system's progression bar has reached full and buyout is available. Select a price that seems reasonable. Number of colonies residing in the system, number of planets in question, and spice color type all are factors in how much credits the other empire expects from you. The cost is usually quite high. When you purchase a system, the trade route disappears, and ownership of the system and all its assets are transfered to you. _____________________ [6.4.9] Special Items When visiting a star system, sometimes a planet will have a yellow aura coming out of it. This means that there is an object of interest lying on the planet surface. These are either rare artifacts, a pirate attack, or a planet terrain tool. They are usually worth checking out and collecting. Artifacts are worth decent money, the terrain tools are fun, and the pirate attacks...are a dud. Artifacts always belong to a set. If you can somehow collect a set, its net worth is increased by 10 times. Since the sets are so large (8-10 pieces each), and the pieces only appear by chance on a planet, its usually not worth your time to collect them. If you really want to, you can designate a planet to stow your goodies as you get them. Terrain altering tools alter the terrain in novel ways. They usually produce fun shapes or effects, cost no energy to use, and have a minor cooldown associated with them. You can use them to give planets certain shapes. They make no effect to the actual productivity of the planet. ______________________________________ [6.4.10] Non-spacefaring civilizations In your explorations, you may encounter civilizations that are still in tribal or civilization stage. If you don't want to blow them up, you can instead uplift them using a monolith single-use item. This monolith will increase their stage level to space stage over time. When they become space-faring, you will be notified of this change. Since you were responsible for their technological advance, you get an automatic permanent +50 in diplomatic relations. _________________ [6.4.11] Missions All empires will give you missions if you ask for them. A planet will issue you exactly one mission, and you can choose to take it or not. However, once you've VIEWED the mission, if you reject it, you will lose relations with that empire. Mission destinations will always be marked on your star map in some way. If you know exactly what planet it is, it will have a line drawn to it. If you don't know where it is, you will see a circle on your star map. Your mission system is in that circle some where. Keep in mind, the circle is on the plane of the galaxy, and is SPHERICAL. In 3-D space, it means the star in question may be above or below the circle, and a little more towards the inside of the circle. The star will never be outside the circle. Usually the mission text will tell you some clues about the planet and/or system. Read it carefully. There's no reason why anyone should not be able to find whatever system they have a quest on. Read the mission to figure out what to do, they are all very straight forward. Once you complete or reject a mission from a planet, the planet will not issue you another mission for some time. If you're trying to raise relations with an empire, go to another planet and take a mission from there. Usually an empire will have enough planets for you to constantly embark on missions for them. ____________________ [6.4.12] Progression To progress through space stage, fill up your bar by recieving accomodations. Accomodations are earned through badges. Badges unlock tools for you to use and are earned through completing specific tasks a certain number of times. If there's a tool you wish to unlock, go to it in your collections list and it will tell you which badges you need. Then go into your badges list and find the badge in question (they are in alphabetical order) and perform whatever task it requires of you. For example, if I wanted interstellar drive 5, I would go into my collections list and mouse over ID5 and it will tell me I need the explorer 5 badge. Moving to the badge list, I can find the explorer badge and mouse over that which will tell me that to earn the explorer badge which unlocks ID5, I need to make 1500 star system jumps. So then I go and click on 1500 star systems and it'll unlock the drive for me. Unlocked tools must be purchased before you can use them. Your empire will ALWAYS sell EVERY tool. (But other empires may sell them cheaper...) __________________________________ [6.5] "Completing" the Space Stage Space Stage technically doesn't have an end where credits roll and happy music plays. As you expand into space stage, you can decide when you've "won". A typical goal, however, is to reach the center of the universe. Such a goal involves all aspects of space stage, diplomacy, colonization, punching Grox, flying around, and getting generally frustrated at 3-D space. The SPORE space stage can be convieniently divided into 3 phases: Setting up, expansion, and taking the fight into the heart of the galaxy. _______________________________ [6.5.1] Setting up your empire Right off the bat, you're thrown into the star neighborhood which surrounded your system that you've called home for the past 2-3 hours. Several missions are handed out that are mandatory. These are the ones where you find the crashed space ship, then fly to their world on a nearby star, then return to your homeworld. Your homeworld then issues a colonization mission. Although you have the choice to skip this mission, DON'T SKIP IT. You get a free colony incredi-pak for accepting this mission. DO NOT COMPLETE THIS MISSION YET. Fly to all nearby stars and find planets that have GREEN orbit paths and have LOW atmosphere. These two requirements are important. Colonize a planet that meet these requirements that isn't the planet you were supposed to go to. Return to your homeworld and report that you've wasted your incredi-pak and they will sell you another one for dirt cheap. (These things are usually 125k!) Continue to colonize nearby planets that meet the two previous criteria until you think you've had enough. Do not upgrade these colonies at all yet, you simply don't have the money for it. Ten is usually a good number to shoot for. Do not upgrade these colonies at all yet, you simply don't have the money for it. While you are doing this, you should have made contact with at least 1 other empire. Don't do any diplomacy, just compliment them enough to keep them from attacking you. Once you've had enough, complete the mission by colonizing the one they actually wanted you to colonize. Once you've completed this mission, you won't recieve another game-progressing mission from your homeworld until you have earned several command badges. When you go to get missions from your homeworld, they will give you a set of "tutorial" missions. Select the one that says "I want to learn how to terraform" (or something along those lines). They will now give you 1 free atmosphere generator and 10 each of a shrub, bush, tree, 2 herbivores, and a carnivore. This is a randomly generated set of plants and animals that may or may not be native to your homeworld. (Makes you wonder how they got them). This situation seems rather familiar. The mission tells you to go improve the terra score of the planet you were supposed to colonize during the previous mission. Instead of that, go improve those other planets you colonized first, going back home for more atmosphere generators. Since all the planets were missing was an atmosphere, this should bump them to at least T1. You can then improve the planet's Terrascore by laying down those plants and animals you got. Just ONE of each plant and animal will stabilize the terrascore, so don't go squandering them. Make sure to lay down the animals gently. Once you complete this mission, its pretty much freeform from here. Its up to you if you want to take on any other "tutorial" mission from your homeworld. They are somewhat annoying and don't get you much in my opinion. If you did this phase right, you should now have several systems under your control, each with a T1 (or higher if you knew what to do) colony ready to be upgraded with buildings. Buildings are expensive, which means you need some money. Keep in mind you aren't restricted to just one method listed below, you can mix and choose however you like. _______________________________ [6.5.1.1] Grovelling for money One method to gain money in the early game is to just run missions. That empire next to you that I said to ignore? Now its time to make them your friend. Take the mission from your homeworld "I want to make allies" (or something along those lines) and they'll tell you to go forge an alliance. Now go to a planet owned by your closest neighbor, they're about to become your best friend for a long time. Initiate communications with them and do their missions. See previous section on completing missions. Each mission should give you a small amount of cash, good for 2-3 buildings on your own colonies. When you can, become allies with them so that you can monitor their expansion progress at all times. (Don't want them getting too big). Check their trade window, they should sell colony incredi-paks for cheap...at least cheaper than your own empire. This is important because it is substantially better to buy colonizers from these guys than your own swindling citizens. Keep these guys your friends, their proximity to your empire makes them the shopping mall right outside your doorsteps. __________________________________ [6.5.1.2] Trading Spice for money A slower method of gaining money in the early game is to trade what spice you can produce. Your homeworld, however, produces spice at a rate that is at best 10% the rate of a fully functional colony. The spice your homeworld produces is always red, the cheapest type of spice available. Sell your spice to neighboring empires or one of your own colonies, whomever will buy it for more. Then wait and pick up more spice from your homeworld. Upgrade colonies with factories as soon as you can so that those colonies can get working producing spice too. Once you get things going though, trading spice becomes a MUCH faster way to gain money. (If I ever need money in my game, I can make an extremely short spice run and gain about 8 million credits in 3-5 minutes of work) _____________________________________ [6.5.1.3] Beating people up for money A way to really start your expansion with a bang is to start conquering people. Captured planets usually will come with spice producing colonies that were transfered to your control when they surrendered. The more systems you capture, the more spice production you get, which in turn increases the money you can gain per unit time. If you want to do it this way, start reading the next section. ___________________________________________ [6.5.2] Expanding away from your homeworld Now that you've setup your empire, it is time to set your eyes on other stars. As you move through this phase, it is in your favor to keep yourself constantly stocked with the best non-munitions weapons, terraforming equipment, and a healthy stock of colonizers. Each time you unlock a new weapon or terraforming equipment, keep in mind to get some credits so you can buy the new tool. Keep an eye out for new drives too, because being able to move around is kinda important. In your drive to earn some initial credits to build up your fledgling empire, you should have ran into other empires besides your first and only friend. Now its time to take some new systems, by force. In another FAQ, the author writes that "wars are something you really want to avoid at all possible cost, because it is expensive to end them and quite annoying to avoid." Here, I say wars are the fastest way to end a war. They are also a very quick way to procure more systems which will give you more money. Really, the only annoying part of war is the fact that once you start, your empire starts expanding to such a size that its hard to keep track of it all. Lets assault a planet. Fly to a planet owned by an empire not controlled by your allies (attacking them would be...unbeneficial to you, after all, they sell cheap colonizers). Fly to the first city. Open fire on their town hall. At first you will have only lasers, so just track your laser on the town hall. Honestly, you can ignore the fighters beating on you if you want, although in the early game, you won't have all that much HP, so you could destroy them too to be safe. As you fire on the city hall, the capture progression bar will advance. The power of the weapon you are using pushes the bar to the right while population and happiness of the target city will resist its movement. IF the bar really isn't moving (If you havn't captured it within 10 seconds), consider destroying a few buildings, namely houses and entertainment centers. Try not to hit factories (they have a spice symbol above them), they provide unhappiness, keeping them intact actually makes it easier for you to capture the city. When the progression bar reaches the end, the city will either blow up (bad) or raise a white flag and make a "captured" sound (good). Either way, the city will now stop shooting you. Move onto the rest of the cities in the SYSTEM (if an empire owns multiple planets, you have to leave the current one and go to the other planets). Once all of them have surrendered, the "Capture System" button will become available at the top of your screen. Select it and the entire system's remaining assets will be transferred to you. *Weapons against cities: Lasers - its a laser, you shoot it. Pulse - Does more damage than the laser over time, good for picking out targets or destroying turrets. Bomb - Not very accurate, but does massive damage to buildings and dramatically moves the capture progression bar. Since its not very accurate, targetting the city hall with a bomb actually may destroy buildings near it instead, making it easier to capture the city. Just be careful with it, you aren't trying to blow up everything. The general strategy for capturing a given city is as follows: 1. Activate shields if this is a homeworld (there'll be a lot of cities on the minimap...I also assume you have shields, skip this step if no shields) 2. Use bombs on the city hall until the city is captured. Bombs are nice if targetting at the city hall. It will destroy nearby buildings, which will assist in capture, and since you are aiming at the center of the town, it will leave turrets alone. Why leave turrets alone? They are expensive to rebuild, so once you've captured the city, its nice that the turrets are already installed for you. 3. If you have the best bombs, they have very slow travel time and thus have a tendency to destroy the city because you accidentally fired one shot too many. If that's the case, if a bomb ever moves the bar by a large amount, immediately switch to shooting pulse instead. The pulse is guarenteed to hit exactly what you are targetting and won't cause collateral damage. If during your attack you run low on energy, health, or worse yet, explode, return to a nearby world you control to heal and refuel (or revive). Be relentless, continue your assault on the system you were attacking until you take it over or destroy it completely. Once you've taken a system, rebuild it as best as you can. If you left turrets alone, you can consider the system protected from pirates. If there isn't any turrets, build at least 2 on each city. Continue to assault a single empire, never attack two at the same time. You can see where your target empire is because you are now at war and their stars will be surrounded by a red territory border. Once you have completely conquered an empire, perform maintenance on the planets you just conquered. Restore them to full production capability and make sure they are well protected with turrets. On the empire's original homeworld, if you've managed to capture 4 or more cities, this planet is worth making a spice production center. Place a spice storage building on this planet. The spice storage is an unlockable single-use ability that doubles the planet's spice storage. Homeworld planets with 4 or more cities pump out spice at an incrediblly fast rate. You don't want to squander extra spice. If you did a good job, this planet can produce a maximum of 100 spice (10 cities * 5 spice * 2 for storage) in under 5 minutes. If during your attack, you recieve a "we're under attack by unknown ships" warning, you have two choices. Since during your attack, you're at war with the empire, the empire can assault systems you own. However, this attack can also be one from pirates. If it is from pirates, you can ignore it. If it is from the empire, then if you ignore it, they will likely take it over or do heavy damage to its infrastructure. You can choose to ignore this warning, or you can respond to it. If you respond to the warning, go take care of it and then immediately return to finishing your assault on the empire. If you ignore the warning however, you must finish your assault before the invisible mission timer is up. This is because if you can completely annhilate an empire before that mission disappears, then the mission's antagonists become pirates instead, which means you don't need to respond to it anymore. However, if you can't annhilate the empire and it does turn out to be the empire attacking you, then you will likely lose the system. This isn't too big of a problem, just go take it back, but try to keep the damage to a minimum, those were your buildings down there. Be aggressive in expanding your empire. Once you've made contact with an alien race, destroy them and take their homeworld. Expanding your empire in this way is cheap, efficient, and greatly increases your spice production. Make sure to keep your weapons and terraform tools up to date with the best available to you. If you find yourself flying through a cluster of stars with no empires in it, consider laying down some colonies of your own, if anything, just to make a path for you to follow on your way home. Never use terraforming tools that are single-use. These are a big waste of money, money that could have been invested in colonizers or buildings. Instead, unlock the various energy- dependent tools and terraform only using those tools. (IF you don't have the tool for a particular terraforming direction, then don't terraform). Look at the tips section for some interesting behavior of the NPC empires and how to terraform efficiently. Lastly, keep your ally that's near you in check. Try to box them in if you can by surrounding them with your own systems. The NPC empires will never expand past a certain range, so if you can claim all the stars within their reach, they will never be able to expand. If he's getting big, you can destroy some of his systems and then bribe him to end the war and get back onto better terms. If you can tame that empire, it becomes a good source of single-use items like colonizers. (Colonizers are probably going to be your most used item besides weapons) If you want to expand simply for financial gains, try to make no contact with the Grox (don't conquer towards the center, conquer towards the outer rim of your arm of the galaxy). If you end up somehow at war with the Grox, you're in for some trouble. See next section. ________________________ [6.5.3] Heading inwards When you've expanded your empire to a size you are pleased with, it is time to turn your attention to the center. The game's "endgame" awaits you in that direction. There is already a good "center of the galaxy" guide on gamefaqs, and so I don't need to go into much detail, but I will give a brief set of instructions for each of the 3 methods. You'll need interstellar drive 4, but you probably should have 5 by now if you've expanded enough. _____________________________ [6.5.3.1] Peace with the Grox This is a painstaking method that will give you a clear path to the center without all the trouble. The -100 relation to all empires in the galaxy is problematic because they'll now constantly nip away at your empire, and you won't be able to respond to the attacks in time. Not to mention, this "awakens" the empires that would have otherwise stayed "dormant". Check out the tips section to see what implications this has. However, once you've allied with the grox, you can prance your way to the center with no trouble at all. However, it is still a maze in there, so just take your time. ___________________________ [6.5.3.2] War with the Grox This is by far the ultimate test in your empire destroying/expanding capabilities. The Grox empire is HUGE, and their cities are all built on T0 planets, which means when you capture a planet, all its buildings go away and renders them useless. You can fortify planets you take from them by laying down your own colony or terraforming, but that isn't nearly as cheap or fast as capturing pre-made cities. You've just declared war on the Grox, which means, like any other empire, they'll periodically attack one of your systems. As usual, fortify cities, if possible, with several turrets. One other method to destroying systems owned by the Grox is to terraform the planet. However, this is usually a slow method, and the act of terraforming actually destroys the cities, which means you have to lay down colonizers (which is more annoying than just installing buildings). You can only hold 99 colonizers, and each colonizer has to be purchased one at a time from one friendly system at a time. With the size of the Grox empire, it would be unfavorable for you to fly back and forth buying colonizers all the time. If you just want to get to the center, then just punch a path through the Grox as you fly towards the galactic core. IF you want to conquer the Grox, start from where your arm of the galaxy touches their empire, and then slowly spread out from there. Conquer completely in one section before moving on, this way it keeps your empire together and ensures you didn't miss something after you thought you were done. _________________________________ [6.5.3.3] Mad dash for the center You'll need a couple colonizers for this and the maximum amount of health. Having a wormhole key helps here. Start by jumping through wormholes until one lands you relatively close to the galactic core. There's plenty of wormholes in that general vincinity. The area controlled by the Grox can be looked at as 2 circular areas filled with stars divided by a thin band of empty space. This thin band of empty space has a few bridges that span it. Only TWO of these can be crossed using interstellar drive 4, and there are many dud bridges that can not be crossed even with interstellar drive 5. Your travel range with ID5 in this area is 3 parsecs, which means as you travel, constantly be on the lookout for the next star forward that is within 3 parsecs away. First the wormholes. There are about 7 or 8 wormholes in the inner circle. Once you end up somehow in the inner circle, you can make a relatively short jump to the galactic core. If you can find such a wormhole that leads you right into this area, then you're golden. If not, you can settle for a wormhole that lands you on the inside of the outer circle. Proceed towards a star bridge that you think you can cross. The Grox will send ships to shoot at you, so when you reach an HP of around 2000, fly to a non-occupied star (one that doesn't have blue radio waves coming out of it) and quickly land on a planet and lay down a colony. Then without waiting for the colony to form, fly UP and out of the planet. Once on the system view, the colony is built immediately and you can open up communications for repairs. Repair up and continue your journey. Repeat this process until you reach the center. To get back out, either take a nearby wormhole and jump wormholes til you end up near your arm of the galaxy, or walk out the way you came using the colonies you built as markers of the path. ______________________________________ [6.6] Consequences of the Space Stage? The space stage is the last stage of the game, however, since you are now acting on the galaxy level, your actions during your game has profound changes to your SPORE game as a whole. Here's a list of what consequences arise from SAVING your space stage game. (Saving permanently sets these changes) 1. Every system you claim is marked as "claimed" to all space stage visitors in your entire game. If you visit a system owned by another one of your saved games, it will be seen as claimed by that race. 2. Every Empire you encounter during your exploration will be present when you visit it with another saved game. It also "awakens" them. See tips section about awakened empires. 3. Every time you explore a star system, names are permanently generated for the star and the planet. The game has only so many names, so eventually it'll start doubling them up using numbers. Your game may see a planet named Aldis, then a planet elsewhere called Aldis-2, and Aldis-3, and so on. My empire is so huge that I get deja vu from certain planets because of the name thing. 4. If you capture a planet owned by another saved game, that save game's empire actually loses the planet. When you load up that saved game, control of the system will have been lost. You can never do anything to a saved game's homeworld, however. 5. All this implies that if you destroy the Grox and conquer the center of the galaxy, then any other space stage game on your computer will have zero resistance reaching the center of the galaxy. Your saved games always start neutral with each other. _______________________________ [6.7] Tips for the Space Stage. There's lots to do during the space stage, which means there's lots of little quirks and intricacies you can take advantage of. _________________________________ [6.7.1] Terraforming & Colonizing *You can get dirt cheap colonizers and atmosphere generators early in the game by not completing the first few tutorial missions. Just don't use them on the planet they were meant for. *Colonizing takes lots of money. Save money by buying your colonization tools from an NPC empire, they will almost always sell it for cheaper than your empire. *To fully colonize a planet with 3 colonies, full turrets, full colonization extras (uber turret, spice storage, etc), and full buildings will cost 2.3million credits. Such a planet producing red spice at 396 spice/hr (3 colonies optimum production, you can do better than this, but if you are doing worse than this, rethink your building pattern) will pay for itself in about 45 minutes. *When terraforming, get the dot moving past T1 and into T2 before you lay down your first colony. Since as the colony is setting up, you can't use any tools, make sure you have 3 terraform arrows going so the dot continues to move while you sit there idle. This is just time efficiency, not much else to it. *If you overshoot while terraforming, turn back the arrow by using tools of the opposite direction. *Terraforming plants and animals are dupe-able. Find a T0 planet, raise it up to T1 (no more than that) and stabilize it using your first "set" of plants and animals. Fly out of the planet then fly back down. The plants and animals will have proliferated all over the planet, ready for you to pick them up. They respawn quickly if you fly around the planet, and you can easily get 99 of each. Repeat on a different T0 planet for your other sets. *Your maximum cargo size is rigged to fit. Your maximum cargo size is perfect for holding 3 sets of plants and animals plus the 6 types of spices. This means you shouldn't have cargo problems if you keep it clean. *You can't colonize on water. If you find yourself on an ocean planet, raise the planet's surface using sculpting tools to make a platform. *Colonies create land. If you want to preserve the land structure (such as on Earth), make sure the large ring you see when laying down the colony stays on land and doesn't jut out into the water. *Colonize the solar system. Its fun and costs a lot. Don't ask me why, or I will ask you why not. *Blow up Earth. You get an achievement, but don't save your game. It's Earth after all. *Don't use wildlife sanctuaries, that's a planet you could have used to produce spice. And there's no point having extra animals unless you just want to have fun with it. There's an achievement for having lots of these though. _______________________________________________________________ [6.7.2] Relations with NPC Empires (and your other saved games) *The Galactic Code is broken by anything that instantly wipes out a planet's original owner. This includes Planet Buster, Gravitation Wave, and Fanatical Frenzy. This effect isn't all that bad because it only effects empires whose systems lie within 20 parsecs of where you used the ability. If you want to keep your allies (such as the one right next to you), just don't use these things near them. *Relationships with other empires is solely on a sliding integer scale. If they have over 75 with you, they will ally with you without question. If they have under -75 with you, they will be at war. No empire will start off perfectly happy with you or perfectly hating you. This includes the Grox. *"AWAKENED" Empires. In your entire game, an empire is considered "dormant" if it has never been visited by one of your saved games. By visited, I mean you wandered close enough to trigger a "welcome" transmission from the empire. Some empires do not give out a "welcome" transmission, so watch out. As long as an empire remains dormant, it does not expand in size. Empires usually start off with anywhere between 2 to 5 systems, but will slowly expand over time to neighboring star systems when they are "awakened." Once awakened, as long as you are playing a game on space stage, a NPC empire will expand in size. This means if you awaken an empire with one game, then go play for a few hours on another space stage game, on your return to the first game, that awakened empire will have grown in size. What does this mean? When you awaken an empire, if you don't want them to be big later, you HAVE to destroy them right away. You can avoid this problem by not saving, because these changes are made permanent only when you save. However, if you have two space stage games (such as one played by a sibling) you will have to clear your area before you save, or else you might come back to find an empire protruding into your own. *NPC empires never attack your civilization when you aren't playing it. At least that's a relief. *Except if your civilization is allied with the current civilization being played. Darn. Sometimes, empires you are allied with will get an "we're under attack" message. Lets call your saved civilization, civ A, and the one you are currently playing civ B. If civ B allies with civ A, civ A allies by the sliding integer scale rule as if it was an NPC empire. However, since you are playing civ B, and civ A is an ally, if civ A has any enemies (you saved civ A's game when it was still at war with an NPC empire), then civ A may sometimes issue an "we're under attack" message. As civ B, you have the option of ignoring such a message. If civ A was indeed attacked by the empire they are at war with (instead of pirates, surely your cities have turrets to deter pirates), then civ A may lose the system to the attacking empire. If you save your game in civ B and reload civ A, you will be missing the system in question. Rule of thumb: Always save your game when you aren't at war, and don't ally with your other civilizations, just leave them alone. *If you go to war with your own civilizations, that civilization can issue "NPC style" attacks on your own systems. This is a problem because the best solution to a war with an empire is to annhilate it. You can't completely annhilate a civilization that is a saved game because you can't attack their homeworld. This means they'll be a constant thorn in your side. Attacks issued by them can not take over your planet, but if an attack would have taken it over, you lose all buildings on the planet instead. (Leaves you open for attack from an NPC empire). You can always bribe your other civilization with credits. No actual credit transfer takes place however. ______________ [6.7.3] Income *Maximize spice production by making good building patterns. A stable pattern should have at least neutral happiness and 132 spice/hr. I've heard people can do better, if you can do so, by all means go for it. *Happiness does not increase spice production, only lowers the chance of capture. Which means neutral is good enough, turrets also lower the chance of capture, build those instead. *Your homeworld sucks. Don't rely on it for spice production, however you do need to protect it. I've never lost my homeworld, but I assume its a really bad thing to do. *NPC homeworlds rock. Don't destroy their cities, make them surrender instead. Since you can only have THREE colonies on a T3 planet, and a homeworld can come with 10 cities, its in your favor to preserve the cities. Each city acts as a colony which can produce massive amounts of spice. For example, I have perfectly captured a homeworld that produces pink spice. The homeworld generates 1320 spice an hour (that's 100 every 4 minutes or so). If I actively make spice runs between this planet and a planet that buys pink spice for the maximum price, I can get over 52,800,000 credits in an hour. However, close to this system, I actually captured another homeworld that produces blue spice. Good times. Always protect these worlds with an uber turret and place a spice storage to maximize production. (Fanatical Frenzy special ability is VERY useful for capturing homeworlds). *Planet prices for spice fluctuate. This just means you need to always find planets with good prices instead of relying on one planet. Its not too big of a deal, but sometimes can get annoying. When you do look for planets with good prices however, make sure to buy their colonize packs, you're already in the screen anyway. =============================================================================== [7] The story of the Quinor The Quinor is my space stage creature. It is the only creature in space stage on my game for obvious reasons. This is their story. The Quinor started off as a multi-flagellated herbivore with 5 flagella and 2 spikes. They struggled and fought hard for the elusive green algae that was supposed to be abundant in the waters of Platin. Their speed and defensive ability was only bested by things bigger than them, but they only killed for defense. Eventually they met a creature with a mouth unlike any other. It was long and tubular, which pierced and sucked sustenance from plant and animal alike. Exemplaring over their defeated enemy, they eventually evolved such a probiscus, with which they quickly found the joys of the kill. However, when the other creatures began to grow bigger, they found themselves disadvantaged. Somehow, evolution had stopped for them, and time stood still. The last evolution the Quinor was ever bestowed was the fusing of their flagella into a set of cilia. With these most primitive of limbs, they followed the other creatures who was hosted by the planet and clambored onto land. [At the end of the cell stage, my creature had stalk eyes, probiscus ] [mouth, 2 spikes, one flagella, and a set of cilia...and a really big ] [head, they looked like cute green slugs with big heads. ] [I completed cell stage as a carnivore (RED) ] Quickly they found that creatures with legs were faster than them, creatures with arms were more powerful than them, and other creatures possessed the ability to hide or fly. None such gifts were given to the Quinor, who crawled still with belly on land, aided only by the flapping motion of their cilia which had once made them crafty in the water. But this was not water where they could float, this was a harsh land with a gravitic force that pushed them against sand and rock. They sought for friendship with those nearby. Their primitive brains understood that with their many weaknesses, they must rely on the help of others to succeed. The smaller primitive creatures were quick to befriend, but larger animals were unimpressed. Singing was the only trick the Quinor knew, and even then they weren't particularly good at it. Continuing down the evolutionary path, the Quinor saw many feats performed by other animals, but yet they considered their own bodies. Small, frail, unimpressive. Their only defense was a bite that barely scratched the hard scales of those bigger than them. When a fight turned bad, they could do nothing but lay down their lives, there was nothing they could do. Without legs, they were easily outrun, and their green color was clearly visible against the orange landscape. They were weak, often requiring entire packs to defeat a single foe, only to all die shortly after. Yet they knew they must fight on. Their power was in their number and reproductive speed. Despite their short-comings, they fought on. Generations of Quinor died so that their future generations could live. They knew no fear, for it was the Quinor way to die in futile battles. Through attrition, they gained victory over many species. Eons passed and as they grew a brain within their massive heads, they began to question why they had never gained the luxury of other creatures. Why in the billions of years, they had never changed. A question that exercised their minds, for although they did not know it, they were given the greatest luxury of all, brilliance and wisdom. [At the end of creature stage, my creature still had stalk eyes, a ] [probiscus mouth, 2 spikes, one flagella, and a set of cilia. I did ] [not evolve at all during the creature stage, and retained my level 1 ] [bite and level 1 dash without any other abilities. It was a hard ] [ordeal. To exterminate a nest, it would often require me to kill ] [stragglers or assault a single creature at a nest and have the entire] [pack die. I died countless numbers of times. I couldn't run, and my] [attacks did like 2 damage each. I preyed on the weak when I could ] [find them, and eggs were like a godsend. Did I mention I had no arms] [OR legs? I had no arms or legs, I never touched the creature editor ] [during this stage. I completed creature stage as a predator (RED) ] They eventually mastered fire and began a socialized life. Their mouths were long and protected, with which they could wield tools. They shaped wood to form protective gear for their soft bodies, they decorated themselves with impressive masks, they sewed hide to make backpacks to carry food. They knew it was time to leave their savage ways. They saw the way other creatures, once mightier than them, cower away from their mastery of the elements. They knew it was time to return to their peaceful ways. Other creatures learned from the Quinor, and they too became wise. The Quinor put down their weapons and nurtured the wisdom of others, impressing them with their knowledge of music and art, and bringing them sustenance in their times of need. Gifts were lavishly poured upon savage tribes to sate their hunger and hate. The Quinor knew that each life was precious, and that their lives were fragile. They could not afford a quarrel with another tribe who has also gained the power of tools. They befriended even the most savage of creatures. They showed them the way of peace. As their skill in masonry grew, they began to become masters of their world, shaping raw materials into meaningful tools. In a dream, their chieftain was greeted by the mighty SPODE, who spoke to him for what seemed to be many years, granting him an infinite wisdom overnight. Upon awakening, he immediately gathered his people and taught them what he had learned. They were to build a nation, right where they stood, and with it, carry the word of SPODE across the globe. But the Quinor was not united in this thought, claiming it was much too radical. Many questioned the sanity of the elderly chieftain and broke away from the tribe. [At the end of tribal stage, my creature had befriended all 5 tribes. ] [This stage was accomplished extremely quickly despite the fact that ] [my creature did not move very fast (no legs!). My biggest challenge ] [actually was collecting food. I would sometimes lose tribesmen just ] [hunting animals for food because they had such low damage (no arms!).] [I completed Tribal stage on social (GREEN) ] "The word of SPODE MUST be spread" exclaimed the chieftain as he ascended his throne as leader of a nation. And so it was to be. Those who stayed with the chieftain considered themselves the "True Quinor" those who follow the word of SPODE. They upheld the belief that their shortcomings was a test for the right of dominance. "We have come a long way, and now we are given the ultimate battle: we must fight our own kind." And so it was to be. However, the true Quinor did not wish to damage their planet or their own kind. They spread the word of SPODE using missionary vehicles modelled after themselves. The vehicles were lightly armored, but strangely enthralling and extremely speedy. With each vehicle and lives they lost in their holy war, many more were at the ready to seve the will of SPODE. They tamed the militant, they converted the rich. Even those who followed false gods began to put down their unholy texts and repented under the might of SPODE. At long last, the Quinor was once again united. Past grievances were forgotten and as peace and prosperity spread across the land many began to look into the heavens. The elderly chieftain knew his job was done. On his death bed, he declared a message to all of Platin. "SPODE is there, his holy heavens is being invaded by strange creatures as wise as us. We are the only and true believers. We must spread his will and cleanse the heavens." With such words, the entire economic, military, and spiritual power of the Quinor was focused into one great project: to explore the heavens and conquer those who would defy the will of SPODE. Their resolve was clear, they must once again pick up the weapons they discarded so long ago and cleanse the stars of defilers. The chieftain's remains were placed into a sacred sanctuary within the Quinor flagship, the Sershina. It is there that they may call upon the power of their greatest leader to convert entire planets to the will of SPODE. [At the end of civilization stage, I achieved a religious victory by ] [procuring 6 cities then using the global domination ability. This ] [stage was different from all the others since it wasn't reliant on my] [creatures anymore. ] [I completed civilization stage on religious (GREEN) and recieve the ] [Zealot power "Fanatical Frenzy". ] Such is the tale of a race who simply wanted a reasonable place within the way of things. They conquered many hardships, surpassed many goals, and continually crushed those who would stand in their way. The crew of their ships carry the determination that they once had as a single cell. For everytime a Quinor sees itself, it is reminded of their primordial beginnings. All this time, they still have not evolved. These limbless space slugs carry a mission greater than any who attempt insult their form. To their ears, it is a compliment of their achievements over their shortcomings. [Currently, I have conquered all the empires on two arms of my galaxy,] [and have started invading the Grox, one system at a time. I have a ] [good 300-400 systems under my control, with quick access through ] [wormholes that I've managed to find which link the majority of my ] [empire. I have found Earth and have converted the Sol System into a ] [major spice production system. (Spent like 16 million building every] [planet up) I still have just one ally, I've shrunk him to a mere 15 ] [systems in a tight clump. He sells colonizers to me for a dirt cheap] [price of 75k each, which is very nice for the mass colonization I ] [make while I invaded the Grox. I control several homeworlds that ] [produce pink and purple spice, and can make loads of credits on short] [notice. Biodisasters are my biggest problem because I have to run to] [the planet, but since I ended on religious, they are few and far in ] [between. While I havn't claimed every system and eliminated every ] [empire, I have truly played a perfect game of SPORE. ] =============================================================================== [8] Legal Stuff? (If you have a heart, read me) To be honest, I wrote this as a voluntary service for the gaming community. Anyone may use it for any purpose. SPORE is a hot game right now and I believe it is a game that will be enjoyed by all for a long time. While we humans play god, we argue among ourselves over this game. Humans are hard to please, every man wants everything to benefit themselves. Unfortunately, this can not happen because at least two men exist with conflicting interests. Perhaps this game can teach us a little about society, about accepting each other, and accepting everyone's shortcomings. We are all flawed in some way, and so no man is better than the next man. We live in a society where we can call each other equals. "I am no better than you, but you are no better than me. We are all at the same level" A quote from a history professor I had. It is the way humans should live. We are the same flesh and bones. We need to stop bickering over a game when there are greater problems out in the world. Sometimes we all forget that the life we live was hard fought by our ancestors. There are greater goals for mankind, we need not be hindered by smallfry problems. Our creatures in SPORE strive for greatness and they succeeded, why can't we? This guide was completed on September 23, 2008 "I declare this work to be in the public domain" Feng Kevin Gu
Amazing Games. Many Cheats. Such Wow.
