Civilization Stage

After organizing into a city and creating vehicles, the player leaves the Tribal Stage and begins the Civilization Stage, the fourth of Spore's Game stages.

Structure
In the Civilization stage, players focus on interactions, either peaceful or violent, between their civilization and other civilizations on their Homeworld. One of the main objectives is to collect the spice geysers located around the planet, and prevent the enemy from accessing any themselves. Another is conquering all of the other cities religiously, economically, militarily, or diplomatically. The entrance into space marks the beginning of the Space Stage, but not necessarily the end of control on the Civilization stage.

Like in Tribal Stage, other civilizations can be dealt with peacefully or by war. The main resource of the Civilization stage is spice that can be gathered from nodes on land or sea. Controlling as many spice nodes as possible gives an advantage. There is a diplomatic system in the Civilization stage that looks very similar to Sid Meier's Civilization diplomatic system.

Each civilization can build three types of vehicles: cars, planes and ships. They differ by graphic appearance and three attributes: speed, power and stamina. Making one attribute stronger in the Vehicle Editor means that other attributes will be weaker. For example, if you put many guns on a tank, you'll make it more vulnerable and slower, but it can crush other vehicles more quickly. If you add a powerful engine after that, firepower will be weaker, but the vehicle will be faster. This is made for balance considerations. In addition, planes can only be created and bought after four cities are under a civilization's control. Strangely enough, in the space stage, planets in the civilization stage controlled by another creature can buy and use planes no matter how many cities they control.



There are different types of buildings in cities:


 * Turrets attack enemy vehicles on sight. Turrets differ with civilization type, but do the same damage. The only variable is how many slots the city can handle.
 * Houses make the population of a city increase, which allows you to make more vehicles.
 * Entertainment Centers make a city's population more happy and loyal, especially when placed beside Houses.
 * Factories help effectively gather Spice from controlled nodes, especially when placed beside Houses, but causes unhappiness in cities, especially when placed beside Entertainment Centers.

In Civilization stage and Tribal Stage, players can't edit their creatures anymore, but can add different accessories like hats, pauldrons, masks etc.

Communications Menu
There are four options for the "We come offering gifts, do you accept?" option: -Here's 1000 sporebucks. -Here's 2000 sporebucks. -Here's 4000 sporebucks. -Nevermind
 * Our people admire your wide tracts of land.: Use this to make a compliment to a nation.
 * Your people are descended from limbless space slugs.: Use this to insult a nation.
 * We come offering gifts, do you accept?: Use this to give gifts to a nation.

Trade
If a nation wants to establish a trade route with you, these options appear:
 * I accept your offer, start shipments immediately!
 * I reject your offer, you keep your tawdry goods.

Check out the list of Civilization stage stubs if you're looking to add something.

Civilization Consequence Abilities
The Civilization stage is the first of the four preliminary stages to alter the nature of the trait cards. Whereas in previous stages, Green and Red represented opposite approaches to game-play with Blue representing a balance of the two, Green, Red, and Blue all represent unique ways to play the game. As such, the player's timeline in Civilization is reorganized, placing the strategy which they entered the phase from in the center, with the other two on the extremes.

Civilization stage Achievements
Hidden achievements


 * Fear of Flying - Complete the Civilization stage without ever buying an aircraft.
 * Conclusion - Finish the Civilization stage by launching ICBM weapons and destroying all other cities.

Citizens
The citizens are an obvious reference to the Sims, such as the activities and interactions they play out.

Along with keeping them happy, the citizens, if observed long enough do many things such as weddings, protests, military drills, mass praying, and more. They will also have minor activities such as looking through telescopes, talking, sometimes you may even notice citizens performing magic tricks of some sort to other citizens who are willing to watch, perhaps to earn money, etc. There are many speech bubbles, one even with a picture of Will Wrights face, and another with a planet, an early idea of interstellar travel, so these include Space stage as well. The citizens will also act accordingly to what the type of city they are residing in. When the city is attacked, the citizens will often fire guns at the attacking vehicles and/or panic and start screaming.

When new buildings are placed, such as a factory, often the citizens will react with protests against the placement of factories or cheers when an entertainment system is placed.

A link to a list of the corresponding actions and city types can be found here: citizen actions.

Strategy
Build multiple vehicles fast and capture as many other spice geysers as possible before other civilizations appear. Your priority should be a naval city as it will grant access to the ocean and faster actions with other nations.

Hard Difficulty
The Civilization stage on Hard is quite difficult. A good approach is to use a mixed economic/religious or economic/military strategy. Going hard core on any of them also works, though. The reason for this is that in Hard mode the relationship penalties for being a large nation, or having your borders too close are very big. This makes it difficult to improve your relationship enough to start trading, and if you can't trade its impossible to win economically. On the other hand, cities are much more difficult to capture in Hard mode, so if a city is willing to trade with you an economic takeover is the safest method. A decent strategic outline is the following:

Economic

 * End as an industrious Tribe. At the start of the level do four things. First,design a land vehicle (or select one from the sporepedia) with as much speed as possible. Second, pause the game. Create the same amount of land vehicle's as there are spice geysers on your city's continent. Third, send one to each of the geysers immediately. After this, you should be able to get a good income. If you do not have enough for the vehicles, unpause and wait for the right amount of Sporebucks. Fourth, contact and compliment all of the closest cities so that you don't get attacked right away. If your city is on the continent, then make sure to create a new vehicle that is specialized in speed. Use rockets and wheels. If you are a city by the shore, do the same thing for the boats. Oars add to the speed.


 * Next, find the closest friendly religious or military city and do what it takes to get a trade route going. You may need to give some money as a gift. Once their city is available for purchase, buy it and don't change its type. If you buy the city right after it is available for purchase, your first city (as in the first city you conquer) will always cost 4,000 Sporebucks. Otherwise it should cost around 16,000 Sporebucks. The huge sum that you paid will balance out other negative relations such as "you are a threat," "your nation is too big," and "your boundaries are too close." At some point, someone is going to demand that you stop trading and you should turn them down, of course. If there is a choice between Military and Religious, choose either since Military because they have the strongest fighters or Religious because they capture unhappy cities faster which means only a small anti relation bonus.


 * At this point, several things can happen. If the nation you first started trading with has captured another city, then use your good relationship with that nation to start a trade route. Otherwise, there may be other cities near by which are close enough to trade with. In any case you should be trying to buy another city, if possible. Always keep your economic fleet centred on one or two cities and remember that they will cost more than in Easy or Normal Mode. Once you buy a city always keep it as a Military or Religious. Though optional, you can capture a sea city and keep it economic. Then start trading with a nation that is about to capture or has captured another city.


 * Once the Civilization stage enters its middle part its likely that there will be an emerging enemy power, which we will call Green. Because of the penalties mentioned earlier it will be very difficult/impossible to trade with Green. At this point, you should ramp up production of your military/religious vehicles and attempt to take over Green cities by force. Remember that the number of religious/military vehicles you have is determined by the number of Houses in religious/military cities. So, put more Houses in your religious/military cities and more Factories in your economic ones. Your fleet should be divided into two main parts: 1. The smaller one should be a mobile defensive group to help protect whichever town Green is attacking. 2. The larger one should be used for attacking Green's cities. Time is of the essence, so try and take over cities quickly, using your superpowers when appropriate. When you capture a city, change it to religious/military, whichever you've been using.


 * In the last part of the Civilization stage, if your fleet is strong enough, you may be able to finish by conquering Green. However, Green will build up a massive army and will be giving the hurt out in buckets. The easiest way to win is to get to six/seven cities, switch over to pure defence, and save up for the Global Merger superweapon. With any luck, you will save up enough to purchase the planet before Green knocks you back down to fewer than 6 cities.
 * You could also maintain two alliances as well. One of them will get destroyed, of course, so you should trade with the other one until you could afford the Global Merger. However, you can just use the gadget bomb superpower on Green's last city, but this comes with two downsides- You have to be a military nation and Any other nations will probably declare war on you

Black Cloud
A friendly tribe will earn the Black Cloud superpower. Black Cloud disables entertainment centres and turrets, which are a major problem to military civilizations. An effective strategy is to capture an unhappy military city and keep it as a military city. Then use the Black Cloud to disable turrets in other cities when capturing them.

Tips & Tricks



 * A useful exploit during Civilization stage is that you can instantly switch the attributes of your vehicles whenever you want. For example, during the start of the game, you can focus your vehicles entirely on speed, and use that to rapidly seize a lot of spice geysers and tribal villages. If you are attacking a defenseless city, you can orient your vehicles entirely toward religious/military power to rapidly take the city - after all, they won't be moving, and they aren't being attacked (unless they are religious, because citizens throw rubble and flaming trash at religious vehicles taking over their city). In the event that enemy vehicles show up, you can just switch them to a mixture of religious/military power and health, then switch them back once the threat is past. Taking advantage of this can give you a nice head start in the early game, and speed up city takeover. Another way is to make speedy vehicles and once they arrive for a takeover switch to Military/Religious power as the dominant stat and it will take over the city at a faster rate.


 * Finally, before advancing to Space Stage, make sure all your cities have an optimal building layout and all their Turrets. This way, you don't have to spend money later on building them, and since you start with 100k Sporebucks in the Space Stage no matter what, well, it speaks for itself. Adding Extras will also help, as after you have advanced, you can sell them for 25 Sporebucks each. This may not seem like much, but since each city can hold many of them, possibly 20-50, it really adds up.


 * Take your time when mapping your city. It may take a while, but it really is worth it in the long run. Remember that Factories are more productive when linked to Houses and the City Hall, but they lower happiness and cancel Entertainment buildings when linked. Entertainment buildings are more effective when linked to City Hall and Houses.


 * Keep in mind that if you are a military city, you will have to take over the planet by attacking the other cities. This will damage them and make it easier for your enemies to conquest your Homeworld in Space Stage, unless you rebuild them.


 * Owning one spice geyser at the beginning of the civilization stage game is about as good as owning multiple towards the end. Spice geysers start out with giving 1000/min. But, as the game goes on the efficiency will drop. This may be a reference to earth depleting its natural resources.


 * If you have an economic city on your continent, you might want to make it a protectorate of your own nation you can trade with it for extra money. To be sure it isn't captured, send at least 5 military vehicles (religious also works) to protect it from invaders (economic cities have no defence except turrets).


 * There are almost always four cities on your continent. You may notice that in the hard difficulty, one of them has a blue face.  You start out by attacking a nation on your continent that has a yellow face, usually a military city.


 * On the normal difficulty, there are two nations with blue faces, and you may notice the one with the yellow face usually has the largest military. To prevent it from being a threat in the future and capturing another city, try to capture that city first.


 * Even with the same military/religious power as a land vehicle, a sea vehicle can pack a bigger puch, and an aircraft packs an even bigger punch. For inexpensive power, invest in a powerful navy.


 * Try to ally at least one civilization and let them attack other cities as well. In the end when you two are the only ones left they might want to join you.


 * To be able to make boats as soon as possible, finish Creature Stage with a nest by the sea.


 * There are more tribes at the beginning of the civilization stage than can be civilized (nine plus you). Civilizing these tribes will yield free sporebucks or free units to you or the computer.


 * Certain tribes hurt your vehicles if you try to interact with them, these tribes will have a whole territory border to themselves, however, the tribes that dont hurt you vehicles will be in the border of a spice geyser or another city.


 * If you find defending your cities hard then capture a city but make it religous/military (the city needs to be the trait that you DIDNT start with) and create a vehicle there with 98% health and 1% speed and attack/power. Then you can spawn lots of them to protect your cities since the computer targets vehicles first. This will buy you some time to get your vehicles over to your cities.

Indestructible Village
When you aim a Gadget Bomb at a targeted tribal village, sometimes when the bomb hits it, it isn't destroyed, but remains intact.

Trivia

 * Civilization Stage can be compared to the near future on Earth, despite the fact that they do not invent space travel until the very end of this stage, while we have managed to perfect it much earlier. Although so far we have barely travelled past Earth's orbit, while your civilization eventually makes it across the entire galaxy. Also, we do not yet have the technology to produce holograms like those of civilization-stage creatures.
 * When you are converting a city, your religious vehicles appear to lose health gradually. If you look closely at your vehicles, you'll see that the citizens are throwing burning rocks and trash at them.
 * Cities in Civilization Stage could be based off medieval castles, due to the fact that the cities themselves are surrounded by walls.
 * The whole stage (including the name) could be a reference to the popular strategy game, Civilization.
 * Deja vu - if you zoom to other civilizations they look like the creature owning the civilization except a different colour and no clothes on the card.
 * When using the Global Merger super-power the base cost of the power is 60,000 sporebucks, it states that it "Buys" all the cities, this means each other city would cost 15,000 sporebucks instead of the normally accepted 14,000. If used upon 3 cities the cost is lowered by 12,000 sporebucks which is 3,000 less than if you actually bought the cities for 15,000. This raises the cost of the cities up to 16,000 sporebucks
 * If you roll the camera over a unclaimed civilization, a Sim City 4 song called "Gritty City" might play.