Spore/Civilization Stage

The fourth stage is the civilization stage in which you set out to conquer the planet. Having already conquered over five tribes, you set out to conquer the entire world. You'll design your own vehicles and buildings and eventually set out for the stars.

Building Editors

 * See Spore/Building Editor

There are four main types of buildings to design in your game. First you design a city hall then you design houses, factories and entertainment buildings.

Vehicle Editors

 * See Spore/Vehicle Editor

There are three main types of vehicles in the civilization stage. Land vehicles can be designed from the word go, sea vehicles can be designed by a city near the sea and air vehicles can be designed once you own four cities.

Air Vehicles
Although faster than other vehicles, air vehicles cannot take over spice wells, so make sure you keep a few land/sea vehicles around to recapture the wells

Placing Buildings
You increase the max. population, income and happiness of the city by placing buildings. Each city has a limited number of building "slots"; some of these slots are linked together.
 * House buildings increase max population
 * Entertainment buildings increase happiness
 * Factories increase production and decrease happiness

When you place buildings on links, you get a bonus effect based on the type of buildings linked:
 * Entertainment and House gives +1 happiness (show up as green)
 * Factory and House gives a production bonus (show up as blue)
 * Factory and Entertainment gives -1 happiness (show up as red)
 * Other combinations have no effect (show up as white)

Tips for layout:
 * Place factories on slots with many links (up to 4) and surround them with houses to get good production boosts without decreasing happiness too much.
 * Avoid placing factories or entertainment together (or worse, factories AND entertainment together), buffer them with houses if possible

The city hall behaves like a house with respect to links.

Turrets
You can purchase turrets and place them on your city walls to help defend your cities. There will fire upon attacking civilizations and don't count toward your fleet limit allowing you to free up spaces to attack other cities.

Spice and Sporebucks
At this stage, there is no difference between spice and sporebucks. Your primary source of cash are spice wells, that you must take over with your vehicles (Military, Economic or Religious all work).

Well capture is not instantaneous, even if the well is inoccupied. You can try to capture enemy wells, but the enemy will have some time to react.

You can boost your income by building factories in your cities, and linking them with houses.

You need sporebucks to build vehicles and place new buildings.

Other Civilizations
Although your the first to evolve beyond tribe stage, other tribes will emerge and you'll have to interact with them sooner or later. There are lots of things you can do with civilizations

Economic
Probably the easiest route for this phase.


 * 1) Pick a target civilisation, at least friendly (blue smile) if possible. If they're not friendly, give them gifts until they are. (but start with the friendly ones, since you will have a lot more cash to spend after a few victories)
 * 2) Build economic vehicles, and send them over to a city from another friendly civilisation. They will accept to set up a trade route, and you will start earning some cash.
 * 3) After some time, their city will become available to purchase. If it is the last city for this civilisation, place vehicles near their spice wells.
 * 4) Buy the city. If it was the last for this civ, their spice wells are now unoccupied, so capture them before one of the other civs do
 * 5) Pack the city with buildings to earn even more cash, build even more economic vehicles
 * 6) Rinse and repeat.

The best thing with this approach is that trading improves your diplomatic relationship with your target, even though you're taking him over. You don't need to plan for retaliation, just make sure to keep the hostile civs calm with a handful of gifts funded by the enormous cash flow you'll be earning.