Spore/Civilization Stage

Originally, the city phase was to follow the tribal phase, but it was merged into the civilization phase as "a simplified version of SimCity." The player's tribal camp has grown to a city, which must be cared for. Players can use a building editor to change the appearance of the buildings in their city. As in the tribal phase, the game will attempt to detect what style of content the player prefers, download similar content created by other players and add it to the buy menu. Players will also be able to make relations between their civilization and other civilizations on their home planet, whether peaceful or war-torn.

Once players reach this point they are allowed to zoom out further for the first time, and view the entire planet from space. Once the player zooms out past a certain point, the realistically detailed features of the planet become more stylized. For example, the cities of the planet change from a properly-scaled view with all individual buildings visible to a more stylized cartoon-like depiction for clarity. As in the tribal stage, players can meet other creatures of the rival species in other cities to attempt either diplomacy, for opening trade routes and eventually forming an alliance, or for the purpose of attacking them. At this point, a vehicle editor is opened, allowing the player to construct a large variety of land vehicles, aircraft, ships and submersibles.

The goal in this phase is to gain control of the entire planet, and it is left for the player to decide whether to conquer by warfare or diplomatic means. Once players have gained enough credits in this phase, they unlock the UFO and the UFO editor. Before they may proceed into the space phase, they must paint their planet purple with the UFO; the contextual purpose of this is currently speculative.

The main unit of currency is Spice.