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.

City Planner
This is where you'll go for the most part to organise your cities, it's where you design your buildings, your vehicles and choose some aesthetics such as decorations and civilian outfits as well as your own national anthem. To access the city planner, simply click on a city.

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.

City Hall
The city hall is the first building you design in game. It has no purpose except for to act as the center of your city. Your version of the city hall replaces any rivals when you conquer their cities.

Houses
Houses are where your citizens live. They also increase the output of factories and entertainment buildings when placed near them.

Factories
Factories increase the amount of sporebucks per minute. Placing factories anywhere makes citizens unhappy, however placing them near an entertainment building amplifies this unhappiness.

Entertainment
Entertainment buildings make your citizens happy. Place them near homes or your city hall to make them happier. The happier your citzens, the more they celebrate and bring increased income.

Turrets
Turrets aren't designed in an editor, but come with a prechosen design. They make it harder for your rivals to conquer your city as they fire on anyone that attempts to attack and convert your city. They also don't count toward your fleet limit, leaving you free to purchase more vehicles.

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. Like creatures, vehicles are designed symmetrically. There's also an element of strategy as well as you'll need to balance health, power and speed. Whenever you increase a vehicles percentage in one aspect, you decrease it in another aspect. Therefore, you'll need to choose wisely with what you want your vehicle to do.

Land Vehicles
Land vehicles are generally the first vehicle you'll design. As you're the first civilization to emerge from the many tribes around your planet, you'll want to capture spice vents before anyone else. As a tip, design your vehicles with speed in mind, then once you've captured as many spice vents as you can, redesign with power and health in mind.

Sea Vehicles
Sea vehicles are designed from coastal cities. They are used to capture spice vents in the sea. They can also capture other coastal cities on other continents.

Air Vehicles
Air vehicles are unlocked from capturing four cities. From there, you have an advantage over other civilizations who are limited to land and sea 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. Use air vehicles to capture other cities quickly. As a tip, capture the cities belonging to nations without other cities first, this allows you to defeat them quickly as well as making it harder for any larger nations to defeat you.

Decorations
For aesthetic purposes, you can purchase some decoations for your city. They cost 25 Sporebucks each.

National Anthem
The national anthem is your background music during the civilization stage and can be heard from your colonies during the space stage. Like other creators, they can be uploaded and downloaded to the sporepedia. It has four elements to it.
 * Beat: Choose the rythm of your anthem
 * Anthem: Choose an instrument to play your anthem
 * Notes: Choose up to 16 notes and adjust their pitch and length
 * Ambience: Choose up to four sounds that can be heard anywhere on the planet.

Clothing Editor

 * See Spore/Clothing Editor

The clothing editor no longer increases stats for your citzens. Instead, it makes them look civilized and more advanced then their tribal cousins. There are new parts to design your citzens with as well.

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

War
Declaring war is done by clicking on a rival city and selecting 'capture city'. Your vehicles then head to that city and attack it's buildings before starting on the city hall. A bar appears that shows how close you are to conquering their city. When it's filled up, the city is yours. Keep in mind that other nations can declare war on you. As an alternative, you can 'convert' other cities to your religion. Keep in mind that it's exactly the same as capturing other cities.

Trading
Trading is the economic strategy. To establish a trade route, contact their civilization and ask to establish a trade route. Then wait and establish other trade routes in the meantime. Trade routes continue until they let you buy their city out. If you can, offer them as much as you can as a small amount of money may make them reject your offer and the trade route resets.

Other
You can also compliment and insult other nations to increase and decrease relationship.

Abilities
How you played in the last three stages gives you four abilities. They all pertain to a specific strategy.

Military
One word: attack. Behave aggresively and stop at nothing until you capture every city on the planet. Start by capturing the spice vents then build your fleet as fast as you can. Once you've captured the fourth city, build aricraft and use this to your advantage before anyone else can. The last city always surreneders to your control once you've captured every other city meaning you've only got five more cities to capture.

Religious
Buy your vehicles and convert the unhappiest cities first. Then, increase defense and entertainment to make sure the same doesn't happen to you. When converting happier cities, disable the turrets and entertainment buildings to make your job easier. Turrets fire on religious buildings and entertainment is a natural defense for your rivals. As with the other ways to play: rinse and repeat.

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.