More Awesome Than You!

I've run two races up to Ulimate ("hero") now, one on Normal and one on Hard, and I'm feeling like I've seen just about everything the game has to offer.  Even Space is feeling very repetitive.

Space seems to go like this for me:

Look for a nearby world with good color spice.
Plant colony, up it to T1 and start it producing.
Talk to neighbors, run a few missions to get them to Allied status, start trade routes.
Crank first colony up to T3.  When money runs short, run more missions while waiting for spice.
Found a second colony on another, decent color spice world.  Crank that up to T3.
Eliminate nearby Spodist empires.  Force empires can stay, they're not as cranky.
Upgrade any decent planets from the newly captured empire.

By this time, I'm pretty far up the completion guage.  Maybe 2-3 ranks from "Ultimate."  It's not much effort to finish, just plant a few more colonies, maybe buy a few from the neighbors just to get the badge points.

The various personality traits / bonuses seem to have about zero effect on play.  Except maybe the +50% health from Prime Specimen.  I don't bother with the special abilities like Raider Rally.

At this point, it's like the Sims - it requires some restrictive rules like the Devolution Challenge to make it interesting.

 - Gus

Return ticket can be incredibly useful when your empire is big or you are exploring far out. The spice one is very useful early on, not so much after you are set for money.

Play differently, or don't, I guess. But yeah, that's about it. I have one race that's playing completely pacifist and maintaining alliances with every other empire they meet. I have another that does whatever, whenever.

I kinda think that once you hit space and do all the major stuff, Spore becomes somewhat like The Sims -- no particular goals, you just play it how you want and see where it goes.

The real question is how to play differently?

Activities are basically do missions, plant colonies, terraform, crush enemy empires, explore, and maybe collect artifacts.  I've done all of that.  Well, except try to collect complete sets of artifacts, and that's pretty dull and chance-dependent.

I've done the peaceful thing, though Spodists will be a huge income drain if you don't kill them sooner or later.  They'll always demand tribute.

Being a complete xenophobic warmonger doesn't seem viable.  Unless maybe you have the uber-skills of Pescado.  Me, I need alien mercs and few upgrades to take on T2s and T3s, which means making some alliances.  Besides, killing everyone just isn't my style.  Even though I should have done that with the pure-Red carnivore race I just finished.

I've done the hard to do things, like reach the Core and find Earth.  I haven't nuked Earth, but that's not that interesting anyway.

 - Gus

I don't know -- explore the whole galaxy? See if you can reach the home planet of one of your other races? Wipe out the Grox and replace them as the bad-ass of the galaxy? Go on a search for the 'disney planets'? :)

You've neatly discovered the fundamental shortcomings of Splotch. Solution: Go back to TS2! There's always something new to make there!

There's already been a L&P from Wright that they're working on expansions, but I'm not sure what an expansion can do to fundamentally change how the game is played.

Having an entire galactic ARMADA at your disposal would be a nice touch.

If past experience is any guide, the first Spore expansion will add a new, incredibly tedious stage between Civ and Space.

 - Gus

That's definitely one of the things I'd like to see in an expansion -- the ability to build your own fleet, rather than relying solely on allies. Especially if you can create/chose different ships.  I'd love to have a fleet of big heavy cruisers with some smaller, faster protection/support ships circling around.  Or at least the ability to have different types of ships, like pure cargo and pure military.


Yea, something stupid like expanding the 'get your captains badge' into a whole stage, rather than a few quick missions. Make you go out and explore your entire solar system first before you can get the interstellar drive.

I'm hoping they add fish. As in, the ability to evolve as a water creature.

The little "Patching Files..." dialogue box obscured the latter sentence of your post. Seeing only "I'm hoping they add fish.", I immediately thought "So long, and thanks for all the fish.". Will have to enter space stage as a Vogon now, hunt down the Splotch-Earth, and destroy it.

How DO you get that exactly? I got it in my first game but ended up abandoning that one and am on my second space stage, and didn't get it this time. I have no idea how I got it the first time either...

Shaman space bonus. At least three previous stages in green.

Creatures capable of actual flight would be nice, too.

Will's not going to hang around for the expansions.  He maybe took a short vacation and then working on his next game by now, which we won't know what it is for another four plus years from now.  My money is on that it will be something related to robots.

If you have enough jump skill and the good enough wings, you've got creatures that can fly for miles without touching ground. I'm satisfied with that.

Now I get Lil'Brudder's joke in the god thread.

While reading through this thread, I had to think at an interview I once read about spore. They basicly said that spore is currently at 1% of what they wanted to do. (Anyone want to guess how many EP's there will be coming?) I think they mentioned something about planning a complete underwater world. (Although, I'm wondering how that wil work for space...). However, I lost my link to the article...

They're not mutually exclusive. Return ticket is either 3 Green to start, or you can switch by doing a quest in-game. Spice Savant is permanent and can only be had by finishing Civ stage as blue.

Of course, the BEST perk is Zealot, available for 2 red, 2 green, or you can switch. The OPTIMAL path for ULTIMATE POWER is probably BRGB or RRGB, but then your starting archetype is a bit lame, at Bard or Knight. Why is this the best path? Well, Simple:
R: Power Monger, +50% ship energy or B: Generalist, discount to stuff you purchase at homeworld.
R: PRIME SPECIMEN, +50% HP. Also, you get to kill stuff in creature.
G: Gracious Greeter, +10 to all rel
B: Spice Savant, the only perk that apparently functions. Anti-Pirates and anti-Biodisasters appear to be dud perks that do nothing.

RRGB gets you Knight, which does not appear to be available anywhere else in the game, BRGB gets you Bard, which is only so-so. You can, however, convert to Spode and get the Zealot power, which is awesome.

That seems doable, though there's a possibility the B (Economic) cities will all be wiped out before you can take one and convert, particularly if you start with the weakest archetype, Religious.

 - Gus

Zealot is good if you are going to kill, kill, and kill some more. Prolly the best is to keep close to home as a RRGB, conquering or allying as it pleases you until you're at max level and ready to take on the Grox. Then become a Spodist to get Zealot.

I've done Knight and I don't care for it. Mini-me conks out so early as to be nearly useless and takes forever to recharge.

Even with the AOE repair packs?  I find them very handy for quickly recharging allies and citys under attack, and usually carry a bunch of them (I found an ally selling them really cheap. :) ).

Diplomat is actually pretty strong.  It's fairly easy to take on T2's and T3's if the turrets and defending ships are all stunned.  And unlike the Zealot power, there's no relationship hit.

 - Gus

Winning economically when you yourself are not economic to start is really a pain in the nutsack, yes. To really succeed at this, you need to save immediately when you start the Civ stage, build a 100% speed vehicle and then build as many as you can. Claim as many spice geysers as you can, quite likely nearly all of them because you are so FAST, and raid tribal huts. Sometimes a tribal hut will give you a vehicle, possibly an economic vehicle. If you don't receive an economic vehicle, you'll have to reload and try again, the results are random. If you can pull up two or three economic vehicles, you can initiate economics without an economic city.

To then win economically, find an underdog civilization, probably military, and ally with them: Give them gifts until they go neutral, then provide air support with your military for their attacking forces. You will quickly gain a nice rel boost for "Fought our enemy" and become allies. When they conquer the city, start a trade route and buy it from them to gain +Economic Win rating. This will let you secure an economic win, since Economic Win is depends entirely on how many cities you conquer economically, not how much stuff you kill. As long as you make the ally do the dirty work of blasting cities into rubble for you so you can buy them afterwards, you will get the blue win. Be careful not to proceed too fast! Cities you "conquer" because your allies joined you at the end are conquered in the style of your original start and will detract from Economic Winnage.

You can create really Godlike colonies as a Zealot, especially early on: Use the Monolith tool to uplift a terraformed T3 planet. It will sprout up to 5-10 cities. Then Trade and Ally with them to gain Trader and Diplomat badges, then immediately eat them with your superpower. Free colony, better than anything you could have made. The Trader superpower is an insuperior version of this because you must still pay $10M to take over the colony, making it non-viable early on, but you can do so without cheesing off everyone within 10pc. On the other hand, you could just kill them. That's what Holy War Against All is all about.

All archetype superpowers recharge instantly when you reload your game. Mini-Me is probably useful as an ally that no one cares if he dies. Still, allies are...not so useful.

Static Cling is pretty powerful for that, yes. It may seem undiplomatic to use this power to INVADE them, but hey, phasers are universal communicators! However, there *IS* a relationship penalty for BOMBING people, whereas the Zealot power, while carrying up to -200 "Broke Galactic Code", incurs no penalty for the actual capture itself. You are not penalized for harming their planets, bombing their cities, destroying their ships, or otherwise being mean to them.

Incidentally, the Grox *LIKE* it when you break the galactic code. If you use this power against them, will they like you more for it, even as you steal their planets? This is my plan: To get the Grox buttered up by getting them to be non-hostile-on-sight, then just stealing all their bases while making them love me for it. All your base are belong to us!

Made it to the core.  Made it all the way back home.  Surprised someone didn't turn my homeworld into an asteroid field while I was gone.

Uplifting new empires can pass some time.  It's amusing to come back and watch the tribes dive for cover, or doodle next to cities when they finally become civs.  Best of all, whatever nasty things you do to them before they reach the space stage, they don't attribute to you.  So, let loose the epic creatures of doom and watch the stompage.

I read somewhere that Mini-Me's recharge time is the same as its existence time. I just tested it on easy, and, it is. So it should be possible to keep a Mini-Me active indefinitely, just annoying.

I don't know if that's necessarily true for every difficulty level, though.

I believe it was two minutes, and I don't think the recharge varies by difficulty. However, if it manages to get itself blown up, you will be without it until it recharges. Plus, all powers are recharged when the game is loaded.

Truth is, though, like other allies, the mini-me is mostly useless.

Yeah, I just tried for this and screwed myself.

I managed Red -> Red -> Green, though going from Red to Green is not particularly easy in Tribal.  The suggestion you had earlier of killing a tribe member or two and then bribing doesn't work; you take a bigger hit from killing tribe members than you gain from the bribe.  I tried letting them decay naturally from Neutral to Unhappy and then bribing, but didn't seem to be making much progress.  Still, I managed it by converting all 5 tribes.

Then I started on a map with just one economic city.  I grabbed most of the spice geysers on my continent, but by the time I was ready to launch an assault, one of the military cities had taken it.  So there was nothing left but military and religious cities.

Then I did the dumb thing.  I saved the game.  Little did I know the consequences, but I didn't want to sit through Tribal again.

There's no option to restart, so I disbanded everything and sold all my buildings.  Soon enough I was wiped out.  I've never lost a Civ stage, and I expected it would restart me from the map start.

Uh, no.  It restarted from the last save game.  Which was already too late.  Crap.  I don't really want to go through all that again.

 - Gus

Sure it is.

It will be necessary to convert all 5 tribes peacefully in order to achieve a green finish starting from red. Still, it is not exactly hard to do this, as it is rather formulaic.

You can still achieve an economic finish without the benefit of any economic cities to capture through acquiring an economic vehicle or two from a goody hut. The yield of a goody hut is random and determined at pillage, so figure it out. You can receive randomly either money or a vehicle. The vehicle, specifically an economic vehicle, is what you want.

/me P&L.
Why did you save AGAIN after already saving when you first started? You should save BEFORE leaving Tribal, and again immediately after examining the map to make sure there are tribal huts to pillage on your continent.

If you haven't deleted your game in a fit of pique, RRGG is not so bad either. The Green-Civ perk is useless, but +50% spice production isn't all that awesome because production tends to be quickly limited by planetary capacity anyway. It's the BEST of the 3, but not good enough to REALLY fuss over. Also, RRGG immediately gives you the Zealot archetype, which is the best super-power to start with, anyway. All is not lost. Arguably the benefits of having Zealot to start are better than having Spice Savant to start. RRGB/BRGB is merely an exercise in ultimate endpoint power ignoring the path in getting there. An RRGB Zealot is better than an RRGG Zealot, but an RRGG Zealot will get there faster. You decide whether to keep going or not. RRGB gets you the kind of lame Knight archetype, BRGB gets you Bard (better, but not AWESOME). You will have to convert by finding Spodists, allying, and converting. The quest to convert to Zealot is pretty easy, though: Colonize 15 planets, which is what I got. Not sure if it is really 25 and it retroactively counts previousy efforts, or if it's really just 15, but either way, it doesn't matter: To do this the "cheap" way without the effort of actually having to max out 15 planets (45 colony pods, 15 uber turrets/spice storages/bioprotect/biostab, and a bajillion buildings), simply get 15 colony packs and drop one on a planet, bomb your own colony to death, and recolonize again 15 times. Or some combination of real-colonization and fake-colonization. Note that you must colonize, it does not count if you invade or buy.

For the obvious reason: I forgot to save at either of the points you mentioned.  But yeah, saving was just dumb all the way around.  I wish I could blame fatigue (it was 2 AM), but the reality was it was stupidity.

I'm not really doing this for the benes, since I find Space pretty easy on Hard these days, no matter what my abilities are.  I'm doing it mainly to have a new goal.

 - Gus

See, I find it ridiculously easy. One of the first rival civs is almost always an economic. I usually end up religious. So just use your four vehicles (because you did grab all those spice geysers quickly and have the money) to convert/bombard the economic city. I usually lose one vehicle and nearly lose a second. No big deal, as I'm not going to be keeping them. Choose to keep the 2nd city economic and launch all trades from that city. Gift low-neutral cities into accepting trade agreements, or use Diplo Dervish. By the time you get the super-super conversion power, you should be able to use it to snag the remaining cities and still keep just barely blue.

Again, easy. Have everyone gathering and spawn tribe members the moment you can so that when they are adults they can gather. The second a mean rivals pop up, send the chief only to give a gift while everyone else is still gathering. Gift those suckers the second they start to decay. If you play it right, you'll have enough from gathering that you don't really need to do it after your first two alliances. Check progress right before your final alliance and if you seem too close to the line, gift someone. 

I just tried it again, and found it impossible.

Sure, it wasn't difficult to capture the only economic city.  As you say, 4 religious land vehicles make short work of this.

But that's as far as it gets, because by the time I'm in any position to gift anyone, they're all attacking me and they all hate me.  -90 or so relationship because I'm "too big" and "a threat."  There are no "low neutral" cities to bribe into accepting a trade route.

Since I'm trying Red / Red / Green up until this point, "Diplo Dervish" isn't available.

Maybe you're playing on Normal...?

 - Gus

Hrm. I'm not sure if I played to econ on a hard run. One of my hard runs was straight red (the one I'm in now...I am killing near everyone and lobbing mega bombs while my 40ish colonies are well-defended with uber turrets) and the other I know was blue-green-green-green. I'm not sure if I have another on hard. Oh well. That's an excuse to start another save game. I only have 17 so far.

I do Easy or Hard. I don't see a point to Normal.

Third time was the charm.  But I really didn't do much differently, it was largely a matter of luck.

The main problem is that the maximum bonus for bribes is +120, and it's not difficult for other players to dislike you enough that this won't be enough.  For whatever reason, I managed to get a trade route with one of the other cities on my continent.  Meanwhile I continue to bribe everyone, which was enough to keep them from declaring war, but not much more.

I certainly could have beaten the lot of them if I'd gone for an all-out religious offensive, but you just can't offend anyone if you're going for an economic victory.

So now I can say I've done Red / Red / Green / Blue on Hard, but I'm not going to bother again.  From now on, my last two colors will always be the same, it's less painful.

 - Gus

How far you are into the color should affect things. Switching from a green tribal from a red creature is much easier if you were just barely red in creature. Most of my runs are Red-Red-Green-Blue. A few straight greens, two straight reds, and one straight blue. Two starting with blue that I don't remember the rest of. I have a lot of saved games, have I mentioned? And I'm still getting six available planets for new ones.

There will usually be one side that is military or religious that you haven't ever gotten into an actual fight with. Gift THAT guy. Once he becomes yellow, send in your military air fleet you captured from your first continent and proceed to mow down anything attacking him, then tell him to attack another city. Provide the air support needed to make sure he successfully attacks and takes that city. Tell him to attack another city, repeat. Start buying his old cities while he advances. Continue until your buddy has killed all the other enemies with your support (don't actually take the cities, let him do it, then buy the cities), and keep buying them in his wake. You should be able to secure an economic win easily that way.

The implication seems to be that you should take at least 3 cities on your home continent with religion before starting the econ push.  One of which is the econ city, of course.

Isn't taking 3 cities enough to prevent you from getting a Blue win?

 - Gus

Answer: No, taking cities by your "native" method has no effect on your "meter" because your native method is the centered method. Taking more cities after that by blue means will move you towards blue anyway, you only need to flip 2 or 3 actual cities by blueness in order to become blue. But be warned, cities flipped when your ally joins you at the end are considered to be flipped by your native means! So buy out your ally entirely when he reaches the final enemy city (which will surrender to you without an alignment shift, in my tests, plus a single city won't be enough after what you've done).

Also, it is not strictly necessary to take out the 3 cities on your home continent by religious means, either: If you acquired an economic vehicle by means of goody hut, you can economically conquer neighbors even before leaving your own continent. At least one of your neighbors is likely to become implacably angry as a result, although it's possible that the neighbor you conquer economically eats all the other cities for you, so you can buy him off your continent entirely and/or use him as your designated ally.

Crap.  Now I'm gonig to have to try this again, just to see how that works.  I thought I'd be screwing myself if I took out those obnoxious neighbors through religion.

 - Gus

I tried this going from maxed red military (on Hard) and screwed up the first time. Luckily I saved at the beginning. Rival military nation took all but the econ nation I was in the process of grabbing and was then near-invincible. Next time I'll try taking them first then taking an econ. From earlier experience, 3 or so taken in your native means doesn't prevent you from moving one type.

You HAVE to finish your continent before it turns into a "sole survivor" situation on the others. There has to be at least two factions you can take sides with. One of which will probably hate you because he has been sending one or two ships to attack you and getting shot to bits, the other of which will have been too busy fighting that aggressive faction. Both will most likely be military or religious factions (the other faction must NOT be an economic faction, and in all likelyhood will not be, as economic civs are basically screwed when run by the AI). Pick a side, get him to up to yellow, then blast the other side to get a +70 "You fought our enemy" and probably move up into blue or green. Help that side conquer your enemies and buy out their cities as they do it, which will push them into a migratory rampage.

I agree with the inestimable and humble El Presidente. Despite having a lot of effort invested in Spore, I do not think it has the staying power of TS2. I would be surprised if it lasts long enough for EP2.