Civilization Phase

The Civilization Phase, also known as the City Phase or Civ Phase, is huge and also the stage where at least two brand new editors are brought into play. The city phase focuses much more on managing the city as a whole, rather than the individual creatures or even groups of creatures. Micromangement is almost non-existent here, past assigning jobs to certain creatures. Can you believe you came all the way from a single cell?

Your goal in the city phase is to branch out and earn complete control over the planet. You are now competing against other cities of your same species, controlled by your computer. The way in which you take over the planet is again, similarly to all other stages, up to you. The two paths are warfare or unite with neighbouring cities. However, be warned...they may not be as kind as you.

The currency is now Spice, and the player can for the first time pull the camera back and view the entire planet. As you do so the cities will pop to the form of a "button", giving each a much simpler menu so that you can easily switch between micro and macro management. Within the city you can zoom in and see your creatures going about their daily business. Whilst it may be hard to imagine, they are currently at the same stage as we humans are on Earth. They have emotions, jobs, families and everything we do; a fully functioning civilization. And, true to life, constantly competing with neighbouring civilizations.

The building editor is the first of the two new editors introduced in this phase of the game. Buildings are created similar to Lego structures. Options are available for intersection, stacking, creating holes etc.. For more information on the building editor see its own page here. Once the building is created you can set it's type (there are a range of different functional buildings) and place it within your city. Your creatures will respond to your new building either by cheering or showing some other response, giving you an idea of what they think of your choice. Again, Spore's engine stands out here. The game will dynamically generate a list of buildings created by other players in the same style as your own which will populate the "buy" menu allowing you to purchase buildings quickly and place them in the city. Other structures are also available, such as walls to surround the city and defensive turrets.

The second editor is the vehicle editor. You can create land vehicles, aircraft, ships and submersibles. It is speculated that vehicles can have other purposes besides used in warfare, though no evidence of this has been shown. Often in Spore videos vehicles can be seen roaming the planet, indicating they may be able to be used for exploring or gathering resources. Vehicles can be fully customized using an editor similar to the building editor, including tyres, weapons, chassis, cabins etc.. The vehicle editor has been rarely seen, and currently no official video preview of the city phase has been released.

Once you've gained enough Spice and seized control of the entire planet, you will be given access to the UFO editor to create your first UFO. See more information about both the vehicle and UFO editors here. Once created, you must paint your planet purple with the UFO, though there's no clear indication why.

For the Civilization Phase it is difficult to assign screenshots to particular elements of gameplay. To see the phase in more detail head over to Planet Spore's City Phase gallery, and take a look at the images until the city phase video preview becomes available.

Done? Now prepare yourself for the final stage of the game. You've just been handed the power of God as you enter the Space Stage...

(Shamelessly stolen from: Planet Spore)