Aquatic phase, between cell and creature - Leave 2D like cell phase and progress with mouths (bite and charm), fins (dance and sprint) and scale (+health and sprint). Also have one unit proto-legs and arms, with out hands or feet to put fins/mouths. It would be an excellent transition from cell contact activation to attack selection in land phase.

Settlement Phase, between creature and civilization phase - simcity like, where the huts are placed as temple, entertainment, hunting/fishing/farming and housing. This would be a new experience but take them tribal to civilizatons. The goal would be to increase population and food would be money. Entertainment keeps people from leaving, housing increases population caps, harvisting determines how many people have survive. This should not be a long phase, and end with the spor critters harvesting spice.

Empire Phase, post Space Phase - Risk like, simply controling the fleet sizes and moving the fleets where they can be. Combate would be at strategic level, your X ships against there X ships.

My opinon:

Aqutic stage: i would like to have it, because it is a link in the hevolution from cell to land creature

Serrlement: sounds like a more complex tribal stage, wich is good because tribal is the worst part of the game becase of it few objectives

The settlement phase I was suggesting is would be like sims, you would not control the individual creatures, just place locations of huts. The hut would progress into more and more complicated buildings. The differences would be based on environmental factors, proximity of buildings to each other. The goal would be to get to a civilization. All you tribal villages become cities. Its more detail version what happens with factories, houses and entertainment in later phases, but not an RTS in any form.

You would control all the villages and would be no war, the current civilization would start when you select a city and start to take over. Instead of the cities evolving, they would declare independance, otherwise civilizations phase would be the same.

An optional aquatic and/or arial phase would be great as a progression in creature phase. It would be part of the creature phase though, since its same game play. Just adds a 3D element.

ascus wrote:The settlement phase I was suggesting is would be like sims, you would not control the individual creatures, just place locations of huts. The hut would progress into more and more complicated buildings. The differences would be based on environmental factors, proximity of buildings to each other. The goal would be to get to a civilization. All you tribal villages become cities. Its more detail version what happens with factories, houses and entertainment in later phases, but not an RTS in any form.

I think you mean more like populous... Without the whole conflict or godly powers aspect. Would really make more sense as a stage between tribal and civ stages though.

Much of the gripe about tribal stage is just because it is so freaking linear. Either you socialize with a tribe, or you kill them. In both cases the result is practically the same, you get their tools, and you move onto the next. Much of that could really be solved by adding some sort of tool creator, and letting us design tools based on parts aquired from other tribes. I believe this was originally planned, but was dropped so that the stage could be simplified, however what was lost was the fun and creativity aspect of it. It could easily be adapted as a sort of union between creature stafe and civ stage, where your goal is to either create better weapons than your opponent, or make art or musical items to impress the other tribe, or to make functional tools which can be traded with other tribes. They can even re-use the rock, paper, scissors concept used for civ vehicles since weapons can be both showy or used as tools to some degree. And in that way, however you ended creature stage would decide what parts you have more of.

By adding an aspect like that, the tribes you defeat, befriend, or convert would be less linear since you would need to figure out what sort of things they already had, and use that to determine what tools you should make to deal with them.

Actual Cell Phase. A phase that is really single celled organisms.