Latest posts for the topic "Civilization Stage Tips"

Civilization Stage Tips

SporeMasterNumerator — GMT

Post your civilization stage tips here.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

OneBlackbird — GMT

1. Always conquer economic cities last. They can't take your cities unless you agree to trade. (If you're pursuing the red (military) path)

2. When you start the civ phase, buy as many vehicles as possible and send one out to each spice geyser on your continent. If you capture all the geysers before other cities form, you can easily cut off your enemies and make money quickly.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Lomerell — GMT

After capturing the first spice geysers quickly (see above), the next objective is to arrange your city into a profitable fashion.

I usually prioritize in this order:

1. Three vehicles -> Capture three spice nodes.
2. Build a factory. (Place it on the marker with the most intersections. This is usually four or five depending which city design you've been given.)
3. Build houses one at a time (as soon as you can afford them) and connect each to your first factory. You will know you have done this correctly because the line between each house and factory (or your town hall) will be blue and have a [+Spice] symbol. Be forewarned that these connections decrease happiness, but you can make it up later, usually with just one Entertainment building.
4. Once the first factory has the maximum number of bordering houses, you can go back to vehicle building.

Beginning in this fashion, I have never had to worry about money, even on Hard. This strategy helped me to get the Achievements for Steel Civilization and Fear of Flying both at the same time.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

xRWiggum — GMT

when you say connect houses to your factories, do you mean put connectors on your house when building it so that when you place it beside a factory it connects?

what do you gain by connecting your buildings?

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Bones1138 — GMT

[quote=xrwiggum]when you say connect houses to your factories, do you mean put connectors on your house when building it so that when you place it beside a factory it connects?

what do you gain by connecting your buildings?[/quote]

He means connecting your buildings with the red/green/white line that appears when you place buildings next to eachother in your city.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

xRWiggum — GMT

ah, I see, thanks

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Rauros — GMT

If you're wondering what stats to make your vehicles (Do I make it fast? Lots of health? Etc..) just keep in mind that each time you go into the vehicle creator, it will retrofit all your vehicles of that type (Military, Religious, Economic) instantly without changing the vehicles location.

Not that Civ is hard to begin with, but in case you're having trouble and need an edge.

Disclaimer: Although I did come up with this myself, I have seen it echoed throughout the forums, so I'm NOT claiming this is MY idea.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

ne0nus — GMT

On the contrary to the 1st post.If you capture an economic city 1st you will be able to proceed through the game peacefully,but don't capture economic city.One will do.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Heinel — GMT

[quote=Rauros]If you're wondering what stats to make your vehicles (Do I make it fast? Lots of health? Etc..) just keep in mind that each time you go into the vehicle creator, it will retrofit all your vehicles of that type (Military, Religious, Economic) instantly without changing the vehicles location.

Not that Civ is hard to begin with, but in case you're having trouble and need an edge.

Disclaimer: Although I did come up with this myself, I have seen it echoed throughout the forums, so I'm NOT claiming this is MY idea.[/quote]

Depends on the distance they have to travel. Though land vehicles I tend to make them focused on power as they are cheap and I usually use them on cities that are close by. Ships I favor speed as the distance they travel is often long. Air vehicles need a bit more health as they can already move quick, are not limited by terrain and are expensive to replace.

Edit: Oops, read the post wrong. Thought you were asking a question >.>

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Podespawn — GMT

Since economic vehicles can't fight, health points are wasted on them (it just delays the inevitable). Spend all your vehicle points on speed and econ power. Start with maximized speed to claim geysers and establish trade routes, then upgrade to get a better balance between speed and trade capacity.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

PariahDog — GMT

Take over every geyser on your continent right away. If you have to spend money on more vehicles before buildings, it's ok. Your dirt-poor neighbors will be easier to conquer.

If you want to change strategies (religious to eco, etc) then take over a city of the strategy you want first.

If you can, take over a seaport first, if it doesn't clash with the previous tip. Then you can take over ocean geysers.

If you're currently at war and have military or religious ships, station a couple at each water geyser, especially the ones near the enemy. If you're at war with someone on your continent, do the same for the land geysers.

Land vehicles aren't as vulnerable as aircraft because only a couple turrets at a time can target them, whereas aircraft are shot at by all turrets.

Make friends with the largest, most aggressive civ. You won't have to conquer them, saving you time, if you make them your ally.

If you have a huge navy or army, don't tell them to capture a city from halfway across the map. The ones in the front will stop as soon as they're in range, blocking the ones behind. Instead, just move them close to the city, then tell them to capture. This is especially useful if you're not currently at war with that particular city, since they won't attack you while your army/navy gathers.

Bribing someone to help you capture a city may backfire, since they might take it before you can, and then it'll be their city, not yours.

Setting your stance to Aggressive allows any vehicle type to capture a geyser. Economic vehicles take it over instantly, bribing the workers. Military vehicles first destroy the well, then you have to reclaim the geyser. Religious vehicles convert the geyser. Both of the second options are slower. If you're at war, especially a long war with a large civ, take their geysers and defend them - you'll bankrupt them.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

magnemoe — GMT

It helps to have a port city it enable you to rush with boats and get all or most of the ocean geysers. If you manage to grab most of them and the close on land you will leave all your neighbours poor, so fast cars and boats should be your only priority the first minutes.
After the rush change the units to something more balanced.

To get a port city you have the final nest in creature stage close to the sea, if you have a nest very far from the sea, try to look around and see if you find another nest with your species so you can change nest.

If you hold most of the geysers I would recommend waiting with city buildings until you are rich, use money on more boats and cars and bribes. Go out and take over towns. It’s useful to have multiple types of cities so keep the first one of another type.

Civilization Stage Tips

Aznparker — GMT

Ship also seem to have a further range than turrets. You can also use combined traits. It was rather by accident I found out that using religious vehicles to stun turrets while my military ones destroy them saves money.

Watch out for epic monsters, they will hurt you and are stronger than their predecessors. They will attack turrets, but you can also use them to guard a valley preventing the enemy from attacking you (lure them with a few vehicles).

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Karatta — GMT

It is possible to "convert" epic creatures in this stage, using religious vehicles. (it may take 10 or 12 vehicles to do this with few losses) The epic creature will slowly lose health over time, but it will follow all of the tanks involved in capturing it, and will attack what you attack. However, eventually it will die, even if not from enemy combat. (note that using the herbivore area heal skill will drop the Epic to 1 health, and it will die shortly afterwards)

Also, religous vehicles do area damage to enemy military tanks and ships, making it easy to defeat a large military enemy force.

And remember, no matter what specialty you start this stage with, the final "skill" (F4 button) for your military/economic/reglious type, is a complete game ender. If you dont feel like taking over several more cities, as long as you have enough cities to use the skill, just wait till you have the cash, push the button, and its game over man! Game over!

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

chaosbote — GMT

an other good idea which actually begins at the creature stage, is to make your last nest by the water, then when you are in the civ stage, you are already have the option of making boats, thus easier to claim everything

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

eleazzaar — GMT

1) you can "capture" the villages scattered all over the place at the beginning of civ. You get sporebucks or sometimes a free vehicle. Though sometimes they will attack your vehicle

2) near the end of civ, spend your money on improving all of your cities to the max. The money won't transfer to space stage, but anything you build will.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

mesher69 — GMT

I'm having absolute misery at the civilization stage. I've got a military society and a religious society both at the civilian stage and have basically ended up with 2 cities for each and another faction controls every other city on the map. Is there any way to force it to return to beginning to give me another chance to do better? Even getting beaten just returns me to last save ... which leaves me horribly outgunned and hopeless as far as I can see. If I even try to take over another city, the other faction just sends tons of airships to blast me to kingdom come. At the moment they are my "friendly" status but is there any hope for my two civilizations???

Civilization Stage Tips

PariahDog — GMT

I'd recommend quietly sitting back and stocking up on cash, Mesher69. Then, make an ally (green smiley) with the largest civ on the map. If you get the rest of them at least to blue, they won't attack you first.

Once you get enough cash, convert some of your buildings into extra houses. This will let you build extra vehicles.

Take EVERY SINGLE ONE of your vehicles and rush the smallest, weakest civ on the map. If they have more than one city, pay your ally to attack one while you attack another.

You don't have to conquer everyone, because your ally will eventually merge when there's no one left. Also, if your ally is mil/rel, they'll also be taking over cities on their own; instead of paying them to help you, you could watch for an opportunity to help them (which is cheaper.)

Even if you don't take any more cities, and your ally gets them all, you'll win in the end when that ally joins you.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

mesher69 — GMT

Well at the point I'm at, there's only 1 other civilation left and he has every other city besides mine... and we're at yellow "friend level" I've tried bribing and so on.. but nothing seems to budge the points for friendship any higher.

Civilization Stage Tips

PariahDog — GMT

Well, if you've attacked him at all, you may end up with a pretty bad negative relationship penalty. Gifts will only get you so far, then the points cap.

And without an economic city, you can't trade with him... I dunno, I've never finished the game with one civ that wasn't ally before.

If you have to take him militarily, start out the same way (get rich while you wait for the time to strike.) Then, take over his spice geysers. Not only will this cripple his economy, but he'll divert vehicles to take out the ones going after his geysers. I'd use religious vehicles for this, perhaps edited for high speed and religious power. Next, find the weakest city on the map, with the lowest defense rating, and rush it with everything you have. Use your religious vehicles to subdue his defenses and your military ones on the city hall itself. Save a few airplanes for skirmishing his defending vehicles.

Dunno if that'll work foolproof, and it might take some time, but if you can't make him your ally you'll have to conquer him.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

DarthDoggie — GMT

The ideal stat distribution for all economic vehicles is 0% health, 44% economic power, 56% speed. Technically it should be 43.75% economic power and 56.25% speed but 44/56 is the best you can do to my knowledge. This applies to all economic vehicles. Also in terms of profit, air > sea > land. The justification for this requires calculus and I really don't feel like typing that out.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

AEH450 — GMT

If i'm a military civilization I like to wait until I have captured enough cities and then nuke everyone else with the ICBM's. It really makes things easier.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Karatta — GMT

[quote=mesher69]Well at the point I'm at, there's only 1 other civilation left and he has every other city besides mine... and we're at yellow "friend level" I've tried bribing and so on.. but nothing seems to budge the points for friendship any higher.[/quote]

Remember, if you havent started the game AT the civilization stage, you can use "abilities" (the F1 through F4 buttons) to quickly end most fights, improve your standing with another civ, take over a single city, or end the whole game.

Depending on which route you went, try using those abilities listed there to end any fight that might come your way, or prevent one all togeather.

Dont use one to cap a city yet until you do the following : Max out all cities you own with factories and houses, and leave at least 1 point in city happiness. Remember that refunding buildings only gives you half of the purchase cost. Also, the city hall counts as a house, so try to center your entertainment/factory buildings adjacent to it. This will allow you to gain cash very quickly, even if you dont own very many spice resources. But this will leave you vulnerable to religous attack, so watch out.

If you do start the fight, be sure that you have the enemy "where you want them" before you use an ability like any bombs (carnivore/predator//omnivore/adaptable) on the enemy when they approach a target en mass. Use herbivore/social abilities to prevent a fight, or heal a badly damaged group.

The computer AI is usually single minded about where they will attack initially, sending all troops to one location. But it lacks the ability to use special skills like your F1 through F4 button, so use those to your advantage.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

manictiger — GMT

Don't use nukes or big bombs to wipe a city out, unless you don't care about having you're building slots hindered. Even if your home planet is utterly useless for producing spice in the space stage (or maybe it's just a corruption in my game only), you can still sell the buildings. If you just want to have fun, then go ahead and nuke it all to kingdom come, lol.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

mbchudno — GMT

Tips for non-economical carnivores. Only played on easy mode, but i am sure it will apply on any setting with minor tweaks.

Pause when civ stage starts.
Design cars with 100% speed.
Build 3 extra cars (max which you can make with money you given at the start, at least on easy).
Capture all geysers.

by then, you get some free cash available again. Redesign cars to be 70%offence/30%speed. Note that no health needed. As carnivore, you get ability to make your vehicles invulnerable. It only costs 2k and by the time you need it for the next fight its almost always recharged.

Build up cities to produce max $$$ with 0-2 happy face.

Move to capture cities, swarm them with 6+ cars while dropping invulnerability drone right after start of the fight. By the time it kicks in, one of your vehicles will be down to half health but you should not loose any. Add more cars as possible to speed up process.

Move to port city as soon as possible to get access to ships. Build couple with 100% speed. Before taking out any port city, make sure you station ships around their sea geysers to catch them before others do.

Once you have 4 cities, recycle cars and build planes. Same story as before, invulnerability is almost like cheating, specially for religious nation because they convert so fast with no collateral damage. Keep couple ships until you take all the geysers over and all port cities then recycle them.

Swarm of 70% power/30% speed planes will convert/take-over city quick enough for invulnerability to last. Quickly move from one city to another disregarding on ownership only making sure you are working towards having 40k in credits. Once you take 6rth city, initiate 4th ability to end the game.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Podespawn — GMT

Max out your placement of buildings and turrets in all your cities before going on to space, as it costs money to do so in either stage, but your civ stagee money doesn't carry over.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

xyish — GMT

It's worth taking your first steps slowly. Pause, make commands, unpause, and pause again to issue new commands.
Start of with +3 new land vehicles (focus on speed now, you can always select another design and all your vehicles will swap). Note all tribe and spice locations on continent. Split all 4 land vehicles up and let them cap (unpause). Some tribes may give you some bonus sporebucks or even a vehicle (which only speeds things up during your initial expansion phase, and can be sold off later if it does not fit into your main strategy). Capture all spice geysers on your continent and all the tribes that you can loot from. If your city is a habour city, quickly grab a speedy sea vehicle and start grabbing up the offshore spice. Maximize income from cities whenever possible, but be a good judge. If a city looks easy to attack/convert go ahead and spend the money on the vehicles. You will soon be earning income from their city too. Once you have total dominance over your starting continent (~4 cities), you have already won 80% of the game. Sell all your land vehicles and invest heavily on sea/air. Continue strategy on neighbouring continent(s) and once you have 6 nations, you can use the super weapon to capture all cities (sell your remaining vehicles, or even a couple of buildings to if you have to), unless you are going for the 8+ similar cities achievements, then capture each one manually. With your current financial strength that should not be a problem, especially for military/religious. Basically after you get your first few cities and have them all set up right (have at least 1 happiness for each and maximize income. Happy cities may start celebrating 24/7 giving you double the income), you can do whatever you want.

For economic: Trade, trade, trade.
If trade is refused, or if relationships turn sour, spend your entire fortune on bribes. You'll be glad you did so. You can win even if you do not buy out all cities by being allied to the only other nation remaining. Do not refuse larger nations (especially military), and pay minimally for buying small underperforming cities. One tip is to contact (satellite dish icon) every city and praise them to get a slight boost in relations.

For military: People aren't gonna like you.
But that doesn't mean you have to like them. Be aggressive. Take that spice geyser by force. Don't worry about offending other nations, because they can't beat you. Strike before they expand, and expand on their bases. Don't forget to build on cities that you have captured.

For religious: You have arguably the coolest stuff, so use them.
You have the power to capture cities AND retain all their buildings. Use large armies to swarm and focus on cities one at a time (except when going against small and especially defenseless and unhappy cities). Attack in groups large enough and you'll find little to no losses at all. Be as aggressive as military, if not more aggressive than military. Ignore defenses/vehicles and go straight in and convert. You get to project holograms of yourself, so enjoy. Tip: You are the only type that can ignore epics. Use your vehicles on the epic and turn him into a cuddly gigantic plaything.

That said I feel that the easiest to play is religious, and the enormous musical instruments and holographic projections are just some of the many bonuses. Military is simple enough, but don't forget to rebuild. For economic, everything costs some, but trade routes allow you to gain sporebucks too so it all works out. Just be more careful who you are working with and make the right friends. A few gifts won't hurt either.

Oh and in this stage, epics are ANNOYING. This is not [s]terrible[/s] tribal stage. Ignore at all costs. Take a detour to that spice geyser. Economic is especially defenseless, and having turrets on your cities may actually lure an epic to cause epic damage on your structures. Even for religious, the epic pet is pretty useless and hard to get rid off. Once the charm wears off, it will start attacking again, and you will have to keep him in check with your preaching and songs again. It's just not worth it.

Using my strategy guarantees for the Rolling Thunder achievement (assuming v1.01). It takes 20~40mins tops, even in hard mode.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Seliam — GMT

Has anyone played the Civ stage on hard since the patch? It seems that the balance of power has been drasticly skewed towards the AI, since they seem to start with 5+ vehicles, make money at a much faster rate than I do, and my rate of earning is much slower than in normal. Not to mention that all 9 other cities are founded as soon as I claim my first geyser, if not sooner. I hadn't tried to play this stage on hard before the patch, so I don't know if it was overbalanced when they increased the difficulty. Has anyone who completed the civ stage on hard before the patch and played it afterwards tell me how much of a difficulty increase there actually was?

Much appreciated.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Karatta — GMT

[quote=Seliam]Has anyone played the Civ stage on hard since the patch? It seems that the balance of power has been drasticly skewed towards the AI, since they seem to start with 5+ vehicles, make money at a much faster rate than I do, and my rate of earning is much slower than in normal. Not to mention that all 9 other cities are founded as soon as I claim my first geyser, if not sooner. I hadn't tried to play this stage on hard before the patch, so I don't know if it was overbalanced when they increased the difficulty. Has anyone who completed the civ stage on hard before the patch and played it afterwards tell me how much of a difficulty increase there actually was?

Much appreciated.[/quote]

Yeah, I played my first civ stage post-patch today. It was moderatly more difficult, but then I was playing economic, so I had "please dont beat me up" lunch money out the yin-yang. Iv always found the military route the hardest unless against an economic civ because of religious civs area-damage to tanks, but as far as economic strategy goes, yeah, it is more difficult after the patch than before.

It is easier to make the other major powers angry, so if you arent by the sea with access to more than one player at a time to make friends with, the island battle can be very very tough if you are against more than one military city.

As always, it is best to boot-strap the economy before heading into battle, rushing will not help in this game difficulty, no matter what type of civ you are.

You also need to be a fast clicker, and constantly on the move & watching what is going on. Also, it is also more opportune to vary your city types and building layouts, where as on easy and medium you can feel free to go all religious/military/economic, and not over worry about the buildings.

In a sense, it is actually "hard" now.

Id also reccomend, if you are not sure just how difficult it can be compared to your skill (talking to other forum readers here), save as soon as you set up your building designs, vehicle designs, anthem if you have that, civ clothing, and building layout, and dont save again until you are in a moderate-to-good position to win the planet. You'll definatly want that save file to fall back on should you make some wrong moves.

Hard, but not impossible. Dont let the suggestions fool you, it is beatable. I got the "Rolling Thunder" achievement off of it today so it isnt overwhelming, just be sure you have the medium difficulty down before you try.

Good luck!

Edit1:

I have a question for those here, today I ran into an issue where I finished the Civ stage with an economic alignment, but I was rewarded a military trait card. I belive this is related to the number and type of cities you own at completion. Can anyone confirm this senario? (I do not have a screen shot sadly, I quit and reloaded the game to a previous save point without thinking about the strangeness, to change my space trait card).

---------------------------------

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

xyish — GMT

[quote=karatta]
I have a question for those here, today I ran into an issue where I finished the Civ stage with an economic alignment, but I was rewarded a military trait card. I belive this is related to the number and type of cities you own at completion. Can anyone confirm this senario? (I do not have a screen shot sadly, I quit and reloaded the game to a previous save point without thinking about the strangeness, to change my space trait card).[/quote]

Pretty sure that is not the case. For all my games in the Civ stage I've played based on a focused single-minded strategy, that is, based on the type of nation I have, and for all my timelines, they have straight lines throughout despite having cities not belonging to my main type (mostly from super weapon captures).

I also noted that getting into bad relationships, starting wars, killing off enemy unit, using multiple vehicle types (religious/miltary/economic), attacking/converting/starting trade routes with cities do not affect my time line at all. I suspect only captures (based on type of capture) do affect, so if you accidentally attacked a city using a group of military vehicles while being an economic nation will not cause your timeline to slide towards the military trait unless you have captured the city via military means. I cannot confirm because the "free vehicles" (gained by capturing tribes) are unlikely to reach a group large enough to start capturing cities, and I'm lazy to build up say, a military army as a religious nation, but it seems logical.

Edit: Confirmed.
I started a new economic game and quickly bought out a small religious city, which after I maxed out the space building (I should have built all houses, but it was just so habitual to maximize income), giving me allowance to have 4 religious vehicles. In the next few seconds, I had a religious capture! I then proceeded to check the timeline and noticed my timeline had leapt on to the edge of economic and almost into religious. In fact, the arrow was practically pointed on the border between the two traits. The only way I could tell was the lighted economic trait. So unless someone else has any new findings, it is safe to assume that only captures count towards affecting your trait, not city type or even anything else.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

BlanketyBlankMan — GMT

[quote=seliam]Has anyone played the Civ stage on hard since the patch? It seems that the balance of power has been drasticly skewed towards the AI, since they seem to start with 5+ vehicles, make money at a much faster rate than I do, and my rate of earning is much slower than in normal. Not to mention that all 9 other cities are founded as soon as I claim my first geyser, if not sooner. I hadn't tried to play this stage on hard before the patch, so I don't know if it was overbalanced when they increased the difficulty. Has anyone who completed the civ stage on hard before the patch and played it afterwards tell me how much of a difficulty increase there actually was?

Much appreciated.[/quote]I did my hard mode run (for the achievements) the day after the patch; I went military in Civ, and got the under-an-hour achievement at the same time (and the capture-all-geysers and have-8-military-cities achievements). My enemies never attacked with more than one unit at a time, which was thwarted by my turrets every time. They never attacked my geysers.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Seliam — GMT

[quote=blanketyblankman]I did my hard mode run (for the achievements) the day after the patch; I went military in Civ, and got the under-an-hour achievement at the same time (and the capture-all-geysers and have-8-military-cities achievements). My enemies never attacked with more than one unit at a time, which was thwarted by my turrets every time. They never attacked my geysers.[/quote]

Ok, well that is not the experience I am having. I was attempting an economic victory to get the increased spice production, and as soon as the other cities are founded, which sometimes happens before I can even claim my first geyser, the closest military city immediately sends 5-10 land vehicles over and obliterates my city. They also usually blow up my geyser if it is on the way to my city. I think I will give it a shot with a military city and see how that goes, maybe the AI will act differently towards me. It just seemed like a big jump in difficulty from the post-patch tribal stage on hard, which was still pretty easy.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Karatta — GMT

[quote=xyish][quote=karatta]
I have a question for those here, today I ran into an issue where I finished the Civ stage with an economic alignment, but I was rewarded a military trait card. I belive this is related to the number and type of cities you own at completion. Can anyone confirm this senario? (I do not have a screen shot sadly, I quit and reloaded the game to a previous save point without thinking about the strangeness, to change my space trait card).[/quote]

Pretty sure that is not the case. For all my games in the Civ stage I've played based on a focused single-minded strategy, that is, based on the type of nation I have, and for all my timelines, they have straight lines throughout despite having cities not belonging to my main type (mostly from super weapon captures).

I also noted that getting into bad relationships, starting wars, killing off enemy unit, using multiple vehicle types (religious/miltary/economic), attacking/converting/starting trade routes with cities do not affect my time line at all. I suspect only captures (based on type of capture) do affect, so if you accidentally attacked a city using a group of military vehicles while being an economic nation will not cause your timeline to slide towards the military trait unless you have captured the city via military means. I cannot confirm because the "free vehicles" (gained by capturing tribes) are unlikely to reach a group large enough to start capturing cities, and I'm lazy to build up say, a military army as a religious nation, but it seems logical.

Edit: Confirmed.
I started a new economic game and quickly bought out a small religious city, which after I maxed out the space building (I should have built all houses, but it was just so habitual to maximize income), giving me allowance to have 4 religious vehicles. In the next few seconds, I had a religious capture! I then proceeded to check the timeline and noticed my timeline had leapt on to the edge of economic and almost into religious. In fact, the arrow was practically pointed on the border between the two traits. The only way I could tell was the lighted economic trait. So unless someone else has any new findings, it is safe to assume that only captures count towards affecting your trait, not city type or even anything else.[/quote]

I understand the alignment in your case was operating normally, but you will have to complete the game in the manner that I depicted to be certian of the test.

It was pretty strange when I got the game to do that at the end of the phase. I finished the game when I became friends with the last remaining nation, and they asked to join forces to end the civ phase.

That was when I saw my timeline, and at the end of the timeline it displayed in blue under economic heading, but I was rewarded a military trait card at the top of the screen.

I owned 2 economic cities, and 4 military cities at the time.

I spent over 30K on military air vehicles in the last 10 mintues of the game to put down a hostile faction, who I could not raise friendlieness with, and the rest of the game I spent about 14K on economic ships & vehicles. All economic vehicles were deleted near the last 10 minutes of the game, because I could not trade with anyone at the time. After the final city of the hostile faction fell, I begain trade with the last remaning faction with 2 economic vehicles, which eventually bumped my relationship to Happy, ending the game.

Only 1 of my city captures were military, the other 5 were economic. But my military air vehicles were involved in lots of killing at the end of the game, destroying over 20 buildings and turrets, and over 20 enemy military vehicles. I refused to go to war with several nations, after being asked many times throughout the game, (if that has anything to do with the timeline alignment).

Hope that helps if anyone is willing to test!

Edit 1: Im starting to think there is a bug related to the alignments, if you are right on the borderline of an alignment change, the color may not properly depict your alignment. This situation that I recieved here was the second of 2 times that I recieved a creature trait card for a different colored alignment. Both times this occured was when I was on the border of the two. If I find out this is true, I will edit my statement here and above to not confuse new players.
http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/0/5089.page#46645

Civilization Stage Tips

MarshallSucks — GMT

I'm stuck in my Civ Phase, and could use some help.

I'm a military civilization on Normal mode, post-patch. To start, I nabbed two or three geysers and captured the first AI city immediately after it appeared. The next city that appeared was on my continent, is a military powerhouse, and immediately declared war on me. They've captured all of the spice geysers on the continent except for one (which is mine), and they also managed to get my only military city. I made the mistake of backing myself into a corner by saving just before they launched a mixed ground/sea assault on my religious city (which also has a seaport). I don't make money fast enough to roll out vehicles, and the ones I manage to buy seem to get destroyed too quickly. Each time I load, I'm about 15 seconds or less from a large-scale attack on my only city.

Obviously, I'm not great at RTS games. Is there any way to get through this without restarting or cheating?

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

kirpet07 — GMT

[color=darkred][size=9]O man, I could have used all these tips about 2 nights ago. >_< lol
Thanks so much for sharing y'all tips /creating this thread.
It's going to come in soooo handy with my new civilization haha. :3
I've kind of lost all hope for my first one.. :/
~Kp.[/size][/color]

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Buglunch — GMT

I don't see how you're supposed to settle by the sea in
creature stage to get a seaside city at start of civ stage.
I've only been given the option to migrate to one set
nest each time it moves; are there more nests than one
you could find each migration?
You can't move the target nest by the sea so how do we settle there??

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Chariot — GMT

[quote=buglunch]I don't see how you're supposed to settle by the sea in
creature stage to get a seaside city at start of civ stage.
I've only been given the option to migrate to one set
nest each time it moves; are there more nests than one
you could find each migration?
You can't move the target nest by the sea so how do we settle there??[/quote]

follow the dotted line on the minimap past your current nest, you should eventualy find one by the sea which has your type of creature in it, one of which you can mate with. if you do, your home symbol will switch to there, with it wanting you to migrate back to the one you were at before. dont, instead advance while you are there, and your starting city will have a seaport in civ mode.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Spidrouse — GMT

[quote=chaosbote]an other good idea which actually begins at the creature stage, is to make your last nest by the water, then when you are in the civ stage, you are already have the option of making boats, thus easier to claim everything[/quote]

You make your last nest by calling a mate at one of your species nest locations. If you travel down the path in creature stage there are many often even beyond the migration quest chain. Check your history after doing so and it should say something like claimed a new nest and you are ready to go.

This was something I recently learned and it is very useful especially on hard settings if you are economic.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Daboman — GMT

For those having trouble:

Today I had some issues as well, trying to rush to conquer a few cities. Turns out that turtling in your starting city and letting the others grow and hammer each others head actually helps out a lot. I spent the first 15 minutes designing a city for maximum profit with maximum defense. After a while I was able to spam vehicles and turn the tide in my favor.

Civilization Stage Tips

Rush430 — GMT

[quote=marshallsucks]I'm stuck in my Civ Phase, and could use some help.

I'm a military civilization on Normal mode, post-patch. To start, I nabbed two or three geysers and captured the first AI city immediately after it appeared. The next city that appeared was on my continent, is a military powerhouse, and immediately declared war on me. They've captured all of the spice geysers on the continent except for one (which is mine), and they also managed to get my only military city. I made the mistake of backing myself into a corner by saving just before they launched a mixed ground/sea assault on my religious city (which also has a seaport). I don't make money fast enough to roll out vehicles, and the ones I manage to buy seem to get destroyed too quickly. Each time I load, I'm about 15 seconds or less from a large-scale attack on my only city.

Obviously, I'm not great at RTS games. Is there any way to get through this without restarting or cheating? [/quote]

Psh, cheating is for wimps. Restarting's ok by me since practice = learning. But anyway.

Give them gifts, as much as you can, until they are at least blue-face. Paise the game frequently to save precious time while you switch between any other tasks that need your attention. Seriously, money fixes EVERYTHING sometimes. Then just save up, keep giving gifts to stave off a war (but not so much you're not developing your economy) and when you're more prepared roll up a bunch of tanks to the edge of the city that started it, wait for them to get all rearranged (since they won't shoot if they like you) and launch the assault.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Sidus86 — GMT

[quote=DarthDoggie]The ideal stat distribution for all economic vehicles is 0% health, 44% economic power, 56% speed. Technically it should be 43.75% economic power and 56.25% speed but 44/56 is the best you can do to my knowledge. This applies to all economic vehicles. Also in terms of profit, air > sea > land. The justification for this requires calculus and I really don't feel like typing that out.[/quote]

Haha thats great. I would actually really love to see the calculus, or a link to it. (Engineering student )

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Morach — GMT

Choosing your path in the Civ stage - a theory

I'm one who likes to be able to choose the consequence skills and archetype. In all the other stages, I found this very easy: choose your mouth(s)/diet for cell, kill/flirt/or balance for creature, kill/perform/or balance for tribal. (Though the need for a carnivore to eat his neighbors in creature can make the more peaceful paths a bit trickier.) However, I could never get civ to let me pick my path fully. I would habitually take peaceful path in tribal because I liked the gracious greeter bonus in space. Every time I get to civ, I'd be religious. Even when I did red/red/green. So my first theory is that your tribal path determines your starting civ type. I think I may have seen others saying as much elsewhere on the forum.

Second issue, is I seem to never find the type of city I want to shift into. Specifically, in my red/red/green game, I was wanting to pick up blue so that I'd be a knight rather than warrior or spodeling. I saved before any more cities popped up in case I could get some randomization working for me, but that didn't work. The only cities I saw were military(red) or religious(green). In my first game I went straight green and don't remember seeing any economic cities there either. In a game I played green/blue/green, I did find an economic city or 2. So my second theory is that if you want the economic path to appear in some of your cohort cities, you need to have blue in your collective history somewhere. (I believe I saw some military cities in my straight green path so I'm not generalizing yet that all city colors have to come from your history.)

I'm less confidant in the second theory since I don't pay that close of attention to my kids' games so don't notice what cities they meet, and this was the first time I tried to go economic in civ only to find no economic cities (I usually don't care about the types of any cities after the second conquest or so). So my theory 2b is that my luck doesn't like me, for which there's plenty of support.

So has anyone figured this out more specifically who'd be willing to share?

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Sotris — GMT

Does anyone have an idea on how you can go from blue to green in the civ stage? If you start as an economic city, all economic takeovers keep you in blue, and either a military or a religious takeover send you to red. Offering gifts has no effect.

I was trying to make Knights out of my race, but I started carnivore and predator, so I'll have to try to get from red to green (friendly) in the tribal stage if there's no other way. It's not so easy on hard though, and I'll eventually lose the colony discount in favor of Spice Savant

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Loopy-Lizard — GMT

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

spacechase — GMT

Immediatly buy many vehicles and send half to spice places and half to tribes. You do it right if you right click the main hut when there is a ? mark. They may give you a random land vehicle (I was religous and it gave me military), money, or they attack you. There might be more. Also, if they give you money/vehicle, thier tribe goes away, so bye bye any civilization that would form there!

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Bishop149 — GMT

Civilization on Hard is Hard!!

I had come out of Tribal as Religious but wanted to go the military route to end up with the archetype I wanted. Took me quite a few goes to get it right here are my tips:

- As others have said. . . . first things first, spice grab! Get as many geysers as you can before anyone else.

- Invest all of money initially into improving your one cities income and paying it all away in bribes to any civilization that seems to mean you harm.

- After a while two military civilizations began to emerge on top and knocking the hell out of each other, I picked one to side with (the one not on my continent) and off I went. Some of my targets cities had been badly mauled in the conflict and these I took by religious means, spamming land units, had to be quick before my friend conquered them by force.

- Continue to pay off the powerful to keep them friendly.

- From this point one it was easier, I now had 1 religious and 2 military cities. . . . started to produce military units and attacked a civ that was on its last legs. . . took their last city and I have access to air units, the rest was a relative cake walk.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

kuhndog — GMT

i m on my first run through civ and screwed myself over somehow
religious, converted one city which then got taken over by a diff civ. then yellow decided to go crazy and take over all the other civs, but i m an ally with him so he didn;t bother me. however, now my game is at a stalemate. he;s got the rest of the map, i have my one little city. will we eventually merge so that i can get out of civ?

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

snakething278 — GMT

Here's a REALLY easy way to beat CIV on hard, but it requires you to be Economic.
1.Design or use a vehicle with 100% speed to capture as many spice geysers as you can and design a profitable city.
2.Once all accessible geysers are taken, sell your vehicles and increases your cities profilability.
3.Compliment every other nation.
4.Bide your time, giving gifts to those who declare war on you.
5.Once one nation is left, gift them until you become allies. Then modify your vehicles for a balance of speed and economic power and then start trading. Buy their cities and eventually they will unify and you get to rocket of into space.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

ChaosHarbinger — GMT

[quote=kuhndog]i m on my first run through civ and screwed myself over somehow
religious, converted one city which then got taken over by a diff civ. then yellow decided to go crazy and take over all the other civs, but i m an ally with him so he didn;t bother me. however, now my game is at a stalemate. he;s got the rest of the map, i have my one little city. will we eventually merge so that i can get out of civ? [/quote]
No. You need to have at least 6 cities in order for your nation and that of your ally to merge. At least, I've never had a better deal on ANY difficulty setting with fewer cities. So here's what you can try:

1) Max out your sole city.
2) Choose TWO vehicles - one with loads of health and conversion power, another with incredible speed. Switch between the two design when the time comes to capturing a city and moving to the next one.
3) Capture all the spice geysers in the ocean and on your continent.
4) Keep giving cash to the other nation until it maxes out at +120 Relationship for that.
5) Gather about 300K Sporebucks.
6) Swarm his nearest city with all of your forces.
7) Immediately max out that city and your vehicles, then repeat with his next nearest city.
As soon as you can, build planes and sell all your boats and tanks.
9) Repeat process on other continents' cities.
10) Good luck!

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

kuhndog — GMT

and by max out, you mean raise my vehicle cap to the max right?
thanks for the tips, i ll let you know how it turns out

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

ChaosHarbinger — GMT

I mean vehicles, buildings, turrets, the lot. Just keep practising and you'll get there.

A

pieguykarim — GMT

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

ChaosHarbinger — GMT

If you're playing on Hard Mode the other civilisations will pop up within seconds of you buying another vehicle or a building. Even with a max speed vehicle, you'll be lucky to get 2 of the land-based geysers, and have no choice at getting all 5 or 6 before someone else.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

PlanetKing — GMT

[quote=ChaosHarbinger]If you're playing on Hard Mode the other civilisations will pop up within seconds of you buying another vehicle or a building. Even with a max speed vehicle, you'll be lucky to get 2 of the land-based geysers, and have no choice at getting all 5 or 6 before someone else.[/quote]
Yeah that annoyed me first time on hard

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Morach — GMT

Sounds like a viable collection strategy would be to position your starting vehicle near the farthest spice mine, hit pause, buy your extra runner-cars, send them to mines, capture your poised mine, and unpause? I have a 'hard' game that'll hit civ stage soon, so I'll have to be sure to save and experiment some.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

ChaosHarbinger — GMT

That way does work pretty well, but you also have to have a bit of luck in where the other cities pop up - sometimes one will show up immediately next to a spice geyser you're heading for and WHAP! That one's no longer a viable option.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

brian1gramm1 — GMT

[quote=Podespawn]Since economic vehicles can't fight, health points are wasted on them (it just delays the inevitable). Spend all your vehicle points on speed and econ power. Start with maximized speed to claim geysers and establish trade routes, then upgrade to get a better balance between speed and trade capacity.[/quote]

[quote=Aznparker]Ship also seem to have a further range than turrets. You can also use combined traits. It was rather by accident I found out that using religious vehicles to stun turrets while my military ones destroy them saves money. [/quote]

This was an excellent Idea, i hope I can better survive in the civ stage now. All the other stages are pretty easy even on hard, but the civ stage is the hardest for me even on easy. I'm thankful for this forem.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

16darkknight — GMT

If your trade routes being disrupted by epics attacking your economic vehicles but you don't have military but you do have religious also, send in multiple religious vehicles and the epic will be put into a trance.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

buziah — GMT

Not really a tip, but 2 see things from the vehicles perspective select the vehicle and hit spacebar. Its really great and has the camera follow your vehicle, and you can get into 3rd person perspective with it.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

bluesky681 — GMT

shift+cntrl+c then type "[b]moreMoney[/b]" and hit enter.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

b4d93r — GMT

Question about the spice mining, do you need to add something to your vehicle to actually do the mining or just sending it there will do it?

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

SuperWeb — GMT

[quote=b4d93r]Question about the spice mining, do you need to add something to your vehicle to actually do the mining or just sending it there will do it?[/quote]
Just send it.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

b4d93r — GMT

LOL I figured that out but thank you for the reply! It went pretty well, I dominated my planet and made it to the space level. However I forgot to save often and had to quite and now I'm back to just the three cities I have. Noob lesson learned.

I'm really liking this game so far.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Spikes01k — GMT

These tips I developed while playing this stage on hardest difficulty.

Some are not the fairest, but this stage is TOUGH!

1. Create 2 or 3 versions of your vehicles, it really helps. One of a weapon heavy and one speed heavy, and both being some what good at health. You can switch which vehicle is in use in an instant! by changing which is supposed to be used in the vehicle creator. So you can move all your vehicles in with your speed then transform them as soon as they get to their destination into battle oriented. Basically you can switch your vehicle types at any point in an instant, however, you must change all of them at the same time.

2. Save the game from the start before you move your vehicle. But never after that point. Everything in the hardest difficulty is very sensitive as even the slightest wrong move and be devastating. You may not know that you made a mistake until after you saved the game. This stage on this setting is fast enough that its just better to start over.

3. You will notice by multiple run-throughs that this one group on your island will always spawn as bad toward you. You have all the time in the world to start your first spicing. Get one of the ones closest to that group. I didn't find that they tried to actually take it away from me. They seemed more interested in taking over other nations.

4. Defend other nations as they will first try to take them out. Your combined forces can usually do a good job of fending them off with little damage to your vehicles.

5. Accepting trades even when you have only 1 city is a good idea as the game moves too fast. They probably won't be able to buy you out as the other aggressive nations will take them out too fast.

6. The 4th special ability of the Military type is worthless as if you have that money you can probably take everything out anyway. It is better to just take the money and make jets to take over everything any way, and use the other abilities to make it easier. You also lose out on building spots in other nations which I have found to be completely un-build-able on.

7. Investigating with a land vehicle the undeveloped city could turn your vehicle into a different type of vehicle. Might help.

8. Keeping them pitted against each other is a good idea. If you have the money you do want to bribe them. However if the one on your side gets too powerful you could end up with an impossible battle as they get all the other cities and your stuck with just 1. Which is a lose situation in a military game.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

rking447 — GMT

The best way to take cities (other then ICBMs) is to make your vehicles with 70% damage and 20% health and 10% speed, you'll take the city before the nation reacts.

A good way to Protect your citys is to capture all the citys on your Contenent Thus preventing land Attack.

Gadget bombs are not always a good idea,if you capture a city with it that city will only have room for 1 or 2 buildings.because of all the Radio-active waste the bomb left behind.

Although planes are good at capturing citys they can't capture any Spice Geysers.

If you don't by a plane in Civ stage you get The "Scared Of Hights" accomplishment,unless you cheated in Civ or any of the recent stages.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Boinked — GMT

My tactics that I beat the game well with involve making a fleet of almost entirely air units, changing the vehicle to a super fast one, dashing to a city, changing to a craft with max power, obliterating the city in 15 seconds, rebuilding, adding more planes, and changing back to speed for the next target.

Economic is the easiest, especially if you got Diplo Dervish. Use it on a target civilization, then trade and buy out quickly.

I like powerful economic vehicles, five of them can buy out a city in one trip.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

zane99111 — GMT

capture all geysers make air units that are focused on HP and power and pwn cities

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Dinrawr — GMT

You don't need to make air vehicles.
I saved lots of money and got through the stage quickly as Religious using only boats and land vehicles. Just take over a city with a port, then dispatch land vehicles from there to take over the continent. Make sure you make turrets on your first city on that continent since it'll probably come under heavy attack

I don't like doing the 'change vehicle" thing, it seems like cheating to me.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

jabberwock — GMT

make a land vechile with max speed at first to get all avalbe spice geysers, once anoter civ pops up, edit it

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

DinoLord — GMT

A gigantic fleet makes civ stage a lot faster. It takes only one minute to capture a city with 15+ vehicles.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Olgol2 — GMT

[quote=DinoLord]A gigantic fleet makes civ stage a lot faster. It takes only one minute to capture a city with 15+ vehicles.[/quote] less with as many 100% millitary planes, the city is yours in about 20sec.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

mrmango — GMT

Just win.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Metamorfasis — GMT

At the beginning, no matter what archetype you want to be, don't put any weapons, and not much health on your vehicles. Leave at least 80% of the bar to speed. So then, at the beginning of the stage, you can beat the empires to spice geysers, and make millions that way.
After you capture a good amount of geysers, simply change your vehicle to whatever you want, and start conquering with your excess cash!

Good luck to you all!

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Universalpriest — GMT

Before I say this, I'd like you to know that I did not read all the above replys for the fact its 3:03 in the morning and I can't get to sleep even though I'm beat tired.

But here is my method (Note: I suggest being a warmonger for this, however, it could work with religious vehicles. I haven't tried it with them yet.) I like to call it the BLITZKRIEG!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's a fairly simple process. Let me teach you this method, my child.

Step #1: When you first start your Civilization stage, try to make as many vehicles as you can (Note: Having fast and powerfull vehicles can really help with this strategy. Just be sure not to over-do the power and speed, because your vehicle will then be too fragile to fight later on) and send them acrossed the continent to capture as many geysers you can, and while they are at work doing that, put down as many turrets as you can possibly afford as well as factorys, housing (so you can make your army bigger) and don't forget to put entertainment as well so there is no uprises. gotta keep the citizens happy you know, and be carefull where you set them. I've become a master at city planning.) Once all this is done, and the dough (or in this case spice) start's rolling in, make more vehicles.

Step #2: As soon as you see the first city spring up, LAUNCH YOUR ATTACK WHILE IT'S WEAK!! Once defeated, unless you don't wish to be a war monger, set the city to a military city, then begin building houses entertainment and factorys and setting turrets in this city and then increase your forces ever more. Then when the other citys spring up, launch another blitzkrieg and repeat the process.

This little method is very flexible as well. Once you have conquered all the citys on your continent, I like to start selling the land vehicles so you can begin making room and money to make a navy and/or airforce so you can take over the rest of the world using the famous (or i should say infamous) Blitzkrieg method! Oh, and if your wondering what a Blitzkrieg is, it is the same method SPORE Germany used to take over Poland and France in WWII and maybe other countrys. I don't know. I'm half asleep. If I was awake I'd probably be able to think clearer. Don't tell me to go to sleep and don't call me an addict. I tried to, but all I did was toss and turn. Haha!

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

MrDiabolical — GMT

If you are religious, tame an Epic. You do NOT have to wait for the Epic to snap out of it before it "goes Godzilla". Simply target a building and the Epic will hopefully shoot fire.

Civilization Stage Tips

ianmantis — GMT

Do NOT use gadget bombs or icbm's - they leave radioactive rubble that can not be removed.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Michand — GMT

tip for military:

i did a game where i was just total military, i remember that you have to act fast. cities spring up on your continent, and its hard to take them over because theres usually 1 or 2 other civs trying to take them. i ended up allying the cities (there were 2) being taken over, and then when the warlike cities tried to take them, i started destroying their cities, so they would call off the attack, then i would attack their tanks and turrets, then destory their city. my ally died but i knew that would happen. also, always attack turrets first. otherwise you will take MASSIVE casualties. and once you've taken over your continent, boats, boats, boats. sell all your tanks, as nobody can attack you by land now, and create a huge army of boats. by now the spice geysers dont matter, dont take them over, make money from your own cities. just attack the smallest color and eventually there will be another big color about the same size as yours or bigger. you can try to ally them if you have 6+ cities... i just used a gadget bomb on one civ to get 5 cities (it was actually kinda funny... they were attacking my ally who had one city, and i nuked my ally right before they took the city so it counted as mine... but now the big nation hated me...), then i just launched a massive attack on one of the big nations cities to get six (i went from being their friend to being at war with them, but that didnt matter). then i launched the ICBM and got the conclusion achievement. then you wanna max out all your cities before space stage.

maybe you can take some info from this... hopefully it'll help

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

sjhorm — GMT

There is a war that has been going on WAY too long. All the spice nodes are empty, and I am almost out of money. How can I defeat that last city?

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

KittEE97 — GMT

When you first start out in civ, send your land vehicle to run over the tribe huts that are left over. Occasionally they will hurt you but most of the time they will either give you a vehicle or money.

Civilization Stage Tips

Exoskeleten — GMT

Ever wonder whats killing your ship when you not even waring, I mean when your ships are claiming spice gysures? Beware the epics. They will attack your ships. But yous ships cant target them. So avoid them at all costs, and if they attack you city, put turrets up.

Civilization Stage Tips

dmiles — GMT

If you have a economic city make your vechicles fast with little health

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Databug — GMT

I don't know if this has already been said, but it's a good tip so I'll say it anyways.

Once you've conquered all the cities on the planet, DO NOT GO TO THE SPACE STAGE RIGHT AWAY. Before you go to the space stage, make sure that all your cities are filled out at your desired production and happiness levels and that they have a full compliment of turrets. Do this now because once you get to the space stage your money gets knocked down to 100,000 (or knocked back up depending on your economical situation) and the building prices get majorly inflated and it will be nearly impossible for you to max out your spice production without having to bust your @ss trading spice with other empires.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Metagross18 — GMT

How come when if been trading with a econmic city for a long time, they don't buy the city? I think my city isn't even available to buy! I think i have a glitch!

Civilization Stage Tips

BlackDragonAJ89 — GMT

I've read through all of these and I want to say a few tips of my own:

1. Build your vehicles and buildings EARLY. In the civilization age, you can use the sporepedia, unlike the rest of the modes if you're playing the game from the cell stage, in which you can use premade vehicles and buildings. Naturally, your buildings can look like anything, but as for vehicles, I suggest this:

Religious: The quicker you can convert a city the better. Speed isn't a truly big issue here, unless you're trying to get spice geysers quickly when you first start off. Know what body and cockpit parts can give you both speed and health, as your biggest concern are weapons. Designs like buses, blimps, wagons, barges, and double-bladed helicopters work great because you can stack a lot of the religious parts on the side or on the decks (although I'm pretty sure there are other creative methods, but some people might like the ideas).

Economic: Speed and Bling baby! Try to use parts that give off the most speed more than health, since economic vehicles won't be fighting in wars. The economic "weapons" are very easy to mold and work with in the editor, despite being really gaudy looking, so you can get them to fit on anywhere. I would suggesting designing things to be like hot-rods, jet liners, high speed racing boats, and for the slower ones (who have more economic power), cruise liners and delivery trucks decked out with the economic weapons.

Military: Power and health are the biggest concerns here, especially for aircraft, since you're going to get plastered by either a turret, another vehicle, or attacked by religious vehicles. Focus on parts that have more health points attached to them and space to stack your guns on. I can't really suggest more than that, since most of the parts in the military weapons can fit onto anything.

With that in mind, you can build up a variety of vehicles to suit both the situation and your aesthetic tastes. I would suggest building a "starter car" that is built to quickly capture the geysers early in the game (along with a boat too).

2. Playing Through

Religious: Capture the nearby geysers on your continent and around as quickly as possible. Ward of a tribe if you encounter one, if not, just build up your army once the first AI city appears so you can capture it. If you manage to capture an economic city, keep it as is so that any friendlier nations you meet you can trade with, which will also give you income from trading. If the nations on your continent aren't giving you any trouble, trade with them, and buy the cities. Religious nations, like trading nations, don't destroy the buildings of cities they capture, meaning you can quickly clear though this stage quickly if you bribe/trade with friendly nations and attack those who are small and too big for their pants...

Economic: Capture the geysers quickly as always, and then build up your economy before you trade with the first city. Economic nations have virtually no way of attacking themselves, and you must buyout cities in order to advance. 16000 sporebucks guarantees you a city from what I've played, and once you have over that (at least 1700), buyout the first city you traded with. If you manage to capture an military or religious city, let them keep the ability so that you have some way to fight (whether it be the new era speech from that 50ft hologram or a good ol' blast of rockets) and protect yourself from hostile nations. Speed is the key here, and defense shouldn't be too far behind, because there will be one nation who will declare you your swarn enemy. If you really want to get through this fast or just don't want to fight with another nation (or the only other nation left), use the final special you get in this stage, for you get all the cities without having to rebuild.

Military: Nothing much different from the religious side, but as always, if you capture an economic city, keep it as is, because those few friendly nations are far easier to buy out as opposed to leveling the ground on. Of course, don't use the ICBM; it costs too much to rebuild.

3. Pre Space Age

Use the money collected (and still collecting) to build up the cities of your homeworld; things are too pricey in the space stage of the game to jump over without your funds jumping over.

In case you're wondering what my strategy is: it's the "bastardous capitalist" method, in which you trade with friendly nations and blow up enemy nations. Yeah....

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

ciacho0000 — GMT

At the beginning of Civ, when there are no other cities on the map except yours, send out a few vehicles to tribal villages (you'll find them),and you'll get either a free vehicle (this can be useful when, for example, you want to purchase your first city, and all you've got is religious, etc.) or a bunch of Sporebucks.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Mushroomman55 — GMT

Try to capture a lot of spice early in the stage before others get it

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Alex645ca — GMT

Not sure if this has been said, but with Houses, Factories and Entertainment, if they're linked to the City Hall it has the same effect as connecting it to a house.

Civilization Stage Tips

joefesok — GMT

Planes are useless when you have seaships.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Trader99 — GMT

For Economic Vehicles, make them fast with lots of economic power. Health dosen't matter. For Military and Religous, put lots of health and Military or Religous power, but don't bother with speed. At the beginning of the game, buy as many vehicles as you can, and captures all the spice gysers on your continent and in the sea, if you are a sea city.

Civilization Stage Tips

Trader99 — GMT

[quote=joefesok]Planes are useless when you have seaships.[/quote]

Planes are not useless when you have ships, as they cannot trade with or attack cities that do not border the sea and are on different continents.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

goofball10 — GMT

Ships ARE capable of targeting things on land, just not entire cities. You can even begin to destroy buildings in a landlocked city near water.

If you are having a hard time with that city, just put up strong defenses at all your cities (3 or 4 vehicles) and full turrets. The remaining city will likely target 1 of your cities, so move all your vehicles there. Wait until you have enough money, and go in for the kill. Use ships to destroy turrets if it is landlocked but close to water. Then use strong planes with RED lasers and blow the thing up. Or just hit that ICBM button.

Religious: Get as many vehicles as you can (max out to the cap of 36) and take them over.

Economic: You would not be having the money problem.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

digikids — GMT

There is an achievement you can get that is called Spice Hoarder. All you have to do to get it is own all the spice geysers at once before you finish civilization stage.

Also, if an epic is attacking one of your cities first try to charm it if you are a religious city and lead it away, but if the epic is somehow stuck or you aren't a religious city you will either have to wait for your turrets to kill it or have your (non-religious, as they will just charm it again) vehicles attack it. Can economic vehicles attack? I don't know...

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

flametitan — GMT

[quote=digikids]There is an achievement you can get that is called Spice Hoarder. All you have to do to get it is own all the spice geysers at once before you finish civilization stage.
[/quote] Actually, You can do this after comepleting civ and before starting space, and get the achievement

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

RosebudE — GMT

[quote=flametitan][quote=digikids]There is an achievement you can get that is called Spice Hoarder. All you have to do to get it is own all the spice geysers at once before you finish civilization stage.
[/quote] Actually, You can do this after comepleting civ and before starting space, and get the achievement[/quote]

How long do you have to wait to get the Spice Hoarder achievement?

I took over all the geysers and still had three other civilizations besides mine. Two of them, I was very close to buying out, but I decided to wait until it said I had the achievement. Then, one by one, each civilization decided to ally with me and they became part of my nation (One, I think because the Epic creature kept destroying their factory as soon as they built it. ).

Do I just keep waiting to get the achievement instead of continuing to the space stage?

- Jade Aislin

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

HabaneroArrow — GMT

Wipe out all the other civilizations and then capture the geysers [i]before[/i] you advance to the space stage. If you've done all of that, and you still haven't earned the achievement, either you've already gotten it, or you cheated.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

JadeAislin — GMT

I was going to say that as far as I could tell, I had all the geysers. But then I was skimming over the planet and actually found an unclaimed geyser! It was in the space where one edge of the map ends and another begins, where you can't see your green marker for a second. I'm not sure how I was supposed to know it was even there. It makes me wonder where I missed one in my previous game, since I thought I had them all there too.

I've got the achievement now.

Thanks,

Jade Aislin

(Note: This was the username I meant to use in my first post, not RosebudE.)

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

digikids — GMT

[quote=RosebudE][quote=flametitan][quote=digikids]There is an achievement you can get that is called Spice Hoarder. All you have to do to get it is own all the spice geysers at once before you finish civilization stage.
[/quote] Actually, You can do this after comepleting civ and before starting space, and get the achievement[/quote]

How long do you have to wait to get the Spice Hoarder achievement?

I took over all the geysers and still had three other civilizations besides mine. Two of them, I was very close to buying out, but I decided to wait until it said I had the achievement. Then, one by one, each civilization decided to ally with me and they became part of my nation (One, I think because the Epic creature kept destroying their factory as soon as they built it. ).

Do I just keep waiting to get the achievement instead of continuing to the space stage?

- Jade Aislin[/quote]
You should check if you already have the achievement, because you might have it and just not know.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Ratty524 — GMT

These tips are really helpful. Civilization stage is probably the worst stage I have to play, because in almost every attempt I've made so far I've been sucking left and right.

On one of my planets, I'm in kind of a predicament. I set up a military nation and I added an NPC nation (Red, to be specific) in defeating one that was my enemy. I actually regret this, because before long, this single nation started to take over EVERYTHING. As of now, every city in the world belongs to them, and I'm basically left alone as the only one they have left to conquer.

I tried to build an alliance with them, though at the moment it doesn't seem to be changing much. I wouldn't dare go to war with them, as every one of their aircrafts, tanks, and whatevers will completely and utterly destroy my city within seconds. Worse yet, I haven't even made it past the stage of acquiring new vehicles other than tanks, and I own about 5-6 geysers on my continent while the Red Nation owns pretty much every other geyser that exists in my world. Essentially, I am outclassed by a long shot.

... And I was also dumb enough to save at that point.

Is there a way I can solve this, or is my only logical choice is to start over?

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

HangingDeath — GMT

[quote=Ratty524]These tips are really helpful. Civilization stage is probably the worst stage I have to play, because in almost every attempt I've made so far I've been sucking left and right.

On one of my planets, I'm in kind of a predicament. I set up a military nation and I added an NPC nation (Red, to be specific) in defeating one that was my enemy. I actually regret this, because before long, this single nation started to take over EVERYTHING. As of now, every city in the world belongs to them, and I'm basically left alone as the only one they have left to conquer.

I tried to build an alliance with them, though at the moment it doesn't seem to be changing much. I wouldn't dare go to war with them, as every one of their aircrafts, tanks, and whatevers will completely and utterly destroy my city within seconds. Worse yet, I haven't even made it past the stage of acquiring new vehicles other than tanks, and I own about 5-6 geysers on my continent while the Red Nation owns pretty much every other geyser that exists in my world. Essentially, I am outclassed by a long shot.

... And I was also dumb enough to save at that point.

Is there a way I can solve this, or is my only logical choice is to start over?[/quote]
Well, if you are allies with the Red nation. (Green face) they, after a while, will say 'Woot we won let's join up together' and give all of there bases to you.

If not, then I suggest building up a huge force, building a ton of turrets on your cities, and prepare for a long haul.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Iluvdogs0000 — GMT

[quote=HangingDeath][quote=Ratty524]These tips are really helpful. Civilization stage is probably the worst stage I have to play, because in almost every attempt I've made so far I've been sucking left and right.

On one of my planets, I'm in kind of a predicament. I set up a military nation and I added an NPC nation (Red, to be specific) in defeating one that was my enemy. I actually regret this, because before long, this single nation started to take over EVERYTHING. As of now, every city in the world belongs to them, and I'm basically left alone as the only one they have left to conquer.

I tried to build an alliance with them, though at the moment it doesn't seem to be changing much. I wouldn't dare go to war with them, as every one of their aircrafts, tanks, and whatevers will completely and utterly destroy my city within seconds. Worse yet, I haven't even made it past the stage of acquiring new vehicles other than tanks, and I own about 5-6 geysers on my continent while the Red Nation owns pretty much every other geyser that exists in my world. Essentially, I am outclassed by a long shot.

... And I was also dumb enough to save at that point.

Is there a way I can solve this, or is my only logical choice is to start over?[/quote]
Well, if you are allies with the Red nation. (Green face) they, after a while, will say 'Woot we won let's join up together' and give all of there bases to you.

If not, then I suggest building up a huge force, building a ton of turrets on your cities, and prepare for a long haul.[/quote]

All your base are belong to us.

I'd recommend just saving up loads of money, then dumping it into their coffers. If not, you are a bug. You will be squashed.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

HabaneroArrow — GMT

There's a limit to how much points you get for giving another civilization sporebucks. It caps at 120.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Iluvdogs0000 — GMT

[quote=HabaneroArrow]There's a limit to how much points you get for giving another civilization sporebucks. It caps at 120. [/quote]

120 should score you an alliance unless you're at warz.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Ratty524 — GMT

[quote=Iluvdogs0000][quote=HangingDeath]
Well, if you are allies with the Red nation. (Green face) they, after a while, will say 'Woot we won let's join up together' and give all of there bases to you.

If not, then I suggest building up a huge force, building a ton of turrets on your cities, and prepare for a long haul.[/quote]

All your base are belong to us.

I'd recommend just saving up loads of money, then dumping it into their coffers. If not, you are a bug. You will be squashed.[/quote]
You know what's funny? The spore creature I've built up for this particular planet is an insectoid. So saying "you are a bug" would be pretty literal.

Anyway, thanks for the help. I've been trying to build up money anyway, perhaps I should wait a little longer.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

murdick — GMT

Currently on hard mode facing a massed religious attack. Turrets don't help much against them do they? :/

Civilization Stage Tips

TheDynamancer — GMT

Mudrick, the one way to beat a religious attack efficently is to come out of no where with a zealot space empire... I wish you could do that. I really do...

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Lexington08 — GMT

[quote=Sotris]Does anyone have an idea on how you can go from blue to green in the civ stage? If you start as an economic city, all economic takeovers keep you in blue, and either a military or a religious takeover send you to red. Offering gifts has no effect.

I was trying to make Knights out of my race, but I started carnivore and predator, so I'll have to try to get from red to green (friendly) in the tribal stage if there's no other way. It's not so easy on hard though, and I'll eventually lose the colony discount in favor of Spice Savant [/quote]

Going red-red-green-blue is highly recommended. It gets you upgrades to Health and energy (it says Weapons but has been proven to be energy in general), Gracious Greeting (Automatic permanent +10 relationship with all empires), and Spice Savant.

Make sure to maximize your cities BEFORE advancing to the Space stage. You'll have plenty of money to buy buildings with, and if not, make sure you have all geysers captured, because taking over a nation won't give their geysers to you, and then wait for it. You'll start with the exact same 100,000 Sporebucks no matter what you have at the end of the Civ stage, and you'd rather spend it on weapons and junk than buildings that cost the same as they did before, where it's all you needed to buy. You can sell all of your vehicles for some quick money, because after conquering the world and capturing all geysers they're useless.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Jyapper — GMT

sometimes, and I mean sometimes, the AI sucks and will only have a primary goal, like converting one of your spice nodes, or attacking your city. this is usually done with one unit. it is a form of raiding and can get people VERY annoyed.However, taking up quite a few units near where the enemy attacks, and hey presto! the unit is crushed!

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

ZachAttack_4Nd — GMT

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

SporeMasterMidas — GMT

Actually, you can. Before advancing to Tribe Stage, move around the continent until you come across another nest of your species (there are a good six or seven in total) and click on it to get the option to change your home nest to that one. If it's close to the water, then your city will be a port in Civilisation Stage. Has to be pretty close though - and sometimes it will look close enough but not be.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

ZachAttack_4Nd — GMT

[quote=SporeMasterMidas]Actually, you can. Before advancing to Tribe Stage, move around the continent until you come across another nest of your species (there are a good six or seven in total) and click on it to get the option to change your home nest to that one. If it's close to the water, then your city will be a port in Civilisation Stage. Has to be pretty close though - and sometimes it will look close enough but not be.[/quote]

Well...I guess you learn something every day!

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

cloftus4 — GMT

If you are a religious, or military city, try to capture an economic city as fast as you can, when used with diplo dervish, you can buy out almost all of the cities provided you keep them from starting a war with you, remember that economic cities are the ONLY ones that can capture without lowering relations.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

321cats — GMT

One time when I was playing religious, an epic creature attacked some of my vehicles. I had them fight back, and the creature suddenly stopped like it was mesmerized by the attack. I had all but 1 leave and it still did nothing.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

suffish — GMT

[quote=321cats]One time when I was playing religious, an epic creature attacked some of my vehicles. I had them fight back, and the creature suddenly stopped like it was mesmerized by the attack. I had all but 1 leave and it still did nothing. [/quote]That's meant to happen.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Q_bit — GMT

If you are economic only care about speed with all kinds of vehicals, try to have it 100% it goes fastest, you make quick money, and it is also easy to claim all the spice in the beginning.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

suffish — GMT

[quote=Q_bit]If you are economic only care about speed with all kinds of vehicals, try to have it 100% it goes fastest, you make quick money, and it is also easy to claim all the spice in the beginning.[/quote]Oh, I have about 80% economic power and 20% speed.

I always have a lot of military/religious/economic power. That's my tip.

Re:Civilization Stage Tips

Scrylonsis13 — GMT

Build naval blockades around each seaport you control. They usually destroy any invaders before the city is harmed.

Civilization Stage Tips

Triop5 — GMT

Make a fast vehicle with no power, then send a fleet to a city you want to take over. Right before the fleet gets there, change the vehicle to slow and powerful. The whole fleet will instantly change to the new vehicle, so you can effectively have max power AND speed!

And in creature stage, your nest must have seashells in it if you want it to become a port in civilization.