Tribal Phase
Now we're talking. This is where you would rightly expect the years of Sims development to kick in and really push Spore to a new level, and set the scene for the final two stages. Unfortunately the Tribal Phase suffers from Long Weekend Syndrome - it's barely started before it's over.
Basically, your nest from the Creature Phase has been transformed into a thriving village, which has a tribal hut as its centrepiece. From this hut, you can access building options which are limited at first, but become more comprehensive each time you either conquer or (you guessed it) socialise with other tribes. It's the same general concept as the Creature Phase, but with a thin veneer of complexity brushed over the surface to keep your attention piqued.
You start with a tribal leader who can issue special attack commands such as launching fire bombs, or setting a trap to entice wildlife. Other tribal members can be selected in typical RTS fashion by dragging a box around them with your mouse and clicking on various environmental objects to issue orders. You can order a bunch of your brethren to attack a grazing creature and harvest food, which is then taken back to your village on amusingly detailed silver platters, and the food is required to either hatch more villagers, create new structures or feed existing members of your tribe.
The Creature Creator is no longer used to modify your creature directly, as your bodily appearance is now set for the rest of the game, however you do get a fantastic clothing editor which allows you to outfit your clan members with some fairly outrageous attire. From grass skirts to handlebar moustaches, again Maxis has given players another reason to stick around and have some fun.
Combat is very much standard RTS fare; once you've reached your creature limit (starting at five and eventually topping out at twelve) you can initiate an attack on a rival village, assuming you can't be bothered with the diplomatic route. To assist you, you can build structures granting you new weapons, such as hand axes or throwing spears, which each member of your tribe must visit in turn to outfit the requisite weapon. It's important to remember to feed your band of thugs before attempting warfare, as it's difficult to break from combat to do so, and ensuring that they have maximum heath is simply a matter of standing them in your town square to heal for a while.
To destroy an enemy village, you must take out their tribal hut, which has a hitpoint value associated with it. If you manage to kill all the creatures inhabiting the village then it's a foregone conclusion, and after a couple of minutes your tribe will have dealt enough damage to knock it over and remove the village from the game. There are a series of villages you can either destroy or socialise with, and how you go about progressing will shape your tribe's attitude for the future stages.
As I had most luck in the early game by killing everything I came across, I continued this trend with the Tribal Phase and managed to advance by destroying every village. At the ending cinematic, my creatures increased their sentience to the point that bubble images appeared over their heads, and they started to communicate with each other. As I'd chosen war, these images consisted of tanks and nuclear mushroom clouds, a nice touch and really quite well thought out. Just like the random UFO that appeared halfway through the phase and abducted a creature I was about to harvest.
By far the shortest of the land-based phases, it would have been nice to have stuck around for a bit longer.
Civilization Phase
This phase borrows heavily from many other titles and plays out in a similar fashion to the Tribal phase, albeit on a global scale. Your city is one of many that are rapidly popping up all over the map, and it's up to you as to how you will progress to the next phase - either by an economic, religious or military victory. Your city can support various buildings such as houses and factories, and their proximity to each other dictates happiness and revenue gathering.
The unit of currency has now changed to the Sporebuck, and in order to obtain enough to produce military units in bulk you'll need to (yes, Dune fans, you guessed it) harvest spice. Spice plumes have existed since the Creature phase, but until now have not had any practical application. You can capture them by moving a land based unit nearby and setting up a harvest facility on top of the plume; it's all very simple and nothing we haven't seen a dozen times before. Indeed, it's rather like trekking through a back-catalogue of EA's Command & Conquer series. A military victory is as simple as obtaining spice plumes, pumping out units and marching them to the nearest enemy city.
There are some intricacies, as you can't build top-end military units such as fighter planes until you've captured six cities, so you need to use your tanks to accomplish this first. You also have access to super-weapons such as "mighty bombs" with an increased blast radius, and towards the end of the phase, ICBMs. As always, each building and military unit you pump out is based on a template that you yourself have engineered in the Creature Creator, so if you're an artistic soul you'll probably spend more time creating than playing.
As I was pursuing a military victory, I simply took a bunch of cities and spice plumes and waited until I had enough Sporebucks to hit the ICBM button, which took out every other enemy city on the planet and pushed me into the Space phase.
Of course, you can progress by charming your enemies, and their attitude towards you is measured by a progress bar that tracks such matters as "you fought our enemy", and "your nation is too big", allocating a positive or negative score to your state of relations. You can simply earn enough money to buy off your enemy outright as well, and as usual your decisions will set the scene for what kind of benefits you'll gain when you pass into the next phase. It's little wonder then that I managed to pick up the "Warrior Passion" label, although what this actually did was not explained.
Those looking for an Age of Empires fix, or people who are engrossed by the Civilization franchise are not going to come back and play this over and over. It's a stepping stone, it's extremely basic and by itself would rate fairly poorly as an RTS game. I'm also going to have to complain about the unit selection here, it's a real pain having flying units that all occupy a different altitude and require you to zoom out to group.
The Civilization phase is so thin on the ground that it makes Empire Earth III look good. But fortunately it doesn't go on for very long.
