Space Stage Guide: Constant attacks? Can't get anywhere? This might help you!

[EAUK_Aurora]

Thanks for posting this guide, Dominionix. I shall sticky it so that others may use it to help them also

[JohnConnor101]

Very good tip, Alowan - may try it myself. Another: you pass the first colonising mission wherever you place the colony - on a non-T0, red spicer world, for example. So the free colony pack needn't be a throwaway. I tried the same trick with the terraformer, but the creatures seemed more into going into orbit than colonising the new planet too. I'm going to try this again in case it's a one-off bug rather than tutorial compulsion.

Oh, and tell me if this is cheating, but I always save before missions, exiting and asking again if they're particularly stupid / destructive, rather than refusing them. You can say "goodbye" rather than "no" half the time too, and frankly, you don't have to run any missions at all to finish the game, tutorials aside.

[Mystus]

Nice guide. Well done.

[Kritorian]

Very good guide. I've been using this strategy in all my games but the newest except for the bit about taking over a T3 world which i never thought of. I guess it doesnt break galactic code if not using Gravity wave / pirate raid / other superpower? I'm definately going to try because as Decaprime says the key to warfare is money. You need to upgrade your ship to best available weaponry which costs money. It's no good fighting several empires at he same time if you ask me so bribe whoever you want to take over later to stop the war. Again money. You need to stock up on aoe repair and repair packs. Again money allthough not so much as the other bullet points.

Someone asked about how to end a war. To my knowledge there are 3 ways. You can keep killing and overtaking. Eventually they will surrender or you will have taken them over completely. Second option is to bribe them to stop. Third - and i'm not really sure but i think it should work - you can fight your way into some planet and use you joy beam or whatever it's called in english. You just need to get from red face to orange.

Again i'm not really sure if the joy beam strategy works but i see no reason it shouldnt.

Also this highligths the real trouble of war: If you have not yet got the joy beam (assuming it works to actually get from red face to orange) and do not have money or easy way to get money (lots of spice from colonized planets) then you only have one option left to end the war.

My latest game i decided to try a different strategy after having played though 4 games with colonizing / terraforming / spice trading strategy because i thought Maxis would have balanced the game so it is possible to actually play through space age with more than 1 option for strategy. So i never colonized more than the crappy 1 from the start missions and then left to explore worlds and try and make money on artefacts.

This was a game on hard mode which is like normal used to be. Meaning constant alerts of this and that and more empires that really don't like you. I made sure to do several missions for several surrounding empires and did quickly go on friendly turns with most of them and the strategy worked until around middle of the game. At this point i got attacked by an empire that didnt like me. Not an attack on my worlds but when entering a solar system very close to an empire that is orange towards you their ships will attack you and your autoblaster will kill them. I let my autoblaster kill them and entered their system to do a bribe. Now the mistake i did here was to let the autoblaster also finish off the 2 ships that attacked as i entered this system BECAUSE that was enough to turn this empire from orange to red which means war. Had it still been orange i could have done a bribe of 50k or 100k depending on how low their score was.

Now this war with very limited funds was extremely difficult for me. In hard more apparently my ship has only half the health as in normal mode. At the time this was 901 with the first upgrade. I had to struggle to defend my homeworld (quickly lost the other one i had). I had to go sell off the limited spice i had which did include some blue stuff from trade routes though and also try and get artefacts in between the attacks to make money for more upgrades. My homeworld was down to 2 cities left before i turned the tide and eventually destroyed this ******* completely.

At this point i'm at the ninth title and can say its actually possible to do this strategy but also that is even more important to keep good relations cos if war happens you might be scr*wed.

Long post but just thought it would be a nice addition to the OP

PS i'm just 1 damn rare jewel (or whatever they are called in english) away from having the full set of them. I wonder if full sets can be used for anything lol. Anyone know?

[Censmogar]

Please note, you can not restart the space stage. If you save that game and have made a mistake you can’t rectify, you will need to start from an amoeba again…

Awesome guide! It helped me out a lot. I just wanted to add that this is not entirely true. If you start a game in the space age with a creature that has gone through all evolutionary stages, that creature will still have all the abilities it earned throughout it's evolution. And because you can also select the buildings/vehicles you created you can basically start a new game where you left off. The only thing I had to recreate was the anthem but ah well.....

[Tharrg]

Congratulations, your first colony (except for that crappy one you were given earlier on teaching you terra-forming, which by the way is not worth wasting any cash on to develop…).

You do not need to place your first colony where they suggest (Its only a suggestion). So first thing look for a civilization stage civ and continue as given. Build your first colony in T3 world - you will get the benefit of completing the mission as well.

[Maldayne]

i used similar strategy but with one of my games prior to that i got attacked constantly non stop by two other empires that covered 90% of my boarders and a large amount of space. I decided ok this has to stop and with my weak *** ship no allies and trading for a little exra cash within an hour of grinding it i destoyed the one totally and the other idestroyed till they only had one planet and then they offered an alliance. admittedly this grinding was quite funn

[piratelordx]

Strange, I seem to be one of the few people who isn't getting harrassed during the space stage (I am a peaceful terraforming race). I can play for an hour and get perhaps 1-2 raids and an eco-disaster, with the occasional demand for money (potential enemy there I just can't seem to please) and small gifts of money. I've only had 2 grox events, both of which I've ignored.
Having recently brought the energy powered terraforming gear, I can now expand my empire really cheaply (I can get colonies for 75k), so I expect soon to encounter more resistance and get lots more events. Cash won't be a problem, terraforming every world I own near my homeworld will bring in a easy supply of cash. Currently after doing 1 T level of terraforming and travelling around my cluster, I can earn 400k at a time, spend say 200k of that on the new colony, constant profit that will increase.

[Cheesus333]

An incredible guide - you should do a full walkthrough of the game for GameFAQs or something. One point though - you said that if you go wrong, you can't restart the space stage and you have to go right back to Cell. That's only if you want one of the classes other than Wanderer and all thepowers; you can choose just to start from Space stage in the new game menu, altugh you won't get any abilities like Return Ticket or Pirates-b-gone

[MetroPolice]

Hmh... a normal post with a long guide became a sticky... now thats something wich i consider rare...

[Sweetcornminer]

My best tip for destroying a enemies homeworld is to totally wreck their enviroment. Drop it back to a T0 and you'll only need to take on two cities....

[Cryptosis]

Excellent guide, except I have no problems with this kind of thing.

I always start wars, and usely win them. The Grox don't really bother me as Ive sort of made an 'alliance' with them.

[FreezingMonkey]

Wow, great guide. You said the most you got for a spice was 18.5k? Once a colony paid me 87.9k per purple spice lol.

[wendyzee]

Yup - really good guide.
As this is the only place I have even found a mention of this, maybe u guys can help me out.
Is there a way to reset a stage? Any stage.
I find myself getting stuck on the civilization stage on Hard - getting to the point where i cant win.
Early on before i figured out that i can save (once only - and u stuck with it) i saved 2 different games in really bad spots.
There is no way out - i have tried.
So the result is my last city gets destroyed, and then it resets to the place i saved - from where it takes about 5 mins for the city to get tanked again!
One of these games i ended up deleting in frustration :-p
Is there a way to rescue the other one?

Thanks guys.

[1two1]

Really great advise!
But now I'm stuck, I've allied with the four epires around me, I've comleted all the missions(accept the destroy empires ones), I've collinised and bought about five other starsystems each and I dont know what to do next.
The last week I've been playing I havent progressed at all, all I have been doing was saving planets from ecodisaster and pirates.
What have I got to do to move on?

[Cobrastrike1765]

Well Spore at the spacestage is a sanbox ending as in, that it never ends even if you managed to colanize all of the planets you would still have the endless supply of pirate raids, and ecodisasters

There are some goals to achive such as getting to middle of galaxy, or getting all of the achievments.

Or you could try and find some of the easter eggs

Personally I quiet like the space stage a lot as I find it a lot more challenging than the other stages although sometimes it can get a bit hetic with about 5 odd events I need to solve to stop planets being lost

[adamiscool]

Originally Posted by Kathremar

Good guide, very informative.

However, I never had problems with other empires (except Grox) hence constant raids from damn pirates.

how do u reg game im gettin annoyed wit it

[adamiscool]

help me plz

[Secataal]

you gotta give people time to respond, 1 minute isnt long enuf

and what do u mean by how do u reg a game

[1two1]

Originally Posted by Cobrastrike1765

Well Spore at the spacestage is a sanbox ending as in, that it never ends even if you managed to colanize all of the planets you would still have the endless supply of pirate raids, and ecodisasters

There are some goals to achive such as getting to middle of galaxy, or getting all of the achievments.

Or you could try and find some of the easter eggs

Personally I quiet like the space stage a lot as I find it a lot more challenging than the other stages although sometimes it can get a bit hetic with about 5 odd events I need to solve to stop planets being lost

I know that the game is pretty much endless but i'm talken bout the progress bar, mine is only half way and i cant move on, i dont know what to do next

[decomposure89]

Originally Posted by 1two1

I know that the game is pretty much endless but i'm talken bout the progress bar, mine is only half way and i cant move on, i dont know what to do next

The progress bar shows how many badge points you own. The more you get, the more it fills. Every 2-3 "blocks" you can add another allied ship to your fleet. To get badge points, look at your "My Collection" window and you can see what badge levels you have and how close you are to earning another, and how many badge points they're worth.

Oh and also, the higher the badge level, the harder it is to achieve.

[magicdave]

To move your progress bar along, you have to earn badges, you can see what badges you havnt got and have yet to achieve by going into the My collections menu, from their choose the badges Tab, each badge will say what you have to do next to earn that badge.

[1two1]

Oh thanks,
I didnt understand the whole badges thing.
I was wondering why my game was was begining to get boring but now I can move it along,
Thanks again.

[Antharius]

I just ignore attacks now unless im in the mood

If i'm feeling a little annoyed at the constant cries for help (they don't deserve help if they can't help themselves) i'll goto the occasional Eco-Disater and use anti-matter bombs to kill the glowing creatures, unfortunatley I sometimes miss and hit the colonies due to a cheap mouse and bad camera programming.

Also, whats with the computer controlled species not attacking the Grox? I went to lalalalalala yesterday to ask/pay it to attack the Grox but they weren't on THE LIST so I didn't have any use for that species anymore. Waste of good Planet Busters......

[bradkal]

i was trying to be nice to them then thay started attacking me what the hell was that all about?