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

Dominionix · 09-09-2008, 10:16 PM

A Guide To Aggressive Races Trying To Suceed In Space But Just Being Attacked Constantly

The story so far:

I got the game on the day of release in the UK. Having been a reasonable fan of Maxis games (mainly the Sim City’s / Sims games) released so far, I had been following the development of Spore for around a year with great interest. I want to state now, that I what I am trying to give you all here is simply a guide focusing on the space stage (primarily from an aggressive stance). There is a lot that I haven’t worked out myself yet, and I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I have worked out how to make this game playable again. Most people don’t seem to have encountered any problems up until space, so there’s no point in me telling you how to suck eggs. I fully agree that this game needs some serious tweaking / patching to resolve the gaming / technical problems that seem to have over-shadowed the brilliance and depth this game achieves.

The problem:

Like most, I quickly got through the early stages (around 4-6 hours of playing) and got to the space stage. Having developed a carnivorous race that had maxed stats in every single one of its fighting abilities (as well as jump and glide), the first thing I did was go and kick the #@$% out of the nearest empire I could find. Inevitably, this resulted in the constant attacks you read so many posts about, and achieving a mission was simply a write off. So where did it all go wrong? Up until now, I had the best attacking statistics possible, and the rival tribes / cities were less than a challenge to be honest (in fact I was defeating epic monsters in the creature stage). Surely my strongest trait would be offense? Well it is, but it all comes down to how you use it.

The strategy:

The way you need to think about this is simple. If you run up and poke a lion in the eye armed with nothing more than a small stick, there is a fairly good chance you won’t get a chance to tell you friends about it. The same applies to the space stage…

On the other side of the coin, if you make friends with the lion, eat everything in the jungle until you are so big that in the time it takes you to turn around you’ve aged a year. And then go out and buy a tank whilst the lion is sleeping thinking you are his best buddy o’ pal, only for him to wake up and find the only thing on the menu tonight is a rump steak fresh from the ‘King of the jungle’ himself. Well, there is a fairly good chance you will have some stories to take home.

When you start in space, your home planet is surrounded (mainly) by 3-4 other empires. These empires will be of different types, based on the earlier stages of the game. And depending on what type they are, will roughly predict their behavior. You will more than likely have the following:

1 aggressive species: The carnivore during the earlier stages, and the warrior class now that they are in space. This empire will be the most aggressive and give you the most problems to begin with, but if befriended, will become an asset. These are easily identified by the phrases used when talking to them in their home systems via the comms link. Things such as “what could a pathetic empire like yours possibly offer to the great empire that is...”. You see where I’m going with this. If you see the attack warning flash up early on, chances are it’s this lot.

1 religious species: These were the omnivores in the earlier stages, and the ‘medium’ now in space. They will be a mix of both trade and aggression based intent, and will cause you a few problems in the earlier stages, but no where near as much as the aggressive. These are most easily identified by the comments regarding your “belief” and “the almighty one” etc etc.

1 friendly species: These guys are rarely going to launch raids on you or make demands for cash unless you pee in their drinking water (attack them…). They will however be easily pleased and happy to allow you to form trade routes with their systems, which they will later offer to sell you.

1 random species: One of the above, but whichever this one is, it will not share as many borders with you as the other three do. This is the one you want to pretty much ignore unless it gives you any problems. Chances are it won’t…

You also need to very quickly identify these races so you know what you are dealing with when you move / expand in any particular direction.

First things first, and I can’t stress this enough. When you get to space (and I mean literally, as soon as you get there), save the game. There is no auto-save in this game (which a lot of people have moaned about) but frankly, the fact it hasn’t auto-saved has saved my bacon on many occasion. Once saved, play a couple of hours in space without saving. Get used to terraforming, building colonies, and the best ways to trade / make money / upgrade your ship. Work out what you need to prioritize and what was a total waste of time / cash. If in these few hours you have had nothing but success, then by all means save the game. Chances are you will have blown those precious few starting funds on unnecessary items / upgrades and will now be struggling for cash. Well not to worry, quit the game (without saving) and load it back at the start of space. 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…

Once in space, do the very first few basic missions from you home planet and a couple from the other empires for some quick cash. If you get to any mission that mentions attacking another race (even if the mission is given to you by lalalalalala), refuse it (this rule applies for all missions up until the end of this guide). I am going to say this once and only once… ***DO NOT ATTACK ANY OF THE OTHER EMPIRES***. I know what your thinking. I bought this game so I could abuse those cute and fluffy characters created by 12 year old girls. Well you can, but not for a while yet.

When you start in space, every other empire will be bigger than you. You annoy any of them, whether they be trade, religion or warrior, then they will end you. And probably have a laugh doing it too.

Using the cash from your earlier missions, have a look round the local systems for a planet in the tribal / civilization stages and not owned by an empire. You are looking for a T3 planet (chances are it will be in the civilization stage if its T3). Don’t worry about what resource this planet provides, it doesn’t matter at the moment. Right now we are worried about quantity not quality. Now use you tiny-winy little laser to one by one blast the cities off the map. Do this by hovering over them at the highest height it will allow you to target them. The reason for this is you will be out of range of the turrets around the edges, which will blow a low level ship to pieces in a few seconds.

Now you will notice you are very quickly running out of energy to use the laser. In fact to begin with, you will probably only be able to kill one of the cities before you need to tuck-tail and head home to recharge (don’t forget you need to leave energy to use your warp between star systems). Go back to your home planet, recharge for free (ignoring any missions they offer you) and come back and do the same again. Do this until the planet is down to only two cities (and make sure the two you leave belong to different colours). There is a reason for this. If you destroy everything and leave to go recharge or do whatever, another empire will take it over (yes this happened to me…). And the only way you are getting it off them is by upsetting them, which we really don’t want to do right now.

Once there are only two cities left, shoot those down to around 300 health each, and then go home and recharge. Whilst recharging, buy a insta-colony pack thingy. This is gonna seem like a lot of money at the time (probably 150k from your home planet, but if you have made friends with the other empires enough by now you may be able to get it for around 90k from one of them), but believe me, this will seem like pennies later on. Go back to the T3 planet, wipe out the remaining cities, and use your colony pack. 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…). By taking T3 planets you don’t need to use any cash on terra-forming. You can stick colonies straight on it (3 of them). Once you have 3, you will be able to collect a maximum of 15 portions of whatever resource from this planet at a time (done simply by visiting it). Now you may be thinking “15!?!? Why the hell did I just waste all that time taking over a planet to make a measly 15 when my home planet can have 50!!!”, well I’ll tell you. In the time it takes your home planet to make 2-4 portions of resource, this will make the full 15. I’m not entirely sure why this is, but they do seem to produce much much quicker.

Now in the time it has taken you to do this, you will have been attacked a few times, had a few ecological disasters, and possibly frayed relations slightly with some of the surrounding empires. Well don’t worry, because you are about to fix all that.

With your stack of resources, go traveling to different stars and clicking on the trade option to see what price they will offer you for your resources. Stars owned by the same empire will vary massively in the price they offer you, even if they are right next to each other (and you can even find really good prices in systems owned by you), so don’t be afraid to check them all. Try to find a system that is offering 9k+ a unit. The highest I’ve managed to find so far is around 18.5k per unit. Now there are two massive benefits here. Firstly, you are going to make a ton of cash. Second, if you trade the resources with stars belonging to other empires, they like you more! It’s win win!!!

Also spend some time doing missions for the other empires, and occasionally stop to have a look at what they like you the most for. Now I feel this is a good time to tell you that you will need to bribe them at some point. So get over the idea you won’t need to just give you cash away to make them happy, because you will. But use this as the final tactic to push them to super-happy status so you have as much of an opportunity as possible to build up your current empire with cash (which will still be short at the mo).

Eventually, using a combination of trade, missions and bribing you will get the other empires to a stage that they will accept an alliance and trade routes. I’ve also noticed that trade routes (even if you don’t want to buy the star from the other empire) which are available at the stage prior to super-happy seem to lower attacks from them, so get them where you can. Don’t worry, it doesn’t lower how many resources your colonies in those systems produce (at least I don’t think it does…).

I would also advise focusing on one empire at a time, to get your alliances built up. Whilst doing this, do nothing more than keep the other empires tolerant of you (the yellow face) simply so they don’t attack you whenever you enter their space and you can get on with missions easily. Don’t try and please them all because you will just end up skint. Once you are allied with an empire, you need nothing more than the occasional visit and saving them from an economic disaster to keep them happy. If they get attacked by anyone, don’t bother helping. It will lower the happiness of the empire that is attacking them with you, and you don’t want any fighting yet.

Eventually, all 3-4 of the surrounding empires will be your allies, and you will have colonized several systems too (using the tactics mentioned earlier for finding T3 planets). Now this isn’t quick. This will take you a good 10-12 hours of playing to reach this stage, if not more. If this isn’t your cup of tea, then I suggest you get back on the Spore forums and carry on *****ing at EA in the hope they patch the game sometime soon (not likely to happen). You will also have a very nice buffer between your empire and any others that are not so friendly, including the Grot.

Once you do reach this stage however, you can pretty much go un-attacked (with the exception of pirates, which actually can be quite beneficial because they drop a fair amount of cash…) and maybe a few eco-disasters you need to rush back for. Now is your time to prosper. Grab some resources, trade them for some cash, and upgrade everything to your hearts content, making sure you keep you allies happy enough that they don’t disband the alliances you worked so hard for. My ship now has the highest level of everything, including ships flying around me from allies, to the “mega” level weapons. And I’ve colonized around 12 T3 planets which all have extra spice storage on them (increases storage to 30). In the time it takes me to fly around all the systems the first one has pretty much filled up all 30 slots again, and I’ve got near infinite resources to trade and make cash for, at around 1.4-2 million+ a stack (99 resources).

So after all that, guess what! You get to go do what you wanted to do 14 hours of playing ago. Kick the #@$% out of something!!! My advice, use the same tactics you used for taking on civilized planets, don’t bother shooting enemy ships they just respawn. As you get to the planets, zone in, call in pirates or whatever else you have to hand that is going to keep enemy ships off you, and pound the town halls of any cities you find. Retreat to repair / re-energize as and when necessary. You will now be wiping out empires pretty quick, and the only real challenge you will encounter will be the home worlds.

The conclusion (at last, sorry about the length…):

I hope this helps everything who is sick of being attacked every 30 seconds, and I know it’s not necessarily “fun” to begin with, but if you look back to the SimCity games, they were always very tactical and took time to build up.

I think the issue here is that the space stage was advertised as a sandbox environment, where players could carve their own game, and the majority have found themselves very restricted. But the reason they have found themselves restricted is because they were the ones who carved their game without realizing it, by poking lions and not knowing what lions do when poked (yeah, yeah, I’ll shut up about the lions!). Anyway, like I say, this was simply a rough guide for those of you who have really struggled to get a hold on the space stage due to the constant attacks. Any questions, please ask, I’ll do my best!

Regards,

Dominionix

Kathremar · 09-09-2008, 10:32 PM

Good guide, very informative.

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

2p0rk · 09-09-2008, 10:47 PM

Good tips, thanks! I especially like your shortcut method to getting T3 colonies!

adbe · 09-09-2008, 10:53 PM

That was a very good guide, thank you. Keep up the good work!

jamessixsixsix · 09-09-2008, 11:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by adbe

That was a very good guide, thank you. Keep up the good work!

what he said

.

Sulako · 09-09-2008, 11:48 PM

this has been a great help, i can start game #4 now and hope to progress past the first few hours. Thanks.

Deside · 09-09-2008, 11:58 PM

Ye Gods I wish I'd have known this earlier. I've now basically got to mothball my precious first civilization until they bring some kind of patch out because I'm getting attacked from all sides just because I stole a few artifacts from someone...

Sithjedimatt · 10-09-2008, 12:23 AM

Something to add, When you get more money, bribing allies to attack people is very useful, you can easily take out a stronger enemy for a little extra cash.

Triyujin · 10-09-2008, 07:55 AM

really nice guide

im gonna start a new planet and use the advice u gave in that guide

Xatso · 10-09-2008, 09:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dominionix

Once in space, do the very first few basic missions from you home planet and a couple from the other empires for some quick cash. If you get to any mission that mentions attacking another race (even if the mission is given to you by lalalalalala), refuse it (this rule applies for all missions up until the end of this guide). I am going to say this once and only once… ***DO NOT ATTACK ANY OF THE OTHER EMPIRES***. I know what your thinking. I bought this game so I could abuse those cute and fluffy characters created by 12 year old girls. Well you can, but not for a while yet.

Eventually, all 3-4 of the surrounding empires will be your allies, and you will have colonized several systems too (using the tactics mentioned earlier for finding T3 planets). Now this isn’t quick. This will take you a good 10-12 hours of playing to reach this stage, if not more. If this isn’t your cup of tea, then I suggest you get back on the Spore forums and carry on *****ing at EA in the hope they patch the game sometime soon (not likely to happen). You will also have a very nice buffer between your empire and any others that are not so friendly, including the Grot.

Dominionix have given probably the golden rules of playing Spore's space stage.

I have played 3 different races (Military / economic / Diplomatic) with the tactic stated above, and you know what? Hardly any attacks apart from the pirates who is taken apart by my uber turrets.

The only time when I get constantly attacked again is if I decide to take out an uncooperative aggressive race - but then again I am prepared for them and stand strong with my allies

SkywalkerPL · 10-09-2008, 09:27 AM

Well, to be honest - I played same way first time - only missions, then bit of diplomacy, no attacks on enemy - and all I got was 3 empires trying to attack me o_O

Lucky next time I managed to make all empires around me friends (I made missions for them) and now I got quite lot attacks, about 3 per 15 minutes, but still I got cash to make my ship bigger, and better, got time to terraform planets, got time to make missions, and got 3 ships of escort, so in fact - the game is still fun

nin9abadga · 10-09-2008, 09:58 AM

something else i discovered last night is to get aggressive back. the smaller outlying colonies are fairly easy to bomb to bits (once you get the bomb, i can't remember if you start with it?) and the more of the enemies colonies you take out the weaker they become. plus you can either keep the colonies or destroy them.

granted though, you have to earn some money to buy weapons and stuff which isn't easy

Alowan · 10-09-2008, 01:13 PM

A tip for pirates is to build a dummy colony with no defense - it will lure the pirates there and serve as a ground zero for pirate attacks, thereby keeping them off larger colonies..

Regina · 10-09-2008, 01:36 PM

I can't wait to leave the office so I can start a new game follwoing your rules. I was getting nowhere in Space - I hadn't really attacked anyone, but I had been stealing Spice and artifacts from other civs

SharonQ27 · 10-09-2008, 01:40 PM

Thanks for this guide. I'm sure I'll find it very useful now I'm at the space stage

Drachmodian · 10-09-2008, 01:55 PM

Good ideas thanks for posting your thoughts

decaprime · 10-09-2008, 04:29 PM

Thanks for the info, but what advice do you give for the people who are already under constant attack. I started into space with the mindset that i'd try to be 'nice' to everyone, I quickly made an alliance and was making money slowly and learning the ins and outs of space. Then a race that i'd never seen started sending me those "pay us or we'll destroy you messages", I said no- even when I had the money (I didn't realize that they were not empty threats).

I continued on, now I have 2 allies and 3 at war with me, i've stopped expanding my colonies because i'm wedged inbetween the waring species and the further out I make them the more they just get attacked.

I've upgraded my ship a bit, I have the titled of 'The Celebrated' I believe, and I do really like the species that i've made, I don't want to just give up and scrap it and start a new game.

Am I fighting an uphill battle, or should I just start a new game from scratch? What happens if I just let them kill all my colonies? Is there a way to retain all the badges/ranks I have and still get a clean slate?

bloodystump · 10-09-2008, 04:46 PM

Great advice!

Just want to add something i've been using in my *cough* pacifist style space game.

"Demand 150k from me will you!? I have better things to spend my money on..."

I had two ally races and two enemy races. I paid each friendly system to take out adjacent enemy systems. I wiped out both enemies completely without firing a shot (they didn't even know they were being annihilated by my indirect hand). Sure it cost me 40k for each "contract" and it delayed my hoarding of riches but now i'm free to go about my business.

It's funny watching an evil overlord slowly turning friendly as his empire dwindles and sputters out.

Dominionix · 10-09-2008, 05:23 PM

Decaprime:

To be honest with you, I never tried too hard to work my way out of the war situation, and it can be very difficult mainly because you don't ever get a chance to build up your resources. From what I've heard from others, you can use your allies to attack your enemies with a fair amount of success, and for much less money than the enemy will demand of you in "tribute". I would also assume that if you get lalalalalala to attack an enemy, it will lower the rate of attacks (or maybe even stop them altogether) from that enemy. If you are at war with more empires than you can handle alone, perhaps this would be the best approach.

The only down side I can see to this approach is that your ally will (once they have destroyed whoever you asked them to attack) have a considerably larger empire. And at some point you are probably going to want to take them on too.

With regards to restarting, this game is reasonably balanced, so there will be ways for you to get out of the situation (all be it, they may be long and painful). The option to end a war by buying your way out will also work, if you can get the funds. How much they demand to end the war depends on how much you have upset them I think (ie. if its the really red face, then they are gonna demand a lot of cash). My advice would be, pick the empire asking the least amount of money to end the conflict, build up the money by trading resources to your allies as quickly as possible, and then pay them. Once you have done this, I believe it returns you to the "average" status (with the yellow face), which will open up missions for them again. Do some quick missions to get you slightly in to their good books, and then concetrate on the remaining enemy (wiping him out). Or... if you can make the cash, pay them both to stop the war. Although dont forget the option of paying your allies, it will be much cheaper.

Others may be more experienced than me in this side of the game, and may have far better solutions for you, but hope that helps.

Regards,

Dominionix

Thiosk · 10-09-2008, 05:32 PM

If you are in trouble in space, and by trouble i mean 3 enemies attacking you constantly, you might be in for it. Im not sure my strategy will work for that unless you have a big cash cow and your upgraded ship included new weapons.

If you however have a couple allies, and only one angry enemy empire, AND you have a modest cash flow, you can probably get out of it.

Don't bother attacking enemy homeworlds; in my opinion, early on, it will take FoReVeR to put a dent in them. So, drop some atmosphere generators or destroyers on the planet and turn their precious T3 Homeworld into a barren rock. You can easily reterraform it later when you get better tools.

Shutting down the enemy empire is the only way to make it. You need the middle-of-the-road missiles at a bare minimum, or the guards will eat you up before you manage to put a dent in their defenses. Crush those outer, easy colonies to get them off your back. Fly back and defend some more, recharge, then back into the ray with repair packs and allied ships.

Eventually, the enemy *will* capitulate, and you'll be free to recover from the war. Usually after burning their capital world to the ground with meteor strikes or the like.

Unlike other space games, losing colonies isn't a big deal-- if they are not your cash cow colonies.

ONE colony that produces a lot of pink or purple spice will fund all of your adventures; sell it for 30k + per unit at a minimum. If your other colonies get eaten up, you lose nothing but pride and the time spent pruning them.

SO, you don't have to rush around defending everything. once you get worlds with 8 turrets around the cities, the pirates are no longer a significant concern.

Dominionix · 10-09-2008, 07:03 PM

Also, I forgot to mention earlier. I would love to hear other peoples strategies for space. Is there a way to go very quickly in to an aggressive stance and still achieve a decent colony / game without constant attacks? Got a better suggestion than the one I provided? Please share!

Dominionix

Sarus · 11-09-2008, 02:37 PM

First ill just say this guide is great, thanks for taking the time.

Iv noticed that when selecting different stars on the full galaxy view that some of them have a little star with a number inside of them thats on the description next to the name of the star. Does anyone know what that stands for like maybe the power of the empire that owns it or something. Any ideas?

Emohoe · 11-09-2008, 04:03 PM

I <3 this guide third time playing spore through to space stage and I FINALLY have a usable game where everything isn't blowing up every 3 seconds.

Even better than that this guide is modest on how easy it can make things.

On one of the first space missions from home I gained a trade route with 1 empire and quickly formed an alliance. On my way to find a t3 planet I found a 2nd empire and in stopping off their to reach my t3 world I sold my spices and gained a 2nd trade route. By the time I had made my t3 planet I had a 2nd alliance resulting in access to the mini happy ray.

Now with this bad boy as soon as I found a 3rd empire I could fire it upon them (though it took a couple of trips) and moved them to like me enough to allow a trade route.

Amazing guide that will get you going in space then using its methods and the happy ray you can avoid making enemies all together.

Plus I found a loophole to keep your allies happy - when they get attacked by pirates or grox fly to their planet and get all the way into the planet. Then simply fly away without fighting, once the battle is over they will thank you for helping.

decaprime · 11-09-2008, 04:31 PM

Since last writing about my problem with being surrounded by 3 waring nations i'm happy to report that i'm safely out of it, i've been promoted all the way, have 30+ million at my disposal, 25+ alliances and only really have to fight Groxx and explore more towards the center of the galaxy. (I played a lot yesterday

)

Basically what I did to recover is first I allied all of the neighboring 'friendly' species, bribed them, did a mission, established a trade route then allied them. The allies were key because they provide a ton of buffer room. What I found was instead of all of my colonies being attacked at once, my homeplanet would be attacked along with my allies wanting help, I could just take care of my homeplanet and ignore the rest giving me time to actually accomplish things.

The next thing I did was identify which species would be the easiest of the 3 to wipe out, I dumped all of my money into the biggest bomb available and set off into the smallest waring species territory. I would zerg into their planet and just bomb their bases and take the money from destroying it. (get enemies to chase you->outrun them->dive->bomb->loot->leave->repair->repeat)
After clearing 4-5 systems, I felt like I had a lot more breathing room, in clearing I found some systems that were actually worth teraforming and colonizing I made quick work to get T3 colonies on green,pink, and purple spice producing planets. I played the trader game until I had enough money to buy all the tools available to me and then until I had all of the trading badges.

Money made the difference, after being decked out and having a secured cash flow I was able to push back the other waring species, I ended up destroying them completely. I unlocked the spice storage and uber turret, put them on each of my colonies while finding more places to sell my spice at insane amounts.

Basically:
-You need allies to survive
-You need money to win

Will-ko · 21-09-2008, 02:53 PM

Great read, really good job. I'm glad someone took the time to write this, it was needed!

Urgh now I have to go and take one of my enemies homeworlds again...
Spent a good amount of time taking it keeping as many cities intact as I could only for the game to crash after upgrading all the cites and zooming out... Sigh.

09-09-2008, 10:16 PM	#1 (permalink)
Dominionix Rookie Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 5	Space Stage Guide: Constant attacks? Can't get anywhere? This might help you! A Guide To Aggressive Races Trying To Suceed In Space But Just Being Attacked Constantly The story so far: I got the game on the day of release in the UK. Having been a reasonable fan of Maxis games (mainly the Sim City’s / Sims games) released so far, I had been following the development of Spore for around a year with great interest. I want to state now, that I what I am trying to give you all here is simply a guide focusing on the space stage (primarily from an aggressive stance). There is a lot that I haven’t worked out myself yet, and I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I have worked out how to make this game playable again. Most people don’t seem to have encountered any problems up until space, so there’s no point in me telling you how to suck eggs. I fully agree that this game needs some serious tweaking / patching to resolve the gaming / technical problems that seem to have over-shadowed the brilliance and depth this game achieves. The problem: Like most, I quickly got through the early stages (around 4-6 hours of playing) and got to the space stage. Having developed a carnivorous race that had maxed stats in every single one of its fighting abilities (as well as jump and glide), the first thing I did was go and kick the #@$% out of the nearest empire I could find. Inevitably, this resulted in the constant attacks you read so many posts about, and achieving a mission was simply a write off. So where did it all go wrong? Up until now, I had the best attacking statistics possible, and the rival tribes / cities were less than a challenge to be honest (in fact I was defeating epic monsters in the creature stage). Surely my strongest trait would be offense? Well it is, but it all comes down to how you use it. The strategy: The way you need to think about this is simple. If you run up and poke a lion in the eye armed with nothing more than a small stick, there is a fairly good chance you won’t get a chance to tell you friends about it. The same applies to the space stage… On the other side of the coin, if you make friends with the lion, eat everything in the jungle until you are so big that in the time it takes you to turn around you’ve aged a year. And then go out and buy a tank whilst the lion is sleeping thinking you are his best buddy o’ pal, only for him to wake up and find the only thing on the menu tonight is a rump steak fresh from the ‘King of the jungle’ himself. Well, there is a fairly good chance you will have some stories to take home. When you start in space, your home planet is surrounded (mainly) by 3-4 other empires. These empires will be of different types, based on the earlier stages of the game. And depending on what type they are, will roughly predict their behavior. You will more than likely have the following: 1 aggressive species: The carnivore during the earlier stages, and the warrior class now that they are in space. This empire will be the most aggressive and give you the most problems to begin with, but if befriended, will become an asset. These are easily identified by the phrases used when talking to them in their home systems via the comms link. Things such as “what could a pathetic empire like yours possibly offer to the great empire that is...”. You see where I’m going with this. If you see the attack warning flash up early on, chances are it’s this lot. 1 religious species: These were the omnivores in the earlier stages, and the ‘medium’ now in space. They will be a mix of both trade and aggression based intent, and will cause you a few problems in the earlier stages, but no where near as much as the aggressive. These are most easily identified by the comments regarding your “belief” and “the almighty one” etc etc. 1 friendly species: These guys are rarely going to launch raids on you or make demands for cash unless you pee in their drinking water (attack them…). They will however be easily pleased and happy to allow you to form trade routes with their systems, which they will later offer to sell you. 1 random species: One of the above, but whichever this one is, it will not share as many borders with you as the other three do. This is the one you want to pretty much ignore unless it gives you any problems. Chances are it won’t… You also need to very quickly identify these races so you know what you are dealing with when you move / expand in any particular direction. First things first, and I can’t stress this enough. When you get to space (and I mean literally, as soon as you get there), save the game. There is no auto-save in this game (which a lot of people have moaned about) but frankly, the fact it hasn’t auto-saved has saved my bacon on many occasion. Once saved, play a couple of hours in space without saving. Get used to terraforming, building colonies, and the best ways to trade / make money / upgrade your ship. Work out what you need to prioritize and what was a total waste of time / cash. If in these few hours you have had nothing but success, then by all means save the game. Chances are you will have blown those precious few starting funds on unnecessary items / upgrades and will now be struggling for cash. Well not to worry, quit the game (without saving) and load it back at the start of space. 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… Once in space, do the very first few basic missions from you home planet and a couple from the other empires for some quick cash. If you get to any mission that mentions attacking another race (even if the mission is given to you by lalalalalala), refuse it (this rule applies for all missions up until the end of this guide). I am going to say this once and only once… *DO NOT ATTACK ANY OF THE OTHER EMPIRES. I know what your thinking. I bought this game so I could abuse those cute and fluffy characters created by 12 year old girls. Well you can, but not for a while yet. When you start in space, every other empire will be bigger than you. You annoy any of them, whether they be trade, religion or warrior, then they will end you. And probably have a laugh doing it too. Using the cash from your earlier missions, have a look round the local systems for a planet in the tribal / civilization stages and not owned by an empire. You are looking for a T3 planet (chances are it will be in the civilization stage if its T3). Don’t worry about what resource this planet provides, it doesn’t matter at the moment. Right now we are worried about quantity not quality. Now use you tiny-winy little laser to one by one blast the cities off the map. Do this by hovering over them at the highest height it will allow you to target them. The reason for this is you will be out of range of the turrets around the edges, which will blow a low level ship to pieces in a few seconds. Now you will notice you are very quickly running out of energy to use the laser. In fact to begin with, you will probably only be able to kill one of the cities before you need to tuck-tail and head home to recharge (don’t forget you need to leave energy to use your warp between star systems). Go back to your home planet, recharge for free (ignoring any missions they offer you) and come back and do the same again. Do this until the planet is down to only two cities (and make sure the two you leave belong to different colours). There is a reason for this. If you destroy everything and leave to go recharge or do whatever, another empire will take it over (yes this happened to me…). And the only way you are getting it off them is by upsetting them, which we really don’t want to do right now. Once there are only two cities left, shoot those down to around 300 health each, and then go home and recharge. Whilst recharging, buy a insta-colony pack thingy. This is gonna seem like a lot of money at the time (probably 150k from your home planet, but if you have made friends with the other empires enough by now you may be able to get it for around 90k from one of them), but believe me, this will seem like pennies later on. Go back to the T3 planet, wipe out the remaining cities, and use your colony pack. 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…). By taking T3 planets you don’t need to use any cash on terra-forming. You can stick colonies straight on it (3 of them). Once you have 3, you will be able to collect a maximum of 15 portions of whatever resource from this planet at a time (done simply by visiting it). Now you may be thinking “15!?!? Why the hell did I just waste all that time taking over a planet to make a measly 15 when my home planet can have 50!!!”, well I’ll tell you. In the time it takes your home planet to make 2-4 portions of resource, this will make the full 15. I’m not entirely sure why this is, but they do seem to produce much much quicker. Now in the time it has taken you to do this, you will have been attacked a few times, had a few ecological disasters, and possibly frayed relations slightly with some of the surrounding empires. Well don’t worry, because you are about to fix all that. With your stack of resources, go traveling to different stars and clicking on the trade option to see what price they will offer you for your resources. Stars owned by the same empire will vary massively in the price they offer you, even if they are right next to each other (and you can even find really good prices in systems owned by you), so don’t be afraid to check them all. Try to find a system that is offering 9k+ a unit. The highest I’ve managed to find so far is around 18.5k per unit. Now there are two massive benefits here. Firstly, you are going to make a ton of cash. Second, if you trade the resources with stars belonging to other empires, they like you more! It’s win win!!! Also spend some time doing missions for the other empires, and occasionally stop to have a look at what they like you the most for. Now I feel this is a good time to tell you that you will need to bribe them at some point. So get over the idea you won’t need to just give you cash away to make them happy, because you will. But use this as the final tactic to push them to super-happy status so you have as much of an opportunity as possible to build up your current empire with cash (which will still be short at the mo). Eventually, using a combination of trade, missions and bribing you will get the other empires to a stage that they will accept an alliance and trade routes. I’ve also noticed that trade routes (even if you don’t want to buy the star from the other empire) which are available at the stage prior to super-happy seem to lower attacks from them, so get them where you can. Don’t worry, it doesn’t lower how many resources your colonies in those systems produce (at least I don’t think it does…). I would also advise focusing on one empire at a time, to get your alliances built up. Whilst doing this, do nothing more than keep the other empires tolerant of you (the yellow face) simply so they don’t attack you whenever you enter their space and you can get on with missions easily. Don’t try and please them all because you will just end up skint. Once you are allied with an empire, you need nothing more than the occasional visit and saving them from an economic disaster to keep them happy. If they get attacked by anyone, don’t bother helping. It will lower the happiness of the empire that is attacking them with you, and you don’t want any fighting yet. Eventually, all 3-4 of the surrounding empires will be your allies, and you will have colonized several systems too (using the tactics mentioned earlier for finding T3 planets). Now this isn’t quick. This will take you a good 10-12 hours of playing to reach this stage, if not more. If this isn’t your cup of tea, then I suggest you get back on the Spore forums and carry on **ing at EA in the hope they patch the game sometime soon (not likely to happen). You will also have a very nice buffer between your empire and any others that are not so friendly, including the Grot. Once you do reach this stage however, you can pretty much go un-attacked (with the exception of pirates, which actually can be quite beneficial because they drop a fair amount of cash…) and maybe a few eco-disasters you need to rush back for. Now is your time to prosper. Grab some resources, trade them for some cash, and upgrade everything to your hearts content, making sure you keep you allies happy enough that they don’t disband the alliances you worked so hard for. My ship now has the highest level of everything, including ships flying around me from allies, to the “mega” level weapons. And I’ve colonized around 12 T3 planets which all have extra spice storage on them (increases storage to 30). In the time it takes me to fly around all the systems the first one has pretty much filled up all 30 slots again, and I’ve got near infinite resources to trade and make cash for, at around 1.4-2 million+ a stack (99 resources). So after all that, guess what! You get to go do what you wanted to do 14 hours of playing ago. Kick the #@$% out of something!!! My advice, use the same tactics you used for taking on civilized planets, don’t bother shooting enemy ships they just respawn. As you get to the planets, zone in, call in pirates or whatever else you have to hand that is going to keep enemy ships off you, and pound the town halls of any cities you find. Retreat to repair / re-energize as and when necessary. You will now be wiping out empires pretty quick, and the only real challenge you will encounter will be the home worlds. The conclusion (at last, sorry about the length…):** I hope this helps everything who is sick of being attacked every 30 seconds, and I know it’s not necessarily “fun” to begin with, but if you look back to the SimCity games, they were always very tactical and took time to build up. I think the issue here is that the space stage was advertised as a sandbox environment, where players could carve their own game, and the majority have found themselves very restricted. But the reason they have found themselves restricted is because they were the ones who carved their game without realizing it, by poking lions and not knowing what lions do when poked (yeah, yeah, I’ll shut up about the lions!). Anyway, like I say, this was simply a rough guide for those of you who have really struggled to get a hold on the space stage due to the constant attacks. Any questions, please ask, I’ll do my best! Regards, Dominionix

09-09-2008, 10:47 PM	#3 (permalink)
2p0rk Rookie Join Date: Jun 2008 Age: 33 Posts: 61	Good tips, thanks! I especially like your shortcut method to getting T3 colonies! __________________ My Sporepedia homepage

09-09-2008, 10:53 PM	#4 (permalink)
adbe Hi, I'm New! Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: England, Stockton-on-Tees Posts: 1	That was a very good guide, thank you. Keep up the good work! __________________ Spore Best Ever!

09-09-2008, 11:58 PM	#7 (permalink)
Deside Rookie Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Sussex, UK Age: 36 Posts: 76	Ye Gods I wish I'd have known this earlier. I've now basically got to mothball my precious first civilization until they bring some kind of patch out because I'm getting attacked from all sides just because I stole a few artifacts from someone... __________________

10-09-2008, 12:23 AM	#8 (permalink)
Sithjedimatt Rookie Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 80	Something to add, When you get more money, bribing allies to attack people is very useful, you can easily take out a stronger enemy for a little extra cash. __________________

09-09-2008, 10:32 PM	#2 (permalink)
Kathremar Rookie Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 45	Good guide, very informative. However, I never had problems with other empires (except Grox) hence constant raids from damn pirates.

09-09-2008, 11:48 PM	#6 (permalink)
Sulako Rookie Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 77	this has been a great help, i can start game #4 now and hope to progress past the first few hours. Thanks.

10-09-2008, 07:55 AM	#9 (permalink)
Triyujin Rookie Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 43	really nice guide im gonna start a new planet and use the advice u gave in that guide __________________ Expand Your Universe Spore Packs! Packs are updated Daily!

10-09-2008, 09:27 AM	#11 (permalink)
SkywalkerPL Rookie Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 89	Well, to be honest - I played same way first time - only missions, then bit of diplomacy, no attacks on enemy - and all I got was 3 empires trying to attack me o_O Lucky next time I managed to make all empires around me friends (I made missions for them) and now I got quite lot attacks, about 3 per 15 minutes, but still I got cash to make my ship bigger, and better, got time to terraform planets, got time to make missions, and got 3 ships of escort, so in fact - the game is still fun __________________ *I do NOT* endorse the Three Activations/SecuROM** View my SPORE creations! and leave comment. Thanks

10-09-2008, 09:58 AM	#12 (permalink)
nin9abadga Rookie Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 5	something else i discovered last night is to get aggressive back. the smaller outlying colonies are fairly easy to bomb to bits (once you get the bomb, i can't remember if you start with it?) and the more of the enemies colonies you take out the weaker they become. plus you can either keep the colonies or destroy them. granted though, you have to earn some money to buy weapons and stuff which isn't easy

10-09-2008, 01:13 PM	#13 (permalink)
Alowan Rookie Join Date: Jun 2008 Posts: 117	A tip for pirates is to build a dummy colony with no defense - it will lure the pirates there and serve as a ground zero for pirate attacks, thereby keeping them off larger colonies..

10-09-2008, 01:36 PM	#14 (permalink)
Regina Hi, I'm New! Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 1	Thanks I can't wait to leave the office so I can start a new game follwoing your rules. I was getting nowhere in Space - I hadn't really attacked anyone, but I had been stealing Spice and artifacts from other civs

10-09-2008, 01:40 PM	#15 (permalink)
SharonQ27 Forum Guru Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: UK Posts: 1,473	Thanks for this guide. I'm sure I'll find it very useful now I'm at the space stage __________________ My Spore Creatures! - My Sims 2 Profile!

10-09-2008, 01:55 PM	#16 (permalink)
Drachmodian Hi, I'm New! Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 1	Thanks for the info Good ideas thanks for posting your thoughts

10-09-2008, 04:29 PM	#17 (permalink)
decaprime Rookie Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 2	Thanks for the info, but... Thanks for the info, but what advice do you give for the people who are already under constant attack. I started into space with the mindset that i'd try to be 'nice' to everyone, I quickly made an alliance and was making money slowly and learning the ins and outs of space. Then a race that i'd never seen started sending me those "pay us or we'll destroy you messages", I said no- even when I had the money (I didn't realize that they were not empty threats). I continued on, now I have 2 allies and 3 at war with me, i've stopped expanding my colonies because i'm wedged inbetween the waring species and the further out I make them the more they just get attacked. I've upgraded my ship a bit, I have the titled of 'The Celebrated' I believe, and I do really like the species that i've made, I don't want to just give up and scrap it and start a new game. Am I fighting an uphill battle, or should I just start a new game from scratch? What happens if I just let them kill all my colonies? Is there a way to retain all the badges/ranks I have and still get a clean slate?

10-09-2008, 04:46 PM	#18 (permalink)
bloodystump Hi, I'm New! Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 1	Great advice! Just want to add something i've been using in my cough pacifist style space game. "Demand 150k from me will you!? I have better things to spend my money on..." I had two ally races and two enemy races. I paid each friendly system to take out adjacent enemy systems. I wiped out both enemies completely without firing a shot (they didn't even know they were being annihilated by my indirect hand). Sure it cost me 40k for each "contract" and it delayed my hoarding of riches but now i'm free to go about my business. It's funny watching an evil overlord slowly turning friendly as his empire dwindles and sputters out.

10-09-2008, 05:23 PM	#19 (permalink)
Dominionix Rookie Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 5	Decaprime: To be honest with you, I never tried too hard to work my way out of the war situation, and it can be very difficult mainly because you don't ever get a chance to build up your resources. From what I've heard from others, you can use your allies to attack your enemies with a fair amount of success, and for much less money than the enemy will demand of you in "tribute". I would also assume that if you get lalalalalala to attack an enemy, it will lower the rate of attacks (or maybe even stop them altogether) from that enemy. If you are at war with more empires than you can handle alone, perhaps this would be the best approach. The only down side I can see to this approach is that your ally will (once they have destroyed whoever you asked them to attack) have a considerably larger empire. And at some point you are probably going to want to take them on too. With regards to restarting, this game is reasonably balanced, so there will be ways for you to get out of the situation (all be it, they may be long and painful). The option to end a war by buying your way out will also work, if you can get the funds. How much they demand to end the war depends on how much you have upset them I think (ie. if its the really red face, then they are gonna demand a lot of cash). My advice would be, pick the empire asking the least amount of money to end the conflict, build up the money by trading resources to your allies as quickly as possible, and then pay them. Once you have done this, I believe it returns you to the "average" status (with the yellow face), which will open up missions for them again. Do some quick missions to get you slightly in to their good books, and then concetrate on the remaining enemy (wiping him out). Or... if you can make the cash, pay them both to stop the war. Although dont forget the option of paying your allies, it will be much cheaper. Others may be more experienced than me in this side of the game, and may have far better solutions for you, but hope that helps. Regards, Dominionix

10-09-2008, 05:32 PM	#20 (permalink)
Thiosk Rookie Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 6	If you are in trouble in space, and by trouble i mean 3 enemies attacking you constantly, you might be in for it. Im not sure my strategy will work for that unless you have a big cash cow and your upgraded ship included new weapons. If you however have a couple allies, and only one angry enemy empire, AND you have a modest cash flow, you can probably get out of it. Don't bother attacking enemy homeworlds; in my opinion, early on, it will take FoReVeR to put a dent in them. So, drop some atmosphere generators or destroyers on the planet and turn their precious T3 Homeworld into a barren rock. You can easily reterraform it later when you get better tools. Shutting down the enemy empire is the only way to make it. You need the middle-of-the-road missiles at a bare minimum, or the guards will eat you up before you manage to put a dent in their defenses. Crush those outer, easy colonies to get them off your back. Fly back and defend some more, recharge, then back into the ray with repair packs and allied ships. Eventually, the enemy will capitulate, and you'll be free to recover from the war. Usually after burning their capital world to the ground with meteor strikes or the like. Unlike other space games, losing colonies isn't a big deal-- if they are not your cash cow colonies. ONE colony that produces a lot of pink or purple spice will fund all of your adventures; sell it for 30k + per unit at a minimum. If your other colonies get eaten up, you lose nothing but pride and the time spent pruning them. SO, you don't have to rush around defending everything. once you get worlds with 8 turrets around the cities, the pirates are no longer a significant concern.

10-09-2008, 07:03 PM	#21 (permalink)
Dominionix Rookie Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 5	Also, I forgot to mention earlier. I would love to hear other peoples strategies for space. Is there a way to go very quickly in to an aggressive stance and still achieve a decent colony / game without constant attacks? Got a better suggestion than the one I provided? Please share! Dominionix

11-09-2008, 02:37 PM	#22 (permalink)
Sarus Rookie Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 5	First ill just say this guide is great, thanks for taking the time. Iv noticed that when selecting different stars on the full galaxy view that some of them have a little star with a number inside of them thats on the description next to the name of the star. Does anyone know what that stands for like maybe the power of the empire that owns it or something. Any ideas?

11-09-2008, 04:03 PM	#23 (permalink)
Emohoe Rookie Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 54	I <3 this guide third time playing spore through to space stage and I FINALLY have a usable game where everything isn't blowing up every 3 seconds. Even better than that this guide is modest on how easy it can make things. On one of the first space missions from home I gained a trade route with 1 empire and quickly formed an alliance. On my way to find a t3 planet I found a 2nd empire and in stopping off their to reach my t3 world I sold my spices and gained a 2nd trade route. By the time I had made my t3 planet I had a 2nd alliance resulting in access to the mini happy ray. Now with this bad boy as soon as I found a 3rd empire I could fire it upon them (though it took a couple of trips) and moved them to like me enough to allow a trade route. Amazing guide that will get you going in space then using its methods and the happy ray you can avoid making enemies all together. Plus I found a loophole to keep your allies happy - when they get attacked by pirates or grox fly to their planet and get all the way into the planet. Then simply fly away without fighting, once the battle is over they will thank you for helping.

11-09-2008, 04:31 PM	#24 (permalink)
decaprime Rookie Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 2	I've made some progress... Since last writing about my problem with being surrounded by 3 waring nations i'm happy to report that i'm safely out of it, i've been promoted all the way, have 30+ million at my disposal, 25+ alliances and only really have to fight Groxx and explore more towards the center of the galaxy. (I played a lot yesterday ) Basically what I did to recover is first I allied all of the neighboring 'friendly' species, bribed them, did a mission, established a trade route then allied them. The allies were key because they provide a ton of buffer room. What I found was instead of all of my colonies being attacked at once, my homeplanet would be attacked along with my allies wanting help, I could just take care of my homeplanet and ignore the rest giving me time to actually accomplish things. The next thing I did was identify which species would be the easiest of the 3 to wipe out, I dumped all of my money into the biggest bomb available and set off into the smallest waring species territory. I would zerg into their planet and just bomb their bases and take the money from destroying it. (get enemies to chase you->outrun them->dive->bomb->loot->leave->repair->repeat) After clearing 4-5 systems, I felt like I had a lot more breathing room, in clearing I found some systems that were actually worth teraforming and colonizing I made quick work to get T3 colonies on green,pink, and purple spice producing planets. I played the trader game until I had enough money to buy all the tools available to me and then until I had all of the trading badges. Money made the difference, after being decked out and having a secured cash flow I was able to push back the other waring species, I ended up destroying them completely. I unlocked the spice storage and uber turret, put them on each of my colonies while finding more places to sell my spice at insane amounts. Basically: -You need allies to survive -You need money to win

21-09-2008, 02:53 PM	#25 (permalink)
Will-ko Rookie Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 46	Great read, really good job. I'm glad someone took the time to write this, it was needed! Urgh now I have to go and take one of my enemies homeworlds again... Spent a good amount of time taking it keeping as many cities intact as I could only for the game to crash after upgrading all the cites and zooming out... Sigh.