The Hitch-Hikers Guide to Spore

For a mainstream-friendly Will Wright game, Spore is sometimes bizarrely harsh, and leaves some of its basic mechanics entirely unexplained. It's rare to get through the Cell stage without being ripped to shreds and eaten, even on easy mode, and Creature mode can feel like a lonely place when the few remaining friendly species aren't impressed by your dancing. And God forbid you put a move wrong in your first ten minutes in Space that can cause a war your species will never recover from.

Part of it is that Spore isn't like other games. Dying isn't failure, it's the game's way of teaching you how you should evolve next. It doesn't introduce fish nineteen times bigger than you because they'll make balanced boss fights, but to simulate the fact that in nature, everything has something to flee from.

That's why the difficulty modes barely affect the game. Easy still throws unbeatable and permanently hostile super-monsters at you, and Hard is still full of defenseless prey, but means more hostile species at the Creature stage, which just means you have to kill instead of socialize. It's not harder, just less fun. Easy mode seems to have the largest effect on the Civ stage of the game, which is already the easiest. The result is that it's almost impossible to lose, and almost pointless to play.

So play on Normal, and follow these guiding principles, we learned the hard way so you don't have to.

A Tough Cell

Surviving the Cell stage of Spore is largely a question of spiky bits: specifically, where to put them. Spikes and beaks block incoming damage and dish it out to the fleshy bits of your opponents, so you need some on your front end.

It's helpful to have spikes on your 'shoulders', for twisting to stab other creatures' less-protected sides. Another pair on your backside makes you virtually inedible to most predators, some of whom will kill themselves trying.

Speed is your next priority: adding flagella increases it, but if you kill something that has a Jet, that's more cost-efficient. Finally, kill the first thing you see with a proboscis. You can use it to drink your enemies alive.

Social Skills

Making friends at the Creature stage means repeating what the other critter does. His actions fill up the right hand side of the bar: if he reaches the midpoint and you don't, you've failed. If you do the wrong action, or are worse at the right one, you’ll fill less of your side. But it's not the end of the world: if you're better than him at the action he chooses next, you can make up for that slack. Other creatures in your pack add their social skills to yours, but the same is true of the guys you're charming.
Tooth and claw

How good your creature was at combat in the Creature stage is still relevant at the start of the Tribe phase. If they had Bite or Strike at level 5, they’re actually more vicious unarmed than they are if you give them spears to throw.

Serious consequences

Don't forget about your consequence abilities. These are special powers that you unlocked by the way you behaved in the last two stages, and are activated by the big button between your social and aggressive action bars.

The poison mango

Your consequence abilities benefit the play styles that unlocked them. Being aggressive at the Cell stage lets your chieftain at the Tribe stage set down booby-trapped food that'll kill wildlife for you to eat.

Taming of the Ultrashrew

You can have your chieftain give a wild beast some food to tame it. Once tamed, it'll regularly lay eggs that you can take over to your food stash and fight off any invaders.

Peace scoffing
 
If you get into a war you'd rather not be in, you can send one of your creatures to the enemy food store to give them a delicious gift. It almost invariably shuts them up.

Hostile takeover

At the Civ stage you've got to take over every city on the planet with your own nation. You can do it with guns or forced religious conversion, but the most elegant approach is financial. You can win the whole stage just by trading with other cities until you're powerful enough to buy them out. Since you won't be able to take them over by force later, it's vital that you grab as many unclaimed spice geysers as you can when the game starts.

Spend all your money on vehicles and send one out to each unclaimed geyser on the map. Once you've got a bit of spice, send an economic vehicle to propose a trade route with the nearest city. If they don't go for it, open up communications and give them some cash, then propose again. No-one says no twice.

Sooner or later, one of the nastier factions will ask you to take sides against another nation. Always, always refuse. They’ll be upset, but a quick cash gift or two will calm them down. If you capitulate and go to war, it'll cost more to appease your new enemy than it would have to keep your friend happy. After enough trade, you'll have enough economic hooks into a rival city to buy it outright. But if your offer is too low, they'll reject and all your trade progress will be reset. Offer 16,000 - anything less is just insulting.