It's a Helluva Town: Civilization Phase
Ah, back to good ol' Civilisation! The Age where money speak louder than singing and dancing and therefore the main goal for diplomacy.
The Civ Stage has a RTS style type of strategy similar to the Tribal Stage. The main difference is that you focus on creating vehicles and making "Sporebucks" instead of producing Sporean creatures and feeding them.
If you progressed from the Tribal Stage, like other Stage progressions your traits will shift over to the Civilization Stage. This trait will reflect the type of city you first aquire which would be either a Military, Economic, or Religious City. Your first step to expanding will be based on that trait, but as you aquire other cities, you can use variety in your attacks with various Superpowers based on other traits and may end up using all of the traits. Since you only create three types of the vehicles (land, sea, air) per trait, this isn't the stage you would favor if you were the hardcore RTS player.
Even though the idea of the three traits is an "evolution" from the Tribal Stage, the only trait that truly stands out from the others is the economic trait. The military and religion trait basically, in my opinion, works the same way. As a military leader, you get your vehicles, bambard the enemy until the buildings fall. With religion, you bombard the enemy city with "holy bombs", musics, and visions until they are "converted". The only difference is religion works best against unhappy citizens. As for the economic trait, you rely entirely on relations with other nations and buying cities. So as you progress in the game, it is advantageous to aquire different traits.
Military Aircraft destroy an enemy turret.
Religion similar to war with the huge "visionary" image of your creature.
But whatever trait you aquire by capturing cities, you must always focus on your cities' production which will produce you a steady amount of money. Spice geysers are the base income and must be claimed. Then you build your cities with houses, entertainment buildings, and factories to provide a balance of citizen happiness and production.
Once you've captured certain number of cities, you may aquire superweapons which you can activate using a chunk of Sporebucks, but it would provide you a boosting advantage for expanding and may even help you finish the Civ stage quickly in the end.
In my opinion: The Civ Age certainly isn't the most exciting stage in the game, but it is a step up the proggression ladder and may even be a training spot when moving up to the Space stage. For example, in the Space stage you have to manage cities like you do in the Civ stage. The effects are very similar.
Knowing that should allow you to take notice of your actions in the Civ stage. Once you are done with the Civ stage, you will get 1 out of 3 abilities to use during the Space stage, depending on your trait. Military Civilizations will get the Pirates-B-Gone ability which gets a decresed rate of alien raids which is useful if you're gone conquering other planets. Economic civs get "Spice Savage" which is increased spice production so you can go around gathering money faster. And religion, "Green Keeper", decrease of biodisasters, something less to worry about.
I would wish that there were more "Creatureness" and some more interaction with your creation instead of focusing on money. Perhaps a little more "spice" (pun warning) and features like different technologies and actually being able to create creatures instead of just vehicles would make this stage a lot better.
But then the Civ stage is undoublty important to your proggress in the game, and just like our world, it keeps us curious, or even horrified at what the future Space stage has in store for us.
A city with a trade contract.
Written by Crue Knight
