Useful Spore information (Warning- "spoilers")

[invertin]

Universal tips-
Pressing Alt and clicking+holding on an existing piece in any editor will copy it exactly.

Cell Stage-
If playing as a herbivore, put the mouths on either side of the head of the creature instead of on the front. (I.E The mouths are pointing diagonally up-left and up-right) Then make them as big as possible. Food will fall into your mouth much faster.

Carnivores can do the same, and put a spike in the space left or something.

When choosing speed parts, go for alot of jets with some of those wing thingies. If you just go for jet, sure you'll go fast, but as a result steering will be almost impossible.

Speaking of speed, go for speed when you are a herbivore, speed is important as a carnivore, but it's better to use those points for more ways of killing things, wheras a herbivore has to be able to get food fast and get out fast.

Creature Stage-
Eyes are actually unneeded. If you go for a creature without eyes, just zoom out as far as you can and put the camera close to the ground. The only thing that you won't see is up, and that's rarely needed.

Less of a trick and more of a tip, be creative when creating creatures. A mouth does not have to stay as a mouth, spit things can become faces, spikes can be teeth, etc.

The parts you find change depending on what your creature looks like and how you found them. For instance, if you have a hand of a certain type, you'll most likely find another hand on the same row. The size of the skeleton or creature also changes how far along the row it is. A small animal or a small skeleton will only get the first of a row. Killing a small animal will most likely get you a fighting hand or weapon, sociallizing will get you a new social part, etc. (The whole part finding system is all based on chance, so results may vary.

I don't know if this is a perminant change, but it's worth mentioning- When editing a creature, if you have an arm that splits into two (I.E 1 joint to another joint, to 2 joints) you can glitch the symmetry. Put an object on the point where the arms split, then move the arm apart so it's two arms again. The object should only move onto one of those arms.

When creating a creature, the game has an odd thing about single legged creatures so they will move oddly.

When creating a creature, four legs are unnecesary.

When creating a creature, arms and legs are not specifically arms or legs. If you put a foot at the end of an arm, or a hand at the end of a leg, the game will treat them as needed. This way you can have arms with several joints, or make a creature that appears to walk on it's hands and interact with it's feet!

When creating a creature, wings are awkward. With the graphics on low (I haven't seen if the same happens on different settings) the best wings fold awkwardly. It's also worth mentioning that if the wings don't appear to go through the creature in the editor, they still might in the actual game.

When creating a creature as a herbivore, you have some of the best mouths in the game. If you go for the pig styled mouths you get a wide array of attacks to defend yourself, as well as lvl5 sing on the best pig mouth.

If you find a stick on the floor and you have hands, you can pick it up and throw it at other creatures. Your own species will swear (a speech bubble with #@$!? kind of swear), allies and neutrals will do the same. I believe this can be used as an attack against enemies, but it's not confirmed.

Tribal Stage-
Skills in creature stage remain in tribal, except all the social skills, so if you have a fluffy social part that looks silly, you can remove it.

As an extension of the last tip, tribal stage is affected by creature design, but depends on tool use. changing your creature for a weaker design just before tribal stage will not make too much of a difference.

When going for an aggressive species, you only need one battle tool. Having all three actually weakens the nation and uses up food (since no real strategy should be needed). Spears and axes are a personal favorite.

After destroying an enemy nation, you can actually steal food from their food store.

Civ stage-
Allying with nations costs alot of money, but when all the other nations are destroyed your allies will join you.

If you are looking for a quick victory, capture 6 cities, build them up for full defence and alot of production, then just wait till you can afford the 4th power. Maybe leave the game on overnight or something.

When designing cities, the best design is one where half the city is work and half is fun.

Clothes no longer make an impact on gameplay, so do whatever.

When you edit a vehicle, all existing vehicles of that type will change. So make a ship for speed, fly to the enemy, and rebuild it for strength.

The different nation types actually like or dislike eachother. Military hates other militaries, but religious like other religious. I can't remember the actual connections, so when I find out I'll put them here.

Space stage-
The design of your ship makes no difference whatsoever.

Depending on earlier victories you will get different powers and philosophies. If you have three or four stages of a certain color, (green/blue/red) you will become the extreme of that color. (shaman/trader/warrior) If you have two of a color and two of another you'll become a secondary mix. Here's a list. Credit to "doyoureadthis" of the spore forum (edited by me since he got ecologist wrong).
Bard: 2xBlue, 1xGreen, 1xRed
Ecologist: 1xBlue, 2xGreen, 1xRed
Zealot: 0xBlue, 2xGreen, 2xRed
Diplomat: 2xBlue, 2xGreen, 0xRed
Scientist: 2xBlue, 0xGreen, 2xRed
Trader: 4xBlue, 0xGreen, 0xRed
Shaman: 0xBlue, 4xGreen, 0xRed
Warrior: 0xBlue, 0xGreen, 4xRed
Knight: 1xBlue, 1xGreen, 2xRed
If you start the game from cell stage, this will be true. If you start from creature then it is mostly true, if you do 1 red 1 green and 1 blue, you'll be the extreme of the color you were at civ stage. If you start from tribal you can go for extremes or secondary mixes, if you start from civ, you'll be an extreme, and if you start from space you'll be a "wanderer" with no special abilities or powers.

As an extension of the last tip, if you find a strong empire (look at the star symbol when holding the mouse over one of their stars, strong being 4 or above) and are allied with them (green face) then you can do a mission to earn their philosophy.

Knights have the same speech as warriors when you ask them about their ideals, but a different background.

When selling spice, look for solar systems or species with no access to that spice.

Worshippers of spode (Zealots I think) will ask for tribute to spode. Ignoring it the first time will make them dislike you, ignoring after that will not pile up (to my knowledge).

When doing a mission, occasionally you'll get a red or orange ring around a star, this doesn't mean to go to this star, but instead that the star is in that ring. Oddly enough, the ring ignores the third dimension; the star can be above or below the ring.

If you're a trader and you've got the infusion skill, go to a friendly nation (make sure you have enough to buy the planet), offer a trade route, then just use the infusion and buy them straight away.

The scientist has the best military skill.

As a more expensive, but much faster route of military/ecological capture. If you find an enemy planet that will not give in, get a few meteor strikes or atmosphere generators and make the planet uninhabitable, the colonies will be destroyed and the planet ripe for the terraforming. It's alot more expensive than lasers and bombs, but very useful for aspiring warlords (before you've got the super weapons).

An interesting thing. Different stars have different missions. You can have two missions from the same species.

You can abduct members of your own species and put them anywhere else, if they're placed in the wilderness, they'll build a campfire, if placed near tribes they'll interact with the tribe. Other results are unknown.

[agarrett]

Thanks, this makes me want to buy Spore even more!

[BunnyWithStick]

Thanks, this makes me want to buy Spore even less!

[Ozymandias]

Thanks, this makes me want to buy Spore even less!

There you go... save that money up for knocking some teeth out of those wolves and seeing how well they can eat rabbits afterwards =P

EDIT: (or just kill them, and ask the same...)

[Jendraz]

Cool, a few useful things in there. I didn't like the game too much until I got to the space stage. But the space stage rocks

[Blorx]

the civilization phase was oddly enjoyable for me
so was the cell stage
but space is by far the best
it's fun to zap things
xDD

[BunnyWithStick]

A question: Can you still control things on a planet as in civ mode after you advance to the space stage?

It's obvious that you wouldn't be able to play cell stage after your creature has advanced past that, but I hope it's possible to control things at a lower level when applicable.

[Jendraz]

A question: Can you still control things on a planet as in civ mode after you advance to the space stage?

It's obvious that you wouldn't be able to play cell stage after your creature has advanced past that, but I hope it's possible to control things at a lower level when applicable.

You still control what is built on the cities on your planets, but you cannot control individual units on the world.

You CAN do cool stuff like abduct your citizens and put them somewhere else.

[Ozymandias]

A friend of mine took several of his sentients to a planet inhabited by tribes. His creatures prodeeded to wipe out many of the tribes, and he claimed that some of them even made campfires and stuff. Then he said that they lost the will to live or something because they fell over, dead...

[Jendraz]

A friend of mine took several of his sentients to a planet inhabited by tribes. His creatures prodeeded to wipe out many of the tribes, and he claimed that some of them even made campfires and stuff. Then he said that they lost the will to live or something because they fell over, dead...

I've dropped one of my guys off in the wilderness and they do make campfires.

[invertin]

I'm about to add a few things I forgot, though one of them could really be universal..

Maybe I'll make a section on editors.

Also, I'm starting a new game to see what an eyeless cell is like. I'll post the results obviously.

If anyone else has any tricks or interesting things they've noticed, post em here. Speaking of which, adding that little thing about campfires cause that's awesome and I might do that to see what happens.