It's not exactly obvious how to complete a badge in spore, but the easy way is to hit your L key to open the tasks window.

Once open, click on badges, now just click on a badge and notice it's not highlighted.

Go back to spore and you will now have a mission card like any other mission in spore showing you how many things you need to do to get the badge complete the easy way.

One thing that many people don't know is how to track a planet in Spore and I don't blame them, it's totally non-obvious unless you know the trick.

Once you have visited a planet or system all you have to do is open the sporepedia, type in the name or part of it in the browser. Now when you hover over the planet card you want to track in the browser, click on the 3 dots...

This opens another window diplaying the planet. At the bottom is a "TRACK" button, click it, close the window and close sporepedia and zoom out a bit.

Now there's a giant arrow with a line showing you the planet you are tracking.

I use this a lot for example when I'm terraforming a whole system, there's allmost guaranteed to be problems with some of your other systems getting attacked when you are doing that so using track a planet in Spore lets you quickly find your way back to where you want to go.

Just remember, it's only for planets you have allready visited, it doens't work very well for missions where you need to go somewhere to find something unless you have allready been there.

The first thing you want to do is get yourself the shield upgrade, and also update to mega lazor. If you have allied with any empires, fly there and open up diplomacy and ask for one of their ships which they will agree to and you now have an allied ship flying with you to help, you can have up to 4 allied ships with you. If you have allies you may also want to buy a couple heal packs for allied ships so you don't lose them if they get damaged on a planet, hover your mouse over them to get status on their health.

Now it's time for war.

In this example I'm going to use the Tiramizu empire that kept fucking up my colonies near their empire.

First turn on the Empires icon and also friends and allies icon, that way you can see the red circles around the empire you want to beat down.

Now quickly fly to the enemy star system that's closest to your nearest star system, just keep zooming in until you are on their planet.

Hit your shield icon under weapons, as long as shield is on (Sphere around your ship) they can't touch you. Now click one of their colonies on your map and just fly in and hover over their city hall. Since they can't touch you select your best weapon and hammer their city hall. Look at the little power bar that pops up, this tells you how close they are to surrender. When the bar reaches zero a white flag will pop up telling you they surrender, at this point STOP firing and fly to the next colony, rinse and repeat.

If you run out of energy or your shield runs out bail the fuck out, go to your nearest friendly system, go to trade and buy energy and repairs, then zoom down to their planet and wait for your shield to recharge.

Once shield is recharged, fly back to the enemy planet and keep taking out the rest of the colonies. As soon as all colonies have surrendered an option at the top of the screen will say "capture system" hit the button and voila, you have taken over that system, it now belongs to your empire.

We are still not done though. Fly back to a friendly and heal up.

Look at the red enemy zone again, fly to the next system they have and rinse and repeat. If you look at the Empire trail, you will notice one of their systems is brighter in color, that's their home system and you want to leave that for last. As you keep taking out their minor star systems their empire strength goes down, that's what you want, because if it's at full strength, taking over their home system is going to take ages.

All done? Now lets take over their home system. This is not going to be as easy, as home systems have many more colonies to take down and have surrender, but it's worth it trust me.

The strategy for taking over the home system is the same, shield on, hammer a colony into surrendering, then the next, and so on until you can capture the home system.

Here's the cool thing, when you take over the home system you have ton's of spice producing colonies that you only have to heal by replacing any buildings you destroyed, once that's done, you have not only taken down this pesky empire that kept messing you up, but you also have all their minor star systems PLUS the home system, all producing spice for YOU.

When you have taken over a system or two you will be rolling in sporebucks, I'm at something like 60 millions so I don't care about money anymore. Once you have that kind of cash, just boy a Planet Buster and fly straight for the enemy empire home system and blow it away. Using a planet buster for the first time WILL make your jaw drop, it's seriously Star Wars blow up the death star awesome

If like me, you downloaded Spore using EA downloader you won't have much of a manual, so terraforming is a tough nut to crack.

Terraforming made easy in Spore

There's a lot a parameters that needs to be just right in order to raise a planets T score, for that you need some tools, plants and creatures.

You need to buy an atmospere generator, and if you can afford it and have the badges to unlock them, also get some tools that can raise and lower temperature to.

Now fly to any planet that already has another civilization and lets go nature shopping. In order to stabilize a T score level you need:

3 Large plants each for a different T score level.
3 Medium plants each for a different T score level.
3 Small plants each for a different T score level.
6 Herbivores each for a different T score level.
3 Carnivorea each for a different T score level.

To make it easy to find the different plants and creatures look at the area where you also have the T score rings, see all those little dots next to the plant and creature icons? That's called the "food web" and it's VERY usefull if you know how to use it.

You got one row for each T score, if the T score is 1 and stabilized the first row of little dots should be all solid dots. Now, since we are looking for these creatures make sure you'r radar is turned on and click the dot in the "large plant" row. Now fly around a bit and your radar will start beeping and the beam will point in the direction of the "large plant", once you found it, select your abduction beam and beam that sucker up. Repeat this for the medium and small plant and then use the radar to find the remaining 2 herbivores and one carnivore. Note that you need creatures from all 3 stages of T scores. Learning how to use the food web will make it a LOT easier for you to locate the fauna to fill out a T score.

Phew, got all that?

Now lets go to a planet, pick one with a T score of a big fat zero and make sure it's worth all the work so look for anything but red spice, look at the little icon next to the hover tips over a planet that's not claimed yet. If you are willing to fly around a bit try to find purple or pink, those will sell for mad sporebucks.

Look at your controls where you have your map of the planet, see that little globe icon? Click on that.

Now you see 3 rings, these match the current T score of a planet, right now they are all greyed out, lets do something about that.

Look in your cargo hold and find the atmospere generator, drop one down and wait it out a bit, doesn't take long.

After that is done doing its thing, we need to stabilize the T score, if you just leave it like it is now it will drop down and you lost all your work.

HUGE TIMESAVING TIP

When you drop down the plants and creatures as explained below, once you drop something down, IMMIDIATELY switch to your abduction bean and beam whatever you just placed up again. As soon as something is placed the planet will be populated with it, so you can just suck whatever you placed right back up again and you will never have to go find plants and creatures again to terraform.

First we need to drop down one large plant, one medium plant and one small plant, you should get a message that you raised the T score, but it's still not stable.

To make it easy and fast to drop the correct fauna down we can use the food web again. Make sure your cargo hold is selected (Where all your creatures are stored and also where the abduction bean icon is) See the row of dots for the current T score? They are all hollow, not solid. First click the large plant dot. See how a couple icons for large plants are now blinking in your cargo hold? The food web tools are showing you exactly what you need to drop down. If one of the plant icons have a green checkmark it means that is already on the planet so click ones without a checkmark and drop that down. Click the medium plant, icons will blink again etc..

Now drop down 2 DIFFERENT herbivores FIRST, and THEN drop down one carnivore.

Voila, now you should get a message that the T score of 1 has been stabilized and you can now place down a colony, you need a colony incredy pack for that so if you don't have one, go buy one.

Now all that's left is to raise this planets T score 2 more levels and you got a money maker.

T score 2 and 3 is not going to be so simple to get though, an atmosphere generator will not cut it.

Look at the T score rings, see that little dot somewhere? You need to use atmosphere altering tools to nudge it into the next T score ring.

If you look you have temperature gauges and atmosphere gauges (The little cloud icons). Lets say the dot is to the hot side outside the next ring, that means we need to make the climate colder. For that you could use an ice storm for example. If it's the other way around you would use something like a meteor shower. All tools are pretty logically named so just think a bit and you should be able to figure out that to lower the temp you would need a tool that lowers the atmosphere or the other way around.

After you raised the T score you need to place the 3 different plants, 2 herbivores and one carnivore again, these have to be different than ones you allready placed so lets go find some new ones.

When you have raised the T score to 3 you can place 3 colonies (Use colony encredy packs)

It's not enough to just drop down colonies, remember the Civilization stage and how you needed to click the city hall icon and place buildings? You need to do that for all 3 colonies or they won't produce any spice so remember to do that and to optimize the spice production refer to the optimal city layout for max spice-production page.

TIPS

As soon as you get the badges making these tools available GET THEM:

Uber Turret

Put that baby on your money maker spice planets. It RAPES pirates and alien attackers. It does insane damage and has 50.000 health points but nobody ever hurts it because they are dead before they know it.

Extra spice storage

This will raise the amount of spice a planet can hold until you come by to pick it up to 30 packs of spice.

Going it alone and trying to kill other creatures when playing as a carnivore is hard and time consuming. Many times you are at a disadvantage because all other creatures in walking distance has many more health points than you, so here's an easy way to kill other creatures in Spore.

First, mate and go into the creature editor. You want to get spit ability as you can now attack and piss of other powerfull creatures from a distance. Now go to the first pack of creatures that's near you, target one and spit at it. This will piss it off and it will come running at you. Slowly move backwards and stay out of its reach until you make it home to your nest. As soon as you get home standing in your nest attack it. not only will you constantly heal while in your nest, but your pack members will attack with you and easily kill much more powerfull creatures.

Rinse and repeat until you have killed off that pack of creatures. This gets you mad DNA points you can spend to get even more powerfull fast so you have an easy way to kill other creatures in Spore.

Here's a mock up for Spore optimal city layout for max spice production.

H = Houses
F = Factories
E = Entertainment.

Any information about Spore Civilization Stage Strategies and guides should be put in here.

Any information about Spore Creature Stage Strategies and guides should be put in here.

Any information about Spore Cell Stage Strategies and guides should be put in here.

Do the required missions at the start. After that, perhaps do some missions for other races or root around some planets for artifacts and sell them, just enough so you get a decent lazer for your ship.

Now fly around and find a planet with creatures in the Civilization stage. The planet you want should have be at T3 level and have anything but red spice production, spend some time and find at least purple or pink spice production. MAKE SURE this is a creature in the Civ stage and not an Empire or they will kick your ass. Easy way to tell is that you can't contact them. Now fly to the planet, grab your trusty spaceship lazer and hover over a city so you can just barely reach the city hall of that city and start ruining thier shit. Thier turret defense can't reach you and thier ships can't harm you as you are close to orbit and they are only Civ stage (Cheap I know)

You WILL run out of energy so fly back to your home planet and get a free refill, fly back and ruin another city hall until all colonies are gone and voila, free T3 planet that you don't have to terraform. Now all you need is to buy 3 colony packs, plop them down on your new purple/pink T3 planet. Make sure you start filling in house, factory and entertainment buildings. When you place buildings, be carefull to place them to maximize the production of spice, you want to balance the happyness of the city so it's neutral and you should get around 108.x production on all 3 colonies.

Refer to this page for optimal spice production layout

Now bugger of and do something for a while, fly back and pick up spice and fly to another empires planet and sell that shit. You want to shop around and some will try to lowball you. If the planet you try to sell at produces the same spice as you have to sell they won't buy it for a good price so look at the spice colors of thier production before wasting time flying there.

Got sporebucks? Good, now go buy some upgrades. What you realy want is do the right things so you can buy an Uber Turret and a spice tank upgrade for your colony. With the Uber Turret and extra spice storage capacity your planet it safe from pirates and your production should be a 30 spice pr. 15 min or so. As soon as you get more money buy colony turrets for all your colonies, now nothing but the biggest empires or the Grox can touch your money maker, and that happens wery rarely.

I got 30 million sporebucks in a couple of hours using this stragety.

Any information about Spore Space Stage Strategies and guides should be put in here.

Whao I just noticed spore is out, been waiting for this game for YEARS drooling.

I'm downloading now, but fucking hell that EA download manager is slow, nearly 2 hours for a couple gigs, I useually do that in 15 min from news servers.

I can't be the only one being feeling the Spore hype tug at my gaming strings, so let's discuss.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned, but that would be extremely cool is your creature stats affecting the creature in the game.

Examples:

Evolve and build a creature that has predatory dinosaur eyes, then as long as another creature is standing still you won't see it.

Your creature has little tiny legs, then you can't move fast so you have to work on evolving stealth or becomming more dangerous.

Choose bad eyes and your hearing needs to be better, this should directly affect your screen, like being blurred or less bright, or if you select large nigh vision type eyes for nocturnal creatures then your screen should be uncomfortably bright so you need to seek shady areas and only be out at night.

Choose cat eyes, no color vision but better motion detection and night vision.

etc..

I know that if you behave violently and give your creature stats that points to aggresiveness then your fellow creatures will behave that way to. They will haze eachother, playfight and hit eachother in fun, hunt and use weapons more and so on. If you are a friendly creature then your fellow creatures will sit around and chat and be more intelligent in generel in the way they behave.

If you are a pack creature then if you get into trouble your fellow creatures will help you out, if you are a loner type creature then you'r on your own if you get into a fight.

Very fucking cool.

And here's the proof

Get the creature editor, it's miles of fun, the full version is only 10$ so you have something to play with while waiting. Even the free trial is tons of fun.

http://www.spore.com/ftl

Don't know what the hell Spore is? Living under a rock are we?

Spore is a total universe creator.

You start out making the primordial soup creature that you will evolve (Sorry fundies, guess you don't get to have fun ehehehe)

After selecting some properties and graphically building your amoeba or whatever you spawn it and let it live. After a while, based on what it learns and what it can do with whatever stats you gave it you can upgrade. You get new building blocks of life, like arms legs eyes TONS of shit.

Then after evolving your creature becomes sentient, also based on its past, it can build somewhere to live, find mates, form a tribe.

It goes on to learn how to build cities, which you again build from various bulding blocks.

Now it gets interesting, if it wasn't before, because the game is an massive online SINGLE player. Your planet is populated by creatures other people made on the fly and these can be friendly, hostile, may try to take over your creatures cities, or they may be friendly and you can develop trade with them.

Now you can create vehicles, totalle free form like creating creatures and buildings so you can move around the planet.

You can import buildings, vehicles and cities from other players around the world, or creatures and see what they came up with and base your game around that.

Oh but it doens't stop there by a long shot.

Now you evolve to be able to fly into space. And guess what, space is filled with planets that you can terraform and start new worlds. You can fly to your own planet and grab a creature from there, either your own or ones other people created and drop them on the planet you formed and see what happens.

Planets can be land based or water worlds, you can make ocean creatures or land and flying creatures.

Other planets in the universe are also loaded from other players worlds so you can fly there and make relations with those planets or take your creature there and see if it can take over.

Oh you thought it stopped there, oh no, there's also galaxies, black holes and I don't know what the fuck else.

Here's the official youtube channel with tons of videos from the devs showing of the game.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Spore?ob=1

The full game is supposed to be out in about a month, and I can't WAIT.