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7
8->''How will'' you ''create the universe?''
9
10The ''Spore'' franchise is, at its broadest, an "evolutionary simulator" in which you guide the development of a species from its humble beginnings as a single-celled organism in a tidepool to its ultimate destiny as a spacefaring empire capable of conquering (or [[EarthShatteringKaboom destroying]]) other planets. All too often, one that has unfortunately evolved in the shape of [[VideoGamePerversityPotential a giant penis with legs]].
11
12The idea was first conceived by Creator/WillWright not long after ''VideoGame/TheSims1'' was finished; he had made a game about people, so he wanted to make a game about "everything else" next -- and the game's development schedule took eight years to finish.
13
14Almost all content seen in ''Spore'' is developed by its userbase, thanks to the game's ability to automatically upload creations (from cells and creatures to vehicles and spacecraft) to the main ''Spore'' website ("Sporepedia"), and subsequently download those creations to other games. For example, while about 1,700 entities are bundled with the core game disc, Sporepedia hosts ''over 190 million''.
15
16The game begins by naming your homeworld, picking a difficulty, and deciding whether your cell will be herbivorous or carnivorous (though this can change through gameplay). After that, the game proceeds in five distinct EvolutionaryLevels:
17
18* The Cell stage is the simplest of the five; you swim around the tidepool in two dimensions eating fragments of vegetation or meat depending on your cell's diet, [[RisingUpTheFoodChainGame avoiding larger cells]], and collecting new parts for your cell.
19* In the Creature stage, you collect new parts from skeletons, eat food, and either kill or befriend other creatures, using abilities that are defined by which body parts you use.
20* In the Tribal stage, you now control an entire tribe of your creature, rather than just one. You have discovered fire, and must eradicate or ally with the other tribes that spring up, by use of weapons or music respectively.
21* In the Civilization stage, economic, military, and religious nations take over others by respectively buying them out, storming their cities and ''playing music at their enemies while a giant hologram preaches at them''.
22* The Space stage is by far the largest, longest and most complex of them all. It starts off with the colonization of a new system. After that, it's WideOpenSandbox time, culminating in an encounter with the galaxy's most powerful and evil race - or becoming it.
23
24The game has had a few spinoff games: ''VideoGame/SporeCreatures'' for the Platform/NintendoDS, which uses a 2D creature designer rather than 3D, ''Spore Origins'' for mobile phones, which is basically a port of the Cell stage, and ''VideoGame/SporeHero'', for the Platform/NintendoWii and (as ''Spore Hero Arena'') DS, which is more of an adventure game than the original, and focuses more on story and the evolution aspects. Another spinoff, ''VideoGame/{{Darkspore}},'' was released in April 2011, combining an updated Creature Creator with an action-RPG.
25
26----
27!!This game provides examples of:
28
29[[foldercontrol]]
30
31[[folder: A-F]]
32%% * FourX: The Space Phase. Not so much the Civilization phase, oddly enough.
33* AbusivePrecursors:
34** It's all too possible to use the Monolith to create new civilizations only to kill them all off later. In fact terraforming a planet with rare spice to T3, placing a monolith, letting it evolve to Space stage, then killing them off gives you ''more'' cities and is usually ''cheaper'' than just placing colonies.
35** It's also handy for dealing with systems that already have sentient life in them. Toss a couple monoliths their way, then once they get to the space stage, [[WeComeInPeaceShootToKill welcome]] them to the galaxy with all your might.
36** If you wish to [[VideoGameCaringPotential avert this trope]], you can simply enter into a trade route with them (they'll already be predisposed towards you for uplifting them), and then simply buy out the planet after a while.
37** It's also an effective way to grow an ally empire (if you're aiming for the "Change Archetype" mission, or you want stronger ally ships in your fleet). Uplift a planet, de-terraform them to T1 or T0 so that they only have one weak city, then pay the ally to capture the planet.
38* AcceptableBreaksFromReality: The Tribal stage is about the only thing that can be taken at face value. For example, DNA is received for eating things in the "Cell" stage (since you technically control a multicellular microorganism, it is often referred to as the "Tide Pool" stage), or extincting/allying various species in the Creature stage. You can immediately add the most advanced parts you have unlocked even if you don't have what is logically a "prerequisite" part. And don't even mention the SchizoTech and indistinct timeline of the Civilization stage...
39* AchievementMockery:
40** "Joker", which means that you cheated with the race that earned it, and you cannot get more Achievements with it (thus it overlaps with NoFairCheating) and "Pathological Cheater", for gaining 50 Joker badges.
41** "Dance With The Devil", which means you allied with [[AlwaysChaoticEvil the Grox]] and are thus a colossal JerkAss.
42** "Can't Win for Losing", awarded for dying in every stage of the game.
43** "General Custer", awarded for getting 30 followers killed and generally being TheNeidermeyer.
44** "Careless Parent", for losing control of 5 planets.
45** The "Bad Baby" was awarded for getting a creation banned from the online Sporepedia. It was quickly removed because players would deliberately create offensive items in order to get it.
46* ActionCommands: The entire premise of socializing with other creatures in the Creature and Tribal phases.
47* AdamSmithHatesYourGuts: Largely averted, since each planet has their own values for the spices you have on you, and it changes from time to time. However, played straight when buying things from your own empire, such as a colony pak or an uber turret. Other empires sell those items for much less. Of course, the tradeoff is that your empire probably sells everything, whereas the other empires only have a small selection, so you'll have to wander around to find the best deals.
48* AIBreaker: Several regarding the Epic Creatures in Creature Stage. You can prevent them from attacking at all if you get them stuck between trees or rocks, or you can hide behind a rock and just keep spitting away. In fact, this seems like the intended way to beat them, since it's impossible to do so in a head-on fight.
49* AlienAbduction: You can do this yourself in the Space phase, or it can happen to a nearby creature in the Creature or Tribal phases.
50* AlienAmongUs: Averted. Although you can colonize Earth, there are no humans in the vicinity.
51* AliensAreBastards:
52** Some empires in the Space Stage can be like this, most notably the [[KnightTemplar Zealots]]. You can choose this path as well! All it takes is one [[EarthShatteringKaboom Planet Buster]] and bam! You're the most hated being within a radius of twenty parsecs!
53** And of course, The Grox, who are the most hated and feared beings in the galaxy. Likewise, The Grox hate every other being in the galaxy.
54** Even the regular missions involve things like abducting sapient citizens or killing infected ones with lasers.
55* AllPlanetsAreEarthlike: Can be invoked should the player decide to terraform all planets into T3 planets. Otherwise its averted for a lot of them, which start out at T0 or maybe T1 with scant life on it. Interestingly, Earth itself in the game is only a T1 planet.
56* AllThereInTheManual: Actually IN the manual. The manual that came with the game refers to the in-game manual in the standard "to learn more about X see the in-game manual" format.
57* AlienInvasion: Inverted/Played Straight. In the Space phase, you can fly to other planets with sentient life on them and pretty much do whatever you feel like to them with little repercussion (civilization-stage empires may try to defend themselves, but they do pitiful damage to your ship). Of course, piss off other space-faring races and they may attack ''you.''
58* AlienSky: Among your spaceship's arsenal is a series of sky-coloring tools. Additionally, other planets may have, for instance, the star they orbit, their moon, and another planet in the system in clear view (best seen in Creature phase.) In addition to the "normal" Earthy blue, it's also extremely common for starter planets to have purple and orange and red skies.
59* AliensSpeakingEnglish: Justified for text; your Short-Range Video Communicator is equipped with a UniversalTranslator. In audio, they are SpeakingSimlish, so...this game has more in common with [[VideoGame/TheSims Maxis's other title]] than it lets on.
60* AliensStealCattle:
61** Or whatever the local wildlife may happen to be; it's more or less the only way to fill out newly-terraformed planets' ecosystems.
62** Of course, in tribal stage, a spaceship may show up and fly around and steal any creatures you have domesticated from the pen behind the hut...
63** During the creature phase, at one point a spaceship will come down to your planet, and abduct one of the creatures near where your creature is currently at. Every creature around you while its hovering above you will understandably panic and run around during this time.
64* AllergicToEvil: There's a variant of this. If you try to abduct a Grox Citizen, the game will say that it cannot be stored because it is highly toxic and dangerous to the ship. This would imply that the Grox are naturally poisonous to other creatures.
65* AlwaysChaoticEvil: [[spoiler:The Grox]] from the Space Stage hate all organic life and start off with a negative relationship with your empire. Allying with them will make almost every other empire hate you.
66%% * AnimalsHateHim: [[spoiler:The Grox]], again.
67* AncientAstronauts: In Creature and Tribe phase, a spaceship will often visit. Later, you can be one to developing cultures.
68* AndNowForSomeoneCompletelyDifferent: "Locked Captain" adventures place you in control of a different character that cannot gain experience. Fortunately, it's not permanent. Usually this is done either to put all players on a level playing field, or else for the purpose of the adventure's story; for instance, if the player character is not a space captain, or if the character's friends or relatives are part of the story, it would not make sense for the player to be allowed to play it with their normal captain.
69* AntiFrustrationFeatures:
70** Usually, if you destroy another empire's ships in defense of another planet (be it your own or an ally's), it'll bring the empire who owned the destroyed ships closer to declaring war on you. [[spoiler: However, destroying Grox ships in defense won't have this effect; only destroying Grox ships in Grox territory will make them mad, lest you'd have to go to war with the galaxy's biggest and meanest empire before you've even met them, since allies calling for help fighting them off isn't uncommon.]]
71** Similarly, despite starting with an orange face relation(at which most empires attack as soon as you enter their territory), [[spoiler: you'll have to jump between several Grox systems before they attack, since you're sent to see them by your empire at one point and don't want to have to endure attacks(fighting back would mean war) as you're talking to them.]]
72** When you're given the mission to place your first colony, any planet will suffice to complete the mission, not just the one you're sent to. So if you'd rather place the colony pack on a T1 planet with purple spice than the T0 planet with red spice you're sent to, go for it. (The terraforming mission will still require you to terraform the planet you were originally sent to, but that's an optional mission anyway.)
73** In the Maxis Adventure "Protein Synthesis", near the end you have to choose one of a group of RNA strands to give to an active ribosome to create the protein. It's supposed to be a memory game, as you're told what the strand is supposed to match and you were told what matches what earlier, but on the off chance you didn't write that down, the correct one as an empty text box over it when you hover your mouse over it.
74** When you get a mission with a specific location, if you're told which star system, they'll be a line directing you to it. If you're told "X parsecs from star Y, on planet Z", a circle will extend around star Y with the specified radius X. If you're told "Between W and X parsecs from star Y, on planet Z", there will be two such circles, and your target will be in the space between them. All of these make it much easier to find your target in the vastness of space.
75** The complexity meter serves as this in a meta-sense--game performance would take a hit if it tried to render a too-complex creature. On the other side of the coin, the complexity cap is increased to 75 points (from 70) from Tribal onward, so anyone who maxed out their creature's complexity in Creature would still be able to get item buffs in Tribal.
76** In the Civilization stage, once an opposing Nation gets big enough, you can start a trade route with them as long as they're not at war with you, when they normally have to be friendly with you (Blue Face). This keeps someone trying to win via Economic means from being [[UnintentionallyUnwinnable stonewalled]] if they can't get their relationship with the last opposing nation any higher.
77** In the Creature stage, only ''your'' Sneak matters; if you have pack members of a species with a lower Sneak level, or no Sneak at all, hostile nests will still leave you alone as long as your Sneak is active. (No such mercy from Epics, though.)
78** You don't have to worry about the diets of your pack members in Creature Stage; you're the only one in danger of starving to death. So if you're an herbivore trying to get the Social card and your pack happens to have a carnivore in it, you don't have to kill anything to keep it alive.
79* {{Antimatter}}:
80** Now available as handy air-to-air missile systems on every solar system near you.
81** Also available as the second-most powerful planetary bomb weapon, capable of leveling an entire city in one shot!
82* ApeShallNeverKillApe: Played straight until the Space Stage; you can't attack your own species in Cell and Creature, you can't attack your own tribe members in Tribal, and you can't attack your own cities and vehicles in Civilization. In Space, however, you can attack your own colonies all you want and you'll never be called out for it.
83* ApocalypseHow: If you're feeling nasty, you can use your weapons to inflict anything from Class 1 to class X to a planet. Class X-2 and X-3 are technically partially possible (By somehow managing to stock up on Planet Busters), however there is no way to destroy stars or gas giants.
84* ArbitraryHeadcountLimit: Every stage barring Cell has this to some extent.
85** Creature--How many other creatures you can recruit for your pack depends on your brainpower level. Caps at four including yourself.
86** Tribal--How many members your tribe can have depends on the size of your hut, which is in turn determined by how many other tribes you've either allied or conquered. Caps at twelve including the chieftain.
87** Civilization--How many vehicles you can make depends on how many houses you have. What's more, the houses have to be in cities of the same type as the vehicle you want to make; houses in Religious cities have no effect on how many Economic vehicles you can have, for instance. You can make six without any houses and each house adds one. Caps at 36 of any combination of vehicles by the end, but the randomly generated city layouts can decrease that cap in the early game.
88** Space--How many allied ships you can add to your fleet depends on how high ranking of a captain you are. Caps at six including yourself. (Note for Knight Archetype empires: the Mini-U summoned via your superpower counts as an allied ship; if you have five allied ships in your fleet already you can't use Summon Mini-U)
89** There is also a complexity meter which serves to limit how many parts your creature can have, with each part having a certain number of Complexity Points, ranging from 1 to 11. Each spinal segment you give your creature adds half a point to the total. After the creature stage, every clothing article adds one point, apart from Captain's parts which vary from part to part. Caps at 70 in the creature stage, and 75 in subsequent stages.
90* ArmCannon: Your creatures can evolve these ''naturally'', if you so wish.
91** Not to mention the ChestBlaster, the BreathWeapon, the SwissArmyAppendage... Basically, every single trope in AnatomyArsenal and then some. Well, except for BloodyMurder...
92* ArmlessBiped: An option, and often what you start the Creature stage with.
93* ArtificialBrilliance: If a tribe member gets hungry as they're gathering food, they'll eat from the food they gathered instead of having to stop gathering to eat from the main stockpile.
94* ArtisticLicenseBiology: To be expected in a game more focused on being [[RuleOfCool cool]] and [[RuleOfFun fun]].
95** All of the [[{{Kaiju}} Epic creatures]] are carnivores or omnivores, probably to make them more of a threat to the player, even though the largest land animals in real life have been herbivores.
96** During Creature Stage, the herbivores are always [[HerbivoresAreFriendly friendly and curious]] unless attacked, while the carnivores are always [[PredatorsAreMean aggressive and willing to attack your player]]. In real life, it's actually the inverse; herbivorous animals are likely to be paranoid of predators, hence why they will either be skittish and constantly running or hiding from anything they view as a threat, or (in the case of larger animals such as hippos) [[XenophobicHerbivore have been known to attack other animals even when unprovoked]]. Predators, on the other hand, tend to only attack when hunting or out of defense, due to them saving their energy for when they need it.
97** After Cell Stage, the player's creature will be a permanent carnivore, omnivore, or herbivore, and can never switch to a different diet. As a matter of fact, in evolution, an animal can switch from [[AscendedToCarnivorism a herbivorous to carnivorous diet]] or [[VegetarianCarnivore vice versa]] at the drop of a hat if their regular diet becomes scarce.
98** On a similar note, eating something you're not supposed to (fruit if you're a carnivore, or meat if you're a herbivore) will cause your creature to vomit and won't give you any nutrients. Many herbivorous animals will sometimes eat meat in real life to obtain extra protein, and carnivores have also been known to eat fruit. In fact, diet is more of Sliding Scale in real life than the strict Trinairy it's presented as in this game.
99** Once you become sapient, your creature's appearance stays the same and can never be changed outside of color. Even though the changes have been subtle (since it's only been a couple million years), humans have been and are still evolving even after the Stone Age, and are very likely to visibly change in appearance in another million years.
100* AttackOfThe50FootWhatever: Epic creatures can be any normal creature but fifty feet tall, able to kill any creature in one hit and pose a threat to any society in city stage except religious (somehow it is possible to convert them to your religion as well for a short period of time).
101** Hell, in Space stage they have so much health that, along with their fireball attack, they even pose a threat to spaceships. The space stage also allows you to buy a "creature enlarger", which allows you to create an epic.
102* AudibleSharpness: Whenever one cell's spike injures another cell.
103* AuthorAvatar: What some people may make their captains into in Galactic Adventures.
104* AwesomeButImpractical: Planet Busters and several super powers break galactic code and will cause nearly every nearby civilization to declare war on you if used, and one costs about as much as 10 ship upgrades.
105** Possibly also [[spoiler:allying with The Grox. They have the best spaceships and most colonies in the game (all centered around the galactic core, nonetheless), but they'll cause EVERY SPECIES IN THE GALAXY to get such a high negative relationship boost towards you anyone you aren't strongly allied with will declare war on you, and even your most trusted allies will, at best, simply tolerate you, meaning your fleet will consist entirely of your ship and the powerful Grox ship, vs the rest of the galaxy]]
106*** Though if you go to war because of your alliance you can pay your opponent to end the war and the negative moodlets will disappear.
107** Fanatical Frenzy allows you to take over a planet without damaging the infrastructure--but it's best used on a one-star empire with no other systems but your own for a long ways around, especially if war is not feasible right now.
108** The Supersizer. Unleashing {{Kaiju}} on enemy cities seem like a fun way to conquer planets, but the process is so slow that you may as well just use conventional weapons. The only benefit is that allies won't hate you if it's the Epic Creature damaging them rather than you directly.
109* BabyPlanet: All of the planets are oddly small. According to [[https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/140724-the-size-of-spores-planets/ calculations]] people have done, the terrestrial planets are generally about half a mile across.
110* TheBarnum: Industrious tribes form alliances, but they also make wars too. Economic nations will happily do trades, although it's a better deal for them. Traders are with allegiance with the almighty Sporebuck, so it seems...
111** Of course, they could also be a military and economic superpower too (hmm, who does that remind you of?) so always watch out.
112* BeeBeeGun: The "Summon Swarm" tool from the Captain Outfitter.
113* BenevolentAlienInvasion: It is possible, with the right equipment, to visit a planet in the Civilization phase and advance them into the Space phase or improve the planet to make it more habitable, this also boosts your relationship with the target race.
114* {{BFG}}: The War Crime part for military vehicles. This trope also applies to the Planet Buster.
115** Hell, all the military weapon parts for vehicles can qualify, being that religious and economic parts look downright ridiculous.
116* BigBad: [[spoiler:The Grox]]. While you ''can'' befriend them if you really want to, doing so will pretty much make you the sworn enemy of every other race in the galaxy.
117* BinarySuns: Some star systems, though [[RealityIsUnrealistic far fewer than in reality]], have two suns. Planets in these systems orbit the barycenter in a circumbinary or "P-type" configuration, similar to [[Franchise/StarWars Tatooine]].
118* BloodKnight: The Warrior Archetype
119* BodyHorror: You can create some ''really'' fucked-up things in Creature Creator, especially with the Creepy and Cute parts pack.
120* BorderPatrol: A giant sea monster keeps you from swimming to other continents during Creature phase. However, there are mods available that will get rid of the sea monster, effectively allowing you to explore your entire planet. Other continents will be completely devoid of any collectible parts, and will be empty of any other creatures besides your own - very strangely, they will be populated with nests of creatures of your own species, which allows you claim any of these nests as your home nest. This isn't advisable, however, since these other continents will lack other creatures to eat if your species is carnivorous (since you can't kill your own kind), and it's a bit of a pain to constantly swim back and forth between the "main" continent and the one you technically shouldn't be able to live on. And it's also very easy to get lost on your planet.
121** Some adventure creators employ this trope, since a good portion of the time, the adventure will most likely have a lot of empty and unused space.
122** Though oddly, these other continents do contain fruit trees, which is good for herbivores and omnivores. Also, doing this allows you to pick out a good location for your main base, since your home nest will become your village in Tribal stage, and your capital city in the Civilization and Space stages. (other creatures will spawn on the continent after the Creature stage is completed, too, so carnivores will okay during Tribal stage)
123* BoringButPractical: The Return Ticket, the ability you get in the Space Stage for getting at least three green cards during the previous stages. Sure, it's not useful in combat, but when you get lost in the vast expanse of the universe, you need to get back home yesterday or you are running out of fuel...
124** Terraforming weapons can be used to defeat [[spoiler:the Grox]] in their planets. It is slow and you have to keep an eye on your energy and the atmosphere graph, but once you reach T1 level [[spoiler:the Grox]] will leave.
125* ButterFace: Using the Creepy and Cute Extension, it is possible to make a creature with a cute body, but a hideous face.
126* CanonImmigrant: The Nauceans, which can be found [[http://www.gamingsteve.com/blab/index.php?topic=1621.0 here]].
127* CastFromHitPoints: Your spaceship in the Space stage automatically does this to travel between stars if you run out of power.
128* CasualInterstellarTravel: Very much so, once you get the Interstellar Drive near the start of the Space phase.
129* ChekhovsGun:
130** In the Creature stage, the final nest you make it to has a random stick lying on the ground nearby. You end up using it in the cutscene before the Tribal stage as part of the ''2001: A Space Odyssey'' homage.
131** Also in the Creature stage, two of the random events involve meteor showers and alien ships buzzing by. In the Space Stage, ''you're'' the one piloting those ships--and chucking meteors at the earth to raise its temperature.
132** [[RuleOfThree Yet again in the Creature stage]], there are spice geysers, which for animals, are like those carnival rides where you're shot up into the sky and go "WEEEEEE!" In the Civ and Space Stage, they're revealed to be an essential part of the economy on both your planet and the galactic community.
133* TheChewToy: Clark and Stanley in Galactic Adventures. When they die, the player bursts into a dance (all adventures end like this), followed by the end mission text calling you out for being a JerkAss.
134* ChestMonster: The signal emitted by a "rare object" in the Space Stage can actually be a pirate ambush. Thankfully, they're easy to fight or escape from.
135* ChildrenInTow: Every creature.
136* ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: Recommended if you want to win the Tribal stage with the Red card, especially in Hard mode; make every tribe your friend (but not ally), then pick them off one by one when none of them bother to throw the first punch anymore. The fact that opposing Nations can grow on their own in the Civilization stage makes this harder to pull off there, but if you play your cards right you can still catch an Ally off guard with a full flock of Military planes.
137* CircusOfFear: The ''GA'' adventure "[[MonsterClown Shenanigan's]] Funhouse", although it's more like a Carnival of Fear.
138* ColonyDrop:
139** The asteroid call tool can be used for more than just terraforming: it can also be used to devastate cities.
140** ''Galactic Adventures'' reveals that [[spoiler:The Grox]] take over planets by dropping a large planet-terraforming pod onto a planet along with [[TheLegionsOfHell a couple thousand killer cyborgs.]]
141* CommandAndConquerEconomy: Used but then averted - it's in full force during the Tribal and Civilization phases, but colonies buy their own vehicles (but, oddly, not buildings) during the Space stage.
142* CombatTentacles: While the Creature Creator lacks a tentacle part, it is possible to give your creature a facsimile by retaining flagella from the Cell phase, or by using handless limbs.
143* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard:
144** You have a limited amount of space ships at any time, but any opposing empire can constantly ZergRush your planets literally every 10-20 seconds, making it nearly impossible to win the game via non-violent means or without cheating. Fortunately, the first few patches ease this out slightly.
145** Does your Tribe have spears and axes? Are they mere feet from the asshole who just robbed you? Too bad! The AI can just run over a certain area and get sped up and have their health refilled. Later do you want to use that area to recover from a raid? Again, too bad!
146** Sometimes you get the comm signal sound, but no message. This means some bureaucrat in a Warrior or Zealot empire, presumably a victim of ThePeterPrinciple, has mistakenly classified your empire has having denied them tribute. Relationship penalties ensue through no fault of your own.
147** In the Creature Stage, if you charge at another creature and they charge at you, you will ''always'' be the one stunned, regardless of who charged first, who's faster, or who has a higher level charge attack.
148* ConvenientQuesting: Played with - missions for alien empires in the Space phase will usually send you somewhere nearby, but it could be ''anywhere'' nearby, regardless of whether you've been there before.
149** Of course, with so many stars, it can sometimes be hard to find your destination even though it's nearby. Not helping is the fact that some missions tell you "X Parsecs from star Z" for the location, rather than tell you which star system (the latter case will at least have [[AntiFrustrationFeatures a line extending from the star where you got the mission to the target star)]]
150* CoolButInefficient: The Warrior archetype's unique ability, Raider Rally, summons space pirates to attack the planet you're currently on. Unfortunately, the pirates are too weak to be of any real help when you're trying to conquer a planet, and the ability is best used for [[MundaneUtility more mundane purposes]] like getting the Body Guard medal, [[TheChessmaster boosting relations with your allies by "helping" them get rid of the pirates]], or replacing a more dangerous threat attacking the planet, like the Grox or another empire, with the more manageable pirates.
151* CoolShip: You'll spend most of your time in the Space phase with one of these, so it would ''want'' to be cool. Your ship's appearance is purely cosmetic, though, with no effect on gameplay, and you can change it whenever you want.
152* CopyAndPasteEnvironments: Averted or used, depending on phase - each planet is like this on its own, for the most part, so it ''seems'' like this trope is in effect during the Creature, Tribal and Civilization phases, but once you can travel to other planets in the Space phase (or you read ''The Art of Spore'', which came with the [[LimitedSpecialCollectorsUltimateEdition Galactic Edition]]) you'll see that's not the case at all.
153* CopyProtection: The ever-controversial [=SecuROM=]. Oh lord, the ''massive'' flaming that resulted from it being cracked a few days before release... The Steam version, released concurrently, didn't include it.
154** The game released an expansion pack consisting of mechanical parts, available to only those who live in the USA ([[OfferVoidInNebraska except Maine]]) who have bought a bottle of specially marked Dr. Pepper and input the code on the bottom of the lid into the computer. Needless to say, there was no rejoicing. It is available on the internet though. Maxis and EA thankfully didn't take them down, but instead they warned that the pirated version won't allow players to share creations with these parts. They also noted there's a bug in both pirated and non-pirated version that installing them before Galactic Adventures would cause problems to the game.
155** While the game was fortunately launched on GOG.com (which is famous for being DRM-free) in August 2016, the game still requires the actual CD-key to log in to the online sharing aspect of the game. Said CD-key can only be obtained through actual purchase, either on the GOG.com account, on Steam, or on retail disc.
156* CorruptCorporateExecutive: The Trader archetype in Space Stage literally rubs off in this direction, being that cash infusion allows a player to instantly fill out the progress bar to buy out a planet quickly (with no consequences from other empires) and gives general purchases lower prices, resulting that a trading empire can literally bribe and buyout other empires without much hassle (and in turn, make more money in the long run).
157* CosmeticAward: Ranging from "reach the next evolutionary stage" to "conquer stage entirely socially/violently" to "have your pals die an obscene amount of times." There are also more obscure ones (though these can often be viewed through the Achievements section of your Sporepedia) such as finding the Sol system and Earth, [[spoiler:or destroying Earth with Planet Busters.]] A considerable chunk of gameplay is getting them.
158* CoversAlwaysLie: Of all the creatures depicted on the cover of any ''Spore'' game disk (minus ''Darkspore''), only ''two'' are actually included: Captain Barbados and the Solotto creature. A few of the others can't even be recreated with the creature editor.
159* CreatureBreedingMechanic: With the twist that the player controls a single creature directly. Evolution is the goal in that stage of the game: you hunt around for bones that contain instructions for new body parts, then use acquired evolution points to append selected parts in the next generation of creature. In the Space Stage, there's also a "creature tweaker" that allows manipulation of any creature found in the game, but this is purely cosmetic with no influence on play.
160* CropCircles: One Space Stage tool allows you to create these, though it doesn't seem to do anything besides alarm the locals.
161* CulturedBadass: In the Tribal Stage, your tribespeople are equally proficient with weapons and musical instruments.
162* CurbStompBattle: Epic vs. you in Creature Stage.
163** Ten religious vehicles vs. small city in Civ Stage.
164** In Space Stage, the Diplomats' Static Cling ability enables this; use it and those pirates/invaders are yours to pick off without harm.
165* CutscenePowerToTheMax: Creatures seldom move in the same way between the various creators and actual gameplay.
166* CuttingTheKnot: In one section of the Space Stage tutorial, you're attacked by security drones. Technically, you're supposed to shoot them down with your new Proton Missiles, but there's nothing stopping you from just [[ScrewThisImOutOfHere leaving the planet.]]
167* CyberneticsEatYourSoul: The Grox.
168* DamnYouMuscleMemory: If you are doing a creature eradication mission on a planet that also happens to have an artifact, your radar won't differentiate. Consequently, you could end up lasering the artifact if you're not paying attention. This can be avoided by picking up the artifact first (since you're told via a signal coming off of the planet before you enter its atmosphere if it has something special), but if the eradication mission/bio-disaster happens to be on a planet with a space-faring species, they won't appreciate you taking it from them.
169* DangerInTheGalacticCore: The galactic core is surrounded by the civilization of biomechanical AbusivePrecursors called the Grox, and reaching the core itself reveals [[spoiler:a wormhole allowing you to make contact with a ship that might belong to BenevolentPrecursors]].
170* DarkerAndEdgier: The [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin appropriately named]] SpinOff, ''VideoGame/{{Darkspore}}''. Rather surprising, considering Maxis's preference for family games. See its own page for more details.
171** The {{Gorn}} and massive amounts of bloodshed in the trailer is particularly disturbing.
172* DarkIsNotEvil: A variety of horrible-looking creatures can be quite friendly and hospitable, and vice-versa.
173* DeathFromAbove: Lasers, bombs, and pulse blasters are all available for your ship, and can all be used to wreak havoc on enemy installations. If that doesn't work, bring out the big guns: an anti-matter bomb can level a city, and if you really need to show someone you aren't messing around, a Planet Buster can [[EarthShatteringKaboom destroy an entire]] ''[[EarthShatteringKaboom planet]]''.
174* DealWithTheDevil: It's the name of the badge you get if you ally with the Grox.
175* DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist: In the Cell, Creature and Space phases, if your cell, creature or spaceship dies or gets blown up, you just respawn back randomly, at your nest or at your colony you recently visited depending which stage you are on.
176* DeathRay: Your spaceship's Laser probably qualifies as one of these by the time it's fully upgraded. The Mega-Laser blows up Tribal Villages in one shot.
177* DefeatMeansFriendship: In the Space stage, destroying enough colonies of an antagonistic civilization (excepting the Grox, of course) will cause them to scream in terror and bow down to you, reverting to a "don't care much" relationship. Since it's a good strategy to avoid getting wiped out entirely, it's [[JustifiedTrope pretty justified.]]
178* DevelopersForesight:
179** If you were a predator in the creature stage, your tribal villagers will engage in roughhousing, including shoving each other. If one gets shoved into the fire, they will [[AgonyOfTheFeet react]] [[RumpRoast accordingly]].
180** Thought you could create a pseudo-human empire by placing a "Human" creature on Earth and using a Monolith? You can't place a Monolith on Earth.
181** It is possible to modify saved game planets before starting a new game on them using planet sculpting tools, and the developers took measures to ensure that the game would still be playable and relatively bug-free in that state. For instance, if you unify the entire land a la Pangaea, the game is usually programmed to spawn a maximum 4 extra cities on any isolated landmass, but even though there are only 5 cities instead of the usual 10, the progress bar counts each captured city double to make it possible to finish Civilization Stage.
182** Assuming Tutorials are turned on, the Cell Stage begins with a mission to eat five plants if you started as an Herbivore, or five pieces of meat if you started as a Carnivore. Even though it's impossible to start as an Omnivore without mods, there's a version of this mission that tells you to eat five plants ''or'' pieces of meat if you do start as an Omnivore.
183* DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu:
184** It's entirely possible to run into creatures much bigger, stronger, and smarter than you... and then kill them and eat their carcasses. Most easily done in the Cell Stage, where spikes can be used offensively to kill creatures two or three phases up.
185** Spitting Epic creature to death certainly counts.
186** [[spoiler: There's also the Grox. The biggest, meanest, strongest empire in the galaxy can be wiped out just like any other empire by one of the youngest empires in the galaxy, and you even get a badge for it!]]
187* DiegeticCharacterCreation: This trope is essentially the entire point of the game, being a simulation of evolution. As you gain new body parts, you can use them to adapt your creatures to better deal with their environment.
188* DifficultButAwesome:
189** Getting the Economic card in the Civ stage can become this if you didn't get the Industrious card in Tribal; In order to trade with other nations, you'll have to either loot unevolved tribes and hope one of them gives you an Economic land vehicle, or hope an Economic city spawns that you can conquer before anyone else does. The former involves a lot of prayer to the RandomNumberGod, the latter will be guaranteed to tick off other superpowers since non-Economic Civilizations tend to be automatically hated and the ones that don't hate you tend to be the ones that die first; and once a Civilization is too angry at you, you won't be able to trade with them. However, if you manage to pull it off, Spice Savant remains the game breaker it would be otherwise in the Space Stage.
190** Killing an Epic in the Tribal stage as a Carnivore or Omnivore will give you enough meat to last the rest of the stage. The caveat is that while Tribal is the easiest stage to kill an Epic in, "easiest" is relative; you'll probably still take a lot of casualties if you're not careful.
191* DifficultyLevels: Easy, Normal and Hard.
192* TheDiscoveryOfFire: The "Creature" stage ends with the player's creature becoming tribal and learning how to harness fire.
193* DistressCall: Your colonies, or those of your allies, will send these if they come under siege from another empire in the Space phase. A variation on the fake distress call is also used; [[SpacePirates pirates]] will fake the signal emitted by a "rare object" (either artifacts which can be sold for a quick buck, or planet-sculpting tools) [[ChestMonster in order to lure you into a trap]].
194* DudeWheresMyRespect:
195** Averted. Run a mission or two for an alien empire and they'll be happy to form a trade route. Another few and they'll ally themselves with you, and lend you a ship for your allied fleet if you have room.
196** Indeed; later on, one can just go straight for alliance with a quick bribe for most empires, right after FirstContact. If it's a species you uplifted, you might not even need the bribe.
197** Also played straight. If you manage to wipe out every single one of the 2400 Grox colonies, you get nothing other than a badge and bragging rights. Other empires don't treat you any different.
198** Inverted and Averted if you ally with the Grox, the result: the entire galaxy hates your guts...
199* EarthShatteringKaboom: The Planet Buster, to quote the manual, "destroys an entire planet. Feared by all. BIG BADDA BOOM."
200** Also the result of deleting a saved game, which is represented by a planet. (Although the planet, and any colonies you had in that game, are still there if you visit it in another save.)
201* EasterEgg: Several. You might find something [[InsignificantLittleBluePlanet very familiar]] in the Space stage...
202** Some Maxis-made missions even have [[VisualPun giant eggs]] just standing there.[[spoiler: They are always next to goodies that help with the mission.]]
203** Some planets will start playing the ''VideoGame/{{MULE}}'' theme when scanned.
204** If you rapidly twirl the galaxy on the title screen, pictures of the Maxis team will pop out of the center.
205** Almost every Maxis-made adventure includes a hidden Spoffit, usually with Country music playing in the area around them.
206* EasilyConqueredWorld: You can conquer worlds and entire star systems very easily, destroying cities or de-terramorphing (or terraforming) planets, once the planet is in bad atmospheric conditions and so on, its principal cities will be reduced to 2 or even less.
207* EasyLogistics: Averted in the Tribal and Space phases, in which your tribe members have to eat, and your ship needs to refuel, but used in the Civilization phase, wherein your vehicles require no maintenance apart from the initial purchase cost, and repairs after combat.
208* EldritchAbomination: One Maxis-made adventure ends with facing down an ancient horror known as, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin appropriately enough]], the Ancient Horror. [[spoiler: You end up defeating it by giving a magic staff to a nearby altar.]]
209** It's possible to create one; the Creature editor is immensely powerful, not to mention you can enlarge it to epic size in the space age.
210* {{Elopement}}: In the Maxis adventure, "Delicate Negotiations," the children of the Duke and Baron, Julio and Romiette, attempt to elope. They're forced to stop and return to town because their parents are under the mistaken impression that they've been kidnapped and are about to start a war over it.
211* TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt: Subverted. You can destroy the Earth and win an achievement doing so. However, no one is around on the planet to watch in horror. Or stop you.
212* EnemyExchangeProgram: If you capture another city of a different specialty in the Civilization phase and don't convert it to your own, you can build units of its type; especially useful for Economic civs, whose units have ''no'' military capacity.
213* EnemyScan: Sort of. There's a Scan tool for your ship in the Space phase, but it's mostly used for keeping track of wildlife on other planets, rather than in combat.
214* EnemyToAllLivingThings: [[spoiler:The Grox]] are literally this. They hate all Life, and all Life hates them. In fact, habitable planets ''kill'' them.
215* EnergyWeapon: Some of your spaceship's weaponry falls into this category.
216* EverythingTryingToKillYou: This can be possible in the core game, and it's employable in Adventures, all thanks to the power of the editors (and of course, your imagination). You can even make those [[VideoGame/{{Mother}} exploding trees]] if you wanted to...
217* EvilGenius: Scientist empires are, at the very least, a bit morally ambiguous. You need at least one red card to receive the archetype and their signature ability is the Galactic Code-breaking Gravity Wave, which instantly levels every single settlement on the target planet. For reference, only one other signature skill breaks the Code, and it belongs to the [[HolierThanThou Zealot archetype.]]
218* EvolutionaryLevels: The only way to make any sense of the first four phases is to think of the game as an abstract representation of the whole deal.
219** The Cell Stage is, as unbelievable as it may sound, [[TruthInTelevision Truth In Videogames]]. There are actual microscopic organisms called [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2JnX9Yy-D8 Rotifers]] which can ''absorb'' DNA from other microorganisms, and even have body parts resembling those of ''Spore'' cells!
220* TheExactCenterOfEverything: Upon reaching the Galactic Core, you'll encounter a Precursor alien named Steve who awards you with the Staff of Life. The staff is a powerful terraforming tool that instantly makes any planet habitable.
221* ExtremityExtremist: Possible, if you specialize your creature beyond all sense in the Creature phase, thanks to LegoGenetics; you even get an award for maxing out at least 4 abilities. You can continue this into the Tribal phase as well, but it's rather impractical.
222* EyelessFace: You can create a creature without eyes, but without them, you stumble around in the dark in the Cell and Creature Stages.
223* FactorBreakdown: The Civilization and Space stages will show a breakdown of your relationship with another nation or empire when communicating with them; every factor that is taken into account will state its penalty or bonus along with a brief description.
224* FalseReassurance: If you hail a Warrior planet that doesn't like you, they'll greet you with the following:
225-->"Pay no attention to the many large weapons pointed directly at your brain. [[BlatantLies They are here for your protection.]]"
226* FasterThanLightTravel: Your spaceship is equipped with an "interstellar drive." No further elaboration is given.
227* TheFederation: You can build one by having up to six allies. Or it would be one if your friends weren't so prone on declaring war on each other at the drop of a hat. By choosing archetypes properly or just having them far from each other, one can avoid that problem.
228* FetchQuest: One of the mission types alien empires can send you on. They're optional though, unless you want to improve your relationship with them so you can ally with them, get more money or you want to get more badges which increases your rank.
229* FictionalCurrency: The Cell and Creature stages use DNA points as currency, the tribal stage uses food, and the civilization and space stages use Sporebucks, symbolized with a §.
230* FirstTown: Adventure Town for the entire expansion pack and for your species' specific game, Vat Tego. Both are literal walks in the park (or town in their case) and provide the most experience you can get for a ''GA'' adventure (100 EXP, however all Maxis-made adventures give 100 exp to give fledgling captains a good start before tackling the user made creations).
231* FishingForMooks: Since other creatures tend to have packs far larger than yours, the safest way to hunt in Creature stage is doing this. This also applies to impressing them into becoming your allies, since successfully impressing other creatures becomes more difficult if they can call other members of their pack to join them.
232* FissionMailed: In ''Galactic Adventures'', if the last act in an adventure has no goal, you can win by using the beam-up button, which in other circumstances results in failing the mission. There's even a dialog box that pops up saying you'll lose your progress in the adventure.
233* FlowerMouth: The omnivorus mouth part "Dietrap" opens up like a blooming flower with plenty of teeth abound.
234* FluffyTheTerrible: The Creature Creator allows you to name your species whatever you want, regardless of what it actually looks like.
235* FogOfWar: In Cell and Creature, if the cell/creature created is blind. The only visible bit is about a quarter-ish of the screen big circle surrounding your creature, so you can only see what's directly in front of you, beside you and a little above you. It's kinda fun, too.
236** In the Space phase there's a dashed line beyond which names of stars will not load on mouse-over, as well as not being able to click on long-range communications from your colonies or other empires until they're within that circle. It corresponds to the maximum range of the best interstellar drive.
237* ForcedTutorial: ZigZagged in the Space Stage; you can skip the planet tutorial, but once you leave the atmosphere you have to go through all the tutorial missions up through the one where you meet another alien race. After that, your homeworld will still have tutorial missions for you, but you have to talk to Mission Control and receive them manually if you want to do them, which you don't have to. Galactic Adventures has a few such missions- "Adventure Town" for playing adventures on their own via Quickplay [[SubvertedTrope (Though simply starting the mission and then quitting back to the main menu will unlock Quickplay just the same)]], "Becoming a Space Captain" for playing them in Space Stage (which is the first adventure you get no matter which empire you get it from--and the only one you can ever get from your empire to boot). The archetype-specific adventures that come with the expansion might also count, as you have to complete them before you get any downloaded missions from any empire of that archetype.
238* ForDoomTheBellTolls: Heard every time the Black Cloud civilization power is used. The fact that all it does is shut down turrets and entertainment buildings, it tends to be an anticlimax... unless you have [[ZergRush 20 or 30 vehicles parked nearby...]]
239** Subverted with the healing power in that stage, which plays a bright sounding church bell and what sounds to be laughter in the background.
240** A similar sound effect is heard in Space stage when an NPC empire's spaceships enter the atmosphere of the planet you're on. You expect to hear it when you're invading or defending from an invasion, but you can very easily get jumpscared if you're on an allied planet with no enemy ships on it.
241* ForeverWar:
242** Possible, if an empire too weak to do anything to you (or of an archetype that never bothers to attack anyway) declares war on you but you never attack them in response.
243** Piss off [[spoiler: The Grox]] enough for them to declare war (which doesn't take much), and this will be your fate unless you manage to eradicate them; you don't get the option to give a peace offering, and no amount of lost colonies will convince them to surrender.
244* ForGreatJustice: The Knight Archetype, and possibly the Warrior Archetype.
245* FormulaBreakingEpisode: Clark and Stanely IIII is very different from the other Maxis-created Clark and Stanley adventures due to having been created by a different employee. Unlike them, you actually play as Stanley and the adventure is a fairly straightforward combat-based mission [[SparedByTheAdaptation where Stanley doesn't die in the end]].
246* FriendlyFireproof: Ships in your party won't get damage if you accidentally hit them. It will still piss your allies off if you do it on one of their planet anyway.
247* FurryConfusion: It's possible to have a sapient race on a planet, and also have the same race on the same planet as a non-sapient version.
248** Made even worse due to one glitch that will on occasion put a tribal creature as a non-sapient creature.
249[[/folder]]
250
251[[folder: G-L]]
252* GameBreakingBug: Maxis actually released a patch for patch 1.05 to fix a problem that was making many adventures unplayable. However, the same patch can ''still'' cause creatures to be almost completely un-animated, "sliding" around instead of walking, as though they're rubber mannequins attached invisible RC cars. That's right, they had to patch the patch and it still didn't fix all the problems with it. The worst part is that ''different users have to employ different methods to fix this, with no rhyme or reason''.
253** You can target any ability at ships in your allied fleet. Most of the time, this is just an annoyance. When you accidentally launch a colony at one, however, the pack blasts into space and the game freezes waiting futilely for it to land.
254** During the Tribal Stage, a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-SVINKKwwU bug occasionally manifests itself]] where a member of the tribe (most often the chieftain) cannot move normally; instead, it rockets out ''into space'' and takes at least half a minute to come back down to the ground (if it comes back at all), not having moved horizontally. This makes it impossible to befriend tribes, as the chieftain is needed to befriend other tribes, until you allow the chieftain to inevitably starve to death and respawn.
255** Also in the Tribal Stage, you may encounter a bug that causes the game to freeze in the exact same spot every time. When this happens, the menu can be accessed, but nothing else works. It is suspected that this freeze happens if you evolved while befriending a creature at any point. Unfortunately, if you experience this bug, that entire save is pretty much ruined.
256** If you have a wildlife sanctuary in the Space Stage, DO NOT DELETE OR BAN ANY CREATURES THERE. This can result in the game crashing upon entering it. So eradicate any creatures there if you plan on deleting them.
257** They appear to have since been patched, but early versions of the game had two incredibly annoying bugs. Both of these were tied to the planet, making it unusable for a main game no matter how much you reset.:
258*** When transitioning from the cell stage to the creature stage, sometimes your first nest would be in the water. Attempting to swim to shore got you eaten by [[BorderPatrol the sea monster]]. To add insult to injury, you'd often be eaten ''as soon as you reached shore.'' The only way to continue was to make your creature in the creature editor and skip to Tribal, which greatly limits the archetypes you can start the Space Stage as(in particular, it locks you out of Ecologist, Knight, and Bard) and costs you some Space stage perks.
259*** In the space stage, sometimes the ship you're sent to scan when you first go to space failed to spawn on the planet you're sent to. Since you need to scan it to get the Interstellar Drive and exit the star system, this made it impossible to proceed.
260** In the Creature stage, if your species migrates to a new nest and your creature dies before reaching it, you have nowhere to respawn, and the game crashes. Very irritating, especially if you haven't saved.
261** Another variation of the animation glitch is actually quite a bit worse; you can't move a creature in Test Drive without using the mouse, none of the animations function (not even abilities will animate), leaving the creature with only idle and walking animations to use. Swimming, flying, calling, socializing and combat animations don't function. You can still technically play the game, but the lack of animations eventually get annoying.
262** Occasionally, when playing space stage with Galactic Adventures, the game will replace the adventure's intended planet layout with a different one (likely due to adventure planets having to replace existing planets on the map). This results in buildings and elements being placed strangely and can make it impossible to complete the adventure.
263** Concerning particular empire archetypes, there's a glitch where Zealots can and will demand tributes from you ''[[FalseFriend even when you're allies]]''. To make it worse you can't even respond to these demands because the game does not notify you of their incoming transmissions - but you can still hear the incoming transmission sound - and as a result the empire in question will adopt a "You refused to pay us tribute" relation modifier that can extend to -100. Long story short, the glitch makes Zealots not only hard to keep in a positive relation but also prone to becoming hostile for no reason.
264** Downplayed in the sense that "Most Annoying Bug" isn't a trope; with the odd exception of Concert in the Park, socializing in any adventure in a save(as opposed to quickplay) will scramble the timeline. This is likely due to the timeline registering the socialization as a Creature stage action while you're in the Space stage, and subsequently trying to smoosh them together. The timeline isn't vital to the game--once you reach Space and no longer have to keep track of where you're leaning, you can play the whole game without once looking at it--but it can be sad for those who like to reminisce on how much their little cell has grown.
265** It appears that there's an extremely rare cell stage bug that lets you [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzuYN5ennt0 take control of an Epic cell that eats you]].
266* GameMaker: ''Galactic Adventures'' could be likened to UsefulNotes/RPGMaker with the ''Spore'' engine, or a third-person action-adventure maker.
267* GameplayRoulette: One of the game's central identity traits is that it passes through several distinct concepts and genres as its progresses. Cell Stage is a top-down action game mainly concerned with killing enemies, not being killed, and upgrading your character's traits. Creature Stage works much the same, but is three-dimensional, has more complex social, combat and movement mechanics, and allows much greater physical costumization. Tribal Stage becomes a low-scale city-management and strategy game and switches control from one creature to a small group, and drops the DNA currency the previous two stages used as a result of no longer allowing you to change your creatures' physical form. Civilization Stage upgrades in scale from Tribal, becoming a full strategy game where you compete with other factions for control of cities and resources, with the goal being to achieve global domination by military, economic, or cultural might. Space Stage then returns control to a single entity to become a sandbox exploration game with action and civilization sim elements. The ''Galactic Adventures'' DLC allows Space Stage players to periodically return to controlling a single creature in action game sequences.
268* GangUpOnTheHuman:
269** Tribal Stage. Good luck trying to befriend a tribe when there are two inherently hostile ones in the opposite direction that take turns attacking you, and you don't have enough food to buy them both off.
270** Also happens in the Space Stage when going to war. If two NPC empires are at war, the attacking empire will send a few ships to one planet and the defender will send a ship or 2 out and attack with turrets at the most to defend themselves. If the player attacks a planet though, the defenders sends swarms of ships at you in addition to the turrets relentlessly until you either leave or destroy all the cities.
271** Thankfully averted in the Civilization stage; if you keep your relations with other nations high, they'll leave you alone and focus on each other.
272%%* GemTissue: Any creature with the Mackne, Derma Bark, Baublewarts, Jemite and/or Stealing Crystals parts can probably apply.%%"Probably"?
273* GenderBender: All of the creatures, upon gaining sapience, speak in a male-sounding voice, with female voices only heard from the Economic archetype in the Civilization Stage and as an uncommon colony voice type in the Space Stage. None of the voice options in Adventures later in the game are gendered (instead they're determined by pitch), and there is no visible distinction between those who lay eggs and those who don't.
274* TheGenericGuy: The Wanderer archetype, one of two (the other being Knight) to be unavailable to the AI. To get it, you have to start in the Space stage, skipping every prior stage. It's also the only archetype to lack a consequence ability.
275* GlobalCurrency: Used in the Civilization and Space phases; Sporebucks are apparently the official currency of every nation on the planet and every empire in the galaxy. Sort-of [[JustifiedTrope justified]] in the Tribal phase, in which your "currency" is food.
276* GRatedSex: ''Spore'' creatures in the Creature phase apparently reproduce by emitting love-hearts and ''dancing'' with their mate. In the Tribal phase, an egg just rolls out of the main hut. [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] in the manual, in which it is stated that "what happens in there is anyone's guess".
277* GuideDangIt:
278** Finding Sol. With the mind-bogglingly huge galaxy in the game, it's amazing even one person was able to get there.
279** Want to capture colonies on non-T0 planets instead of destroying them? [[spoiler: Aim your bombs for that yellow circle in front of the town hall.]]
280*** Although, in earlier versions you had to [[spoiler: aim at the very center of the circle where the Town Hall was. Filling the 'military bar' without aiming there resulted in the cities exploding as always.]]
281** As you're manipulating parts in the creators, you can hold down the Tab key to get more angles of rotation.
282** Downloading Maxis-made adventures outside of the starting 10 is more roundabout than it should be. Instead of them showing up when you search the adventure's name, you'll get a bunch of modified (usually with ''far'' smaller point rewards) versions by random players. To get the Maxis version, you have to download one of these modified versions, pull it up from your Sporepedia, click on the dropdown menu on the top of the image to get the lineage, and then click the download button where it says "Maxis".
283* GuiltFreeExterminationWar: While wars with other races can be ended via the opponent surrendering or you making a peace offering, [[spoiler: The Grox]] will never surrender, nor do you even get the option to give them a peace offering. Once you've provoked them into war, the only way to end it is to destroy them.
284* HandyMouth: In tribal stage, the chief of a tribe without hands holds their staff in their mouth. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCcaor5W3vU Around 3:45 in this film]].
285* HardCodedHostility: [[spoiler:The Grox]] act like this to everyone. [[SubvertedTrope It is possible to ally with them, though.]] Doing so would cause the other races to hate you.
286* HerbivoresAreFriendly: In the Cell and Creature stages, herbivorous creatures tend to leave you alone unless bothered and, in the latter, are usually more geared towards socializing than fighting. However, it ''is'' possible to defy this, as there's nothing keeping you from getting the herbivore card in the Cell stage and then becoming a predator in the Creature stage.
287* HereWeGoAgain: Fresh into Space stage, you just dropped a fortune getting on a Zealot empire's good side. Then before your funds are replenished, [[OhCrap you get the message from another empire your species has never heard of, saying "You have violated our territory! Be thankful we are not already at war!"]]
288* HeroUnit: Chieftains in the Tribal phase; they're more powerful than your regular tribe members, respawn if killed, and you need them to invoke your Consequence abilities from the first two phases.
289** Your captain in ''Galactic Adventures'', though they act more like your online avatar.
290* HighAltitudeBattle: Most ship-to-ship combat (presumably unrelated to [[ShipToShipCombat the trope of the same name]]) in the Space phase occurs not, as you might expect, in space, but in the atmosphere above colonized planets. [[JustifiedTrope Which makes sense, when you think about it, because why bother defending space?]]
291** Then again, the only (non-modded) weapon that you ([[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard but not your enemies]]) can fire in space is the Auto Turret, so going down into the atmosphere is the only option. On the other hand, there are some mods that raise the height of the available atmosphere for a planet so it makes it seem rather like space...
292* HoldingOutForAHero: Colonies, other empires and even your homeworld seem utterly incapable of preventing eco-disasters on their own in the Space phase. They ''can'' defend themselves from attack with turrets, however.
293** They still call for assistance whenever they get attacked by pirates though, despite bringing in massive fleets to quash them. Yet they still berate you for not helping out if you don't show up in time. Though, conversely, if you arrive just before the last pirate is demolished, they'll shower you with gratitude.
294** Strangely, if you have an Auto-Turret, and it takes out the invading ships before you arrive, the colony will thank you if it was pirates stealing your spice, but berate you if the ships were attacking your cities.
295* HolierThanThou: Zealots. They tend to be a rather disliked archetype, despite an awesome superpower that is ''also'' disliked by NPC empires...
296* HolyHandGrenade: Shamans appear to be mainly pacifists. However, this does not stop their tools in ''Galactic Adventures'' from being weapons that cause extremely CruelAndUnusualDeath.
297* HostileTerraforming: You can deterraform planets of an enemy empire to reduce the level of colony that planet can maintain (especially effective against enemy home-worlds, as it reduces them from thriving T-3s with extra settlements, to a basic T-2 with two settlements at best). Empires will regard this as an act of war. More in line with this trope, [[spoiler:the Grox]], EnemyToAllLivingThings, can be killed by terraforming their planets, and likewise they specialize in deterraforming.
298* HufflepuffHouse: The [[ForGreatJustice Knight]] and Wanderer archetypes in the Space Stage, which are valid for the player but will never be chosen by the AI for some reason. If you have one of these as a save game and visit it with another save, they'll be treated as Warrior and Diplomat empires, respectively.
299* HurricaneOfPuns:
300** Pretty much all of the parts in all editors are like this. A special mention should go to the weapon part "Goes to 11".
301** Special mention goes to the Parkaboy (a Maxis employee) adventure ''"[[VideoGame/BaldursGate Bauder's Gate]]"''.
302* HugeHolographicHead: The full body version. Although depending on creature, it can be a lot less cooler than you think.
303* ImprovisedWeapon: A glitch in the Tribal Stage causes a maraca-player to, instead of swapping the maracas for a weapon, add the weapon ''onto'' the maracas.
304* InformedFlaw: Ecologists are ''supposedly'' ScaryDogmaticAliens, but this doesn't actually turn up. Tick them off by attacking them and they complain at you like Al Gore, but scary... not so much. It's a bit more noticeable in Hard Mode, where they're among the archetypes that will easily demand tribute.
305* InsectoidAliens: Patch 1.03 added exoskeleton limbs which make it easy to create such creatures. Even without the patch, you can make a few insect-looking creatures.
306* InsignificantLittleBluePlanet: There's an achievement called "Manifest Destiny" for "finding" Earth. It's also hinted at in game. Another achievement, "Oh, The Humanity," is for [[EarthShatteringKaboom blowing it up.]] Speaking of humans, they apparently don't exist in this game; Earth is actually guaranteed to be a T1. For whatever reason, terraforming it fully will turn the land red, and deform the continents. Though there's nothing to lose from destroying it, as it never has any valuable spice.
307* InstantWinCondition: Three options in the Civilization Stage, depending on how you finished the Tribal Stage, which determines what philosophy your city adopts. They're unlocked upon capturing 6 cities and triggering them instantly captures the remaining cities. The caveat is that they count as captures that match your starting philosophy (e.g. winning with [=ICBMs=] counts as capturing those cities in a Military fashion), so if you're trying to win the Civ Stage with a card that doesn't match what you got in the Tribal Stage, you'll want to avoid taking the easy way out.
308* InsurmountableWaistHighFence: Averted. If your captain has powerful enough wings/jump/jetpacks, he will be able to jump over damn near everything.
309* IntelligentGerbil: Very easy to make.
310* InUniverseGameClock: Used on a far larger scale than day and night; it's completely possible, and, indeed, there's an [[BraggingRightsReward achievement]] for it, to guide a species from a single-celled lifeform in a tidepool to a space-faring empire in one sitting.
311* ItsUpToYou: There are ''tons'' of examples, but the most horrific is how, during the Space phase, every 15 minutes or so an ally will beg you to defend one of their planets against that biosphere's version of Mad Cow Disease. Now, these are space-faring races who have their own ''navies'' - and larger ones than yours, since they have one ship per planet, whereas you have one ship ''total''. But somehow ''you'' are the only individual in the whole damn galaxy who can fly down and laserbeam the infected animals out of existence.
312** At least the ecologists have a (flimsy) justification. When they send people out to exterminate them themselves their people see the creature's sad eyes and can't carry out the job. But considering that they sell items meant to decrease the chance of ecological disaster....
313** ''Every single adventure'' uses this trope. Some creators manage to throw in a HandWave though explaining that your captain is some sort of paid mercenary or part of a major alliance and just so happens to be the right person for the job...
314* JackOfAllStats: It's possible, if not ideal or easy, to make a vehicle with all of its health, speed, and power (be military, economic, or religious) at even levels.
315* {{Kaiju}}: Epic Creatures. They are a potential threat in every stage, but are most dangerous at Creature level.
316* KarmaMeter: Sort of; Throughout each stage, what color card you get in each stage is generally determined by how violent you were in that stage, with pacifistic choices getting green cards and violent choices getting red cards; along with a blue card for creatures that chose the more balanced route. [[note]]Though the Civilization stage is weird in this regard, as the Economic route (blue) is arguably more pacifistic than the Religious route (green)[[/note]] The combination of colors you get determines what Archetype you'll be in the space stage, with more violent archetypes like Warrior and Zealot needing more red cards while peaceful archetypes like Diplomat and Shaman need more green cards.
317* KillerRabbit: [[spoiler:The Grox]] look like cute little cybernetic hamsters... until they start blowing your planets up. Also occurs with random species due to user-generated content combined with the nearly limitless potential of the Creature editor.
318* KingOfAllCosmos: [[spoiler: Steve!]]
319* KingMook: Epic creatures are essentially Godzilla-sized (and correspondingly tough) versions of regular creatures. The player can even create them from normal sized monsters with a Space Stage item.
320* KnowWhenToFoldEm:
321** If you've captured nine cities in the Civilization stage, if you don't take the last one right away they'll surrender to you anyway.
322** In the Space stage, capturing colonies means damaging them just enough to do this, indicated by the military bar being replaced with a white flag. Capture every colony in a system, and "Capture System" will be available, which is basically the opposing empire saying "We'll leave and let you have the system if you stop trying to kill us." Capture enough star systems, and the empire can offer surrender, which, if accepted, will eliminate all relationship modifiers except for a temporary "We were at war" negative modifier. Unlike the Civilization stage, however, [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential you can refuse these pleas for mercy.]] You can also engage in this yourself by making a peace offering to pay off an attacker, but be careful; being cheap will just anger them more.
323* LargeHam: The religious holograms in Civilization stage, as well as the holograms summoned by "Fanatical Frenzy" in the Space stage.
324* LawfulStupid: Diplomats have to take a Vote to Take Immediate Action for ''everything'', even as their cities are being destroyed or their biosphere is dying of a virus.
325* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: [[spoiler: Steve's speech as you travel through the Galactic Core to meet him touches upon the mechanics of the Sporepedia, and how there are many other worlds that your creations have appeared in and whose creations have appeared in yours.]]
326* LegoGenetics: One of the game's defining factors.
327* LethalLavaLand:
328** In the base game, any planet with a terrascore of 0 from having too high of a temperature is a lava planet. In addition to having a more fiery version of other T0 planets' hazards, the heat rising from the lava oceans themselves inflicts Damage Over Time on your ship. The lava gets retextured to red water if you terraform a planet enough, but retains the heat hazard until the planet actually reaches life-supporting conditions. Since you can only play the earlier stages of the game on life-bearing worlds, the only way you can walk around on a lava planet in the base game is with the Hologram Scout. Good luck getting close enough to use it without taking at least some damage from the flame geysers and burning clouds, though.
329** These are easy to make in ''Galactic Adventures'' by increasing the planet's temperature to the highest setting, though they have the same hazards as a lava planet in Space Stage. You can also invoke this trope without any risk of damage by retexturing the water to look like lava, though the difference will be obvious if something steps in it as the water keeps the ripple effect even with the new texture.
330* LevelGrinding: ''Galactic Adventures'' is rather bad about this, mostly because your captain has ten ranks to go up with (in which you earn the chance to get any part with each new rank), and every new rank usually requires roughly double the number of points your earned for the previous rank. This results in most people playing things like Clark & Stanley and other simple easy adventures that tend to only give you 5-30 points in order to rank up to get a new part so that they can play the harder, larger adventures worth 50 or more. Factor this in with the fact that a single captain can't earn the points from the same mission after the first playthrough, and you'll have a bunch of frustration trying to find worthy missions. Fortunately, Maxis seemed to realize this, as most of the Maxis-made adventures are relatively easy and reward 100 points a pop.
331* LightningBruiser: The Uber Turret, full stop. It has a whopping 50,000 HP (in comparison, the max health the player can have is 11,250 on easy difficulty, and the max health any NPC ship will have is 2,000), moves extremely quickly, and deals approximately 250 damage per second. It can shred even Grox ships apart in a manner of seconds, and is almost guranteed to never die.
332%%* LoadingScreen: "[[RunningGag Reticulating spines]]..."
333* LowTechSpears: Throwing spears are the ranged weapon option for the stone age-level creatures of the Tribal Stage.
334[[/folder]]
335
336[[folder: M-R]]
337%%* {{Macrogame}}: One of the basic precepts of the game's uniqueness.%%Is what?
338* MadeOfExplodium: Buildings designed to look like stage props for adventures all explode when destroyed, regardless of what it is or how it's destroyed, e.g. having your captain gnaw a wooden bridge until it runs out of HP will cause it to go boom. You can also disguise bombs and grenades as other inconspicuous objects while retaining their explosive properties.
339* MamaBear: Just ''try'' to ally with a species in the Creature Stage after you've killed a baby of the species. Or eat an egg for the large DNA bonus. Sometimes friendly species will let you. The way to find out if they will is attack the egg. If they don't react, it's safe. If they become territorial, mad orange face, stop and make friends with them again.
340* MarathonBoss: In an abstract sense, [[spoiler: the Grox, the apparent villains of the galaxy and the largest empire in the game. Should you choose to defeat them, be prepared to spend upwards of a month fighting them.]]
341* MasterOfAll: The omnivore diet actually [[AvertedTrope averts]] this, as while it can eat both fruit and meat, neither of them fills it up as fast as they would a carnivore or herbivore. Unfortunately [[GuideDangIt there's only one screen in the entire game that tells you this]].
342* MartyrdomCulture: The Stones of Force imply that the Warriors have something like this; the first half of them talk about how the individual is fragile and doomed to die at some point anyway, so valuing your own life over the well-being of the species is pointless.
343%%* MegaCrossover: The game can become this, if the player is skilled enough (or just downloads the right sporecasts, anyway...)%%Can become what? How?
344* MetaPowerUp: The scientist and ecologist parts in Galactic Adventures. Scientist parts increase energy storage and recovery (very important if you use warrior or bard parts), and ecologist parts increase health capacity and allow for ''health recovery''.
345* MetalSlime: Rogue Creatures in the Creature stage. They're hard to find and even harder to ally with[[note]]or kill, but they're more valuable alive as pack members than dead, due to their high level skills[[/note]], but will drop 100 DNA once you do.
346* MindScrew:
347** Due to the way the creatures you find on planets are often randomized, once in a rare while you may run into a planet that contains the same creatures your race evolved from. While there're no gameplay differences, it can get interesting should you decide to use those creatures to help stabilize T-scores on planets, or to use a monolith on them.
348** If you don't have many other creatures of your own design in the Sporepedia and move from Creature to Tribal, the Tribal Stage has an odd tendency to make some tribal villages out of earlier versions of your current creature, in addition to earlier versions sometimes spawning as non-sapient creatures.
349* ModelMuseum: The Sporepedia allows you to preview and examine any creation in the game. While most objects like buildings and vehicles can only be examined with a freely rotating camera, creatures can have numerous animations played alongside their various idle animations.
350* SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome: InUniverse. After completing the mission requiring you to contact [[spoiler:the Grox]], most, if not all, other empires treat the fact that you met [[spoiler:the Grox and lived to tell the tale as this]].
351* MoneySpider:
352** The first cell killed that has a new part will drop it for you to pick up.
353** When enemy ships are destroyed in the Space phase, they sometimes drop tokens (shaped like money bags and gold coins) which can be abducted with the Abduction Beam for money. It's never explained exactly why this is, but could probably be {{handwave}}d as salvage which is then sold or as money being carried on the ship when it was destroyed.)
354* TheMonolith: Featured as a tool to accelerate the development of more primitive species and civilizations. May be a ShoutOut to ''Spore''[='s=] spiritual ancestor, ''VideoGame/SimEarth'', as well.
355* MonstrousScenery: In the Cell Stage, you play as a tiny primitive organism. As you swim around searching for food, you can see much bigger organisms swimming far in the background, but you're not large enough to attract their notice... yet.
356%%* MultiMookMelee: The adventure "Infestation", and a a good 75 percent of the Adventures you'll find on the Sporepedia.%%Are examples how?
357* MusicalTrigger: Somewhat worked out during the Civilization stage; religious powers are church-like and optimistic (save for the Black Cloud), economic powers are based on cash registers and 80s style corporate music, and military powers use radio-talk noises over tense orchestral music.
358* MutuallyExclusivePowerups: Both Shaman and Warrior parts will override the base creature attacks (not a problem, since they're both strictly better), and Warrior parts will override Shaman parts (Warrior parts deal much more damage than Shaman ones, but unlike Shaman weapons, cost energy to use). Similarly, Bard and Diplomat parts will override base socialization skills, and Bard will override Diplomat.
359* MyopicConqueror: This is a persistent occupational hazard in the later levels, particularly after your civilization develops space travel. As you capture more planets, your colonies becomes increasingly vulnerable to invasions by other empires. Even if you manage to somehow keep the peace, there's always the possibility that your colonies will suffer environmental disasters that render then non-viable.
360* MyRulesAreNotYourRules: Aside from the issue of you only having one spaceship while other species have many, there's a maximum of only nine types of creature per alien planet (while creature stage has a considerably larger number), and alien tribal planets will have all their tribes be the same species, unlike the actual tribe stage in which there are multiple species.
361* NaturalWeapon: In creature stage, you can weaponize your creature in many ways.
362* NewGamePlus: A unique implementation in that every individual save file shares the same galaxy, so all the planets and colonies spawned by one save file will remain accessible for every other saved game. This can be an easy way to get allies and make pathfinding easier (particularly with regards to Storybook Planets or the path through the Galactic Core). Speedruns of this game (where the goal is to get to the Galactic Core) have a separate NG+ category, with the NG category disallowing the use of other saved games, non-Maxis creations, and wormholes to give everyone an equal playing field.
363* NewsTravelsFast:
364** In the tribal stage, a raid party could be on the other end of the map, but they'll still calm down and return home as soon as you give the tribe a gift.
365** The very moment you ally with [[spoiler:the Grox]], ''every empire in the galaxy'' will know and [[ThisIsUnforgivable react]] [[ThisMeansWar accordingly.]][[note]] it adds a -200 relation modifier to every empire, causing all but your closest allies to declare war. How your allies react depends on how much you spoiled them before making your [[spoiler:Grox]] alliance. This even applies to species ''you uplift afterwards''.[[/note]]
366* NiceJobBreakingItHero: During one of the ''WesternAnimation/RobotChicken''-designed missions, you have to attend the wedding of a race of pig people, but when you fix someone's car it speeds out of control into the city and runs over the groom. The punishment? ''You take his place.''
367* NoBiochemicalBarriers:
368** Any carnivore can eat any herbivore, any herbivore can eat any plant, any omnivore can eat anything and they can all breathe any atmosphere. Probably justified by the RuleOfFun, however, as filling out a T3 ecosystem would be an enormous pain otherwise.
369** Doesn't matter how hot or cold it is, or how thick or thin the air is; no matter what planet your Captain beams down to, he'll be just fine.
370* NoDamageRun: There are achievements for completing the Creature and Tribal Stages without dying, "Survivor" and "Watchful Parent."
371* NoFairCheating: Using certain cheats in saved games activates the Joker badge, which disables achievements on that game. However, there is an achievement for cheating enough times.
372* NoOntologicalInertia: In the Creature stage, you can hunt species to extinction by killing a specified number of them. After you do so, the survivors will spin off into the sky and disappear.
373* NonEntityGeneral: Averted in the Cell and Creature phases, in which the player character is in control of the cell or creature in question, as well as the Tribal phase, in which the player is implied to be the tribe's [[HeroUnit Chieftain]] and Space where the player is the ship's [[HeroUnit Commander]], but used in the Civilization.
374* NoodleImplements: If you refuse to do an "Eradicate 5 citizens" mission for your empire, the one giving the mission will sometimes ask that you "At least do your part and buy duct tape and miniature flags."
375* NotTheIntendedUse:
376** The Warrior's Raider Rally ability is not particularly useful for conquering other planets since the pirates it summons are merely a minor distraction at best. However, if one of your own planets is under attack, it will instantly stop raids from other pirates or enemy empires, and your pirates won't attack you. In addition, players tend to summon pirates just to blow them up for money or to speed up getting the Body Guard 5 badge.
377** Usually, terraforming tools are used to change planets from frozen/molten wastelands, into more desirable and profitable earth like worlds. However, they're perfectly acceptable to use as weapons of mass destruction. In particular, you can [[ColonyDrop summon an asteroid or comet]] to nuke a city into oblivion. And of course, there's always the option to have a comically misplaced volcano sprout up under a city. They're all cheaper than Anti-Matter Bombs!
378* NowWhereWasIGoingAgain: All too easy to fall into in the Space phase. The galaxy is a big place.
379* NukeEm: You get this option if you unlock the Gadget Bomb and ICBM in Civilization. The former does massive damage and can potentially capture a city in one shot, and the latter captures all cities instantly. However, both leave massive rubble that you'll have to rebuild, and using Gadget Bomb will hurt your relationship with other nations. By technicality of using nuclear reaction, Anti-Matter Missiles and Bombs count as well. They're, respectively, consumable anti-ship and anti-colony weapons with a lot of power but are expensive to stock up on.
380* OhTheHumanity: There's an achievement by that name given for destroying Earth.
381* OneManArmy:
382** Played straight during the Cell Stage, and potentially during the Creature and Space stages. You can kill/wipe out a lot of creatures on your own (though you could ally with some too), and any creatures traveling with you will aid you in attacking anything you're fighting.
383** Largely played straight during the Space Stage. Like the creature stage, you can get allies to travel with you, but you have to wonder why your one spaceship is the only one out of your entire civilization that makes contact with other space civilizations, terraforms, sets up colonies, and attacks planets/defends colonies. Made more egregious by the fact that when attacking other planets (or they invade an ally/one of your planets), they have several ships on that planet, and while at war, they also send spaceships to attack you while traveling their space.
384* OneWorldOrder: The objective of the Civilization stage is to unite your entire world under the rule of your civilization.
385* TheOnlyOne: The player, particularly when [[spoiler:the Grox]] show up for a 20-on-1 furball. Averted in that, instead of succeeding handily, you [[DownerEnding die a lot]]. Your only saving grace is that you respawn, for free, at the last one of your colonies you visited; in fact, it's not uncommon for the respawn video to show you flying into a sky that pieces of your ''previous'' ship are still tumbling out of. Alternatively, you can just pick up the Shield upgrade, Mega Bomb the Grox while safe, and then GTFO.
386* OrchestralBombing: Used whenever you're going to use the gadget bomb in the Civilization stage. When the weapon is about to be launched, a tense timpani tap and low brass drone is heard, and upon launch, a massive set of horn falls and timpani rolls. The reason for all of this? The gadget bomb does massive damage and even leaves behind nuclear rubble that can't be rebuilt on.
387* OrphanedEtymology: The Space Stage measures distances between stars in parsecs. Long story short astronomers wait for the Earth to make half an orbit around the sun, which we know means the Earth has moved 2AU as the crow flies, then measure the angle a star seems to have shifted and doing some math to work out its distance from us. This also means that parsecs are useless for anybody not on Earth.
388* OurRobotsAreNonstandard: The Bot Parts Pack, a limited promotion with Dr. Pepper, added robot parts to the Creature Editor.
389* OurWormholesAreDifferent: The black-holes-treated-as-wormholes variety.
390* PacifistRun:
391** It's perfectly possible to get all the way to the space stage without killing anything. This usually requires getting the green card for a stage, however civilization stage throws a bit of a curveball at the player as the blue card (economic) is actually the pacifist choice in that stage, not the green one (religious). Though since no-one is hurt and nothing is damaged through religious conquering (you shut down their entertainment buildings and turrets and preach to them via a hologram, that's about it), you could argue that the green civilization card is no less pacifist than the blue one. ''However'', religious vehicles ''do'' damage and can even destroy other vehicles!
392** There's a special achievement, "Pacifist," that you can get by completing the Cell Stage without killing another creature.
393* PainfulPointyPufferfish: One of the microorganisms in the Cell stage, Puffish, is a slow, round, purple animal defended by an array of spines surrounding its body, which will harm any predator or rival attempting to engage it in melee.
394* PaletteSwap: You might run into a few of these, since creatures are player-created.
395* PassThroughTheRings: When you reach Space phase, an optional tutorial requires you to fly through illuminated spheres above the cities.
396* PhotoMode: The Creature Editor has a Test Drive menu, which lets you play with your creatures and share photos of it.
397* PictorialLetterSubstitution: The "O" in ''Spore'' is typically replaced with a stylized picture of a spiral galaxy to tie in with the "universe in a box" pitch of the game with emphasis on creating your own universe of creatures and cultures.
398* PlanetaryNation: This is a requirement to exit the Civilization Stage to move onto the Space Stage. Same goes for every other galactic empire out there, though they often have more than 1 planet; also Uprisings only happen for entire planets.
399* PlanetOfHats:
400** Kind of the whole point in the Civilization Stage, in which you must conquer the whole planet into a OneWorldOrder for the Space Stage.
401** The game also provides a more literal side of this: during the Civilization Stage, any city you capture will switch the architectural style over to what you're using (even if the buildings are rubble) as well as the vehicles. In the Space Stage, you can choose what buildings and vehicles you want for each planet. However, all of the citizens wear the same outfit regardless of what city or colony they come from.
402** Empires in the Space Stage will invariably be one of the following: [[TheHedonist Bards]], [[TheFederation Diplomats]], [[AnimalLover Ecologists]], [[ForScience Scientists]], [[TechnicalPacifist Shamans]], [[ProudMerchantRace Traders]], [[ProudWarriorRace Warriors]], and [[ScaryDogmaticAliens Zealots]]. Two additional archetypes, [[ForGreatJustice Knights]] and [[TheGenericGuy Wanderers]], are available to the player [[HufflepuffHouse but not the AI]].
403* PlanetLooters: Pirates will occasionally raid one of your worlds, or one of your allies, and try to steal your spice. You can also do that to other civilizations, although doing so will anger them. Don't think you can get away with it unnoticed on civilization-stage planets either. Their nations will attack on sight if you provoke them enough.
404* PlanetOfSteves: If you name your creature "Steve", once you get to Civilization stage you will have a literal PlanetOfSteves.
405* PlanetaryRomance: You would be surprised at how elaborate some players can be when they create adventures or provide a backstory for a race/captain on the [=SporeWiki=]; the evolutionary stages as tracked in your history can give you a great overview of what happened to get your race from a mess of slime to a spacefaring empire.[[note]]Don't get too attached to this feature in ''Galactic Adventures'', though. There's a bug where, outside of the Maxis mission Concert in the Park, socializing in an Adventure will cause the timeline to become horribly glitchy and scrambled.[[/note]]
406* PlayerCreationSharing: All of the creatures, spaceships and other content a given player generates can be uploaded to "Sporepedia" and downloaded into another player's game. The result being that Sporepedia has well over 100,000 times the amount of content the game had when it shipped.
407* {{Precursors}}:
408** Implied. Someone built the Grox (and were possibly destroyed by them) and left the Staff of Life at the center of the galaxy.
409** You're fully capable of ''becoming'' this trope with the Monolith. Whether you're abusive or benevolent is up to you. This is taken even further if you find the planet corresponding to an new game file. You can make things easier or harder for the new empire, giving or starving it of easy access to rare Spices, having benevolent or hostile neighbours, even sculpting the planet itself to change how the Creature, Tribal, and Civilization Stages are played.
410* PredatorsAreMean: In the Creature Stage, carnivorous creatures are more likely to be hostile or aggressive than herbivores, and the always-aggressive epic creatures are almost always carnivores. The player can, of course, defy the trope by playing a carnivore focused on socializing rather than hunting, though it's very difficult as the only sources of sustenance for a carnivore are corpses, which are very rare, and the very creatures you're trying to befriend.
411* PrehistoricAnimalAnalogue: The Maxis-made [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Dino]], which is basically a stegosaur with a warthog head. And as always, you can make more dinosaurs.
412%%* ProudMerchantRace: Economic civilizations and Trader empires.
413* ProudScholarRace: Religious civilizations, who expand through culture rather than economics or warfare, and Scientist empires.
414%%* ProudWarriorRace: Military civilizations, and Warrior and Knight empires. The Zealot may also qualify.%%Examples aren't ambiguous. They qualify or they don't.
415%%* PoweredArmor: The Zealot parts in the Captain Outfitter.
416* QuarantineWithExtremePrejudice: One of the framing devices for the "Kill 5 Space-Faring Citizens" and "Kill 5 Wild Creatures" missions is that they're infected with a dangerous pathogen and killing them is the only way to contain it. This is also the basis of automatic Bio-Disasters. For the former two, however, [[GameplayAndStorySegregation denying or failing the mission doesn't do more than make the empire who gave it upset with you.]] The latter is the only one where ignoring it will have logical consequences--don't kill the five marked creatures in time, and that species will go extinct and another species will contract the virus; rinse and repeat until you either kill the infected or every species on the planet is dead.
417* RainbowPimpGear: Biological example. Many players will focus on getting maxed out stats in the Creature Stage (either for MinMaxing or for the Max Power achivement), with no regard for how the creature actually looks. This is not helped by how the lower-stat parts tend to be more generally fitting with a variety of creatures, while many of the max-stat parts are harder to design around (e.g. the Spurprise! striking part, which look like chainsaws, or the Fleurbine, the max charming part which look like windmills. Both are decidedly less biological-looking than their lower-stat counterparts). Experienced players often shrink certain parts so they can have their benefits without interfering too much with the overall design (although their benefits tend to be minimal in Tribal Stage and merely cosmetic afterwards).
418* RedShirtArmy: There is an achievement in ''Galactic Adventures'' for getting 100 of your crew members killed, which is named Red Shirt.
419* ReviveKillsZombie: [[spoiler:The Grox]] are weak against hospitable planets.
420* RhymesOnADime: In the Maxis adventure, "Delicate Negotiations," the [=NPCs=] all speak in rhyme.
421* RisingUpTheFoodChainGame: The Cell Stage is like this.
422* RockBeatsLaser: Averted. Your single spaceship can easily wipe out an entire tribal and even a modern-era civilization, and there's nothing they can do about it. Played straight, though, with how your relatively young space empire can eventually defeat The Grox.
423** With the way the Civilization Stage works in this game, it can be possible for say, a steampunk-esque nation to wipe out a cyberpunk nation, since both of those elements are merely cosmetic choices. This also happen literally -- have just enough vehicles to destroy a city's turrets, and the ''citizens'' will start pelting junk at your forces in defense. That's only if you're attacking with Religious vehicles, however; the citizens can't do a thing to Military vehicles, since they're too busy panicking or dying.
424** Also done in an odd fashion in that a Tribal Stage species, if they arm and deploy all of their tribe members, can take down an Epic creature fairly easily, while Epic creatures are all but entirely impossible to kill in any other phase.
425* RPGElements: Featured prominently in ''Galactic Adventures'', where you can raise your ranks by completing adventures, unlocking items each time you progress.
426[[/folder]]
427
428[[folder: S-Z]]
429* SamusIsAGirl: During the mating sequences in the Cell and Creature Stages, the specific organism you control is always the one to lay the egg. Admittedly, your creatures could be hermaphroditic/asexual/sex-switching/etc. Curiously subverted in the transition between the Creature and Tribal Stages. The Chieftain for the Tribal Stage is referred to using male pronouns in the help section, despite explicitly being the same individual you were most recently controlling in the Creature Stage.
430* SaveGameLimits: You can't save inside a planet's atmosphere in the Space phase, but this may be due to engine limitations. It's hard to tell. It does appear to be ''possible'', since banning a creature while inside a planet's atmosphere (thus causing your game to automatically save and restart) works just fine, and simply teleports you to just outside the atmosphere of that planet. They just don't let you do that in normal circumstances.
431* SaveScumming: A helpful way to avoid taking missions you don't like.
432** Since most star systems don't generate planets/spice types until you travel to them/are sent there for a mission, you can use this to gain star systems with valuable spice types on their planets.
433** And if you have allied with several empires, you really want to save often when seeking the galactic core, so that if an emergency crops up while you're away, you can just go back to the previous file and not have to face the [[YouHaveFailedMe You Have Failed Us]] relationship penalty.
434* {{Scandalgate}}: The unpleasant fan reaction to EA's insistence on using severe DRM in the game became known as "Sporegate" in the community.
435* ScaryDogmaticAliens: Empires following the Zealot Archetype are dogmatic believers in a specific doctrine; in their view, all other empires must either adopt their beliefs or be destroyed. They are the most hated archetype in the Space stage simply because, unless you've allied with them, its either PAY US 500,000 SPOREBUCKS! or '''DIE UNBELIEVER!'''
436-->'''In-game description:''' Zealots are certain that their beliefs are the only truth that matters. Those who do not feel the same way are not worthy to exist in this galaxy.
437* SchizoTech: The game is deliberately quite vague as to whether you are using MagicFromTechnology or {{Magitek}}, presumably so the player can interpret it however they find appropriate to their species.
438* SchmuckBait: The "Bad Baby!" Achievement, which required a creation of yours [[WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong to get banned]] from the servers. [[DidntThinkThisThrough Unsurprisingly]], every InternetJerk and their mother created the stuff. It got so bad, ''the achievement was actually [[ObviousRulePatch deleted]]''.
439* ScifiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale: Averted. It takes place in the Milky Way Galaxy, and it's ''really,'' '''''really''''' big. WordOfGod even claims [[http://spore.wikia.com/wiki/SporeWiki:Will_Wright_talks_Spore_MMO_and_Cloning/full_interview this is merely 1% of the actual galaxy]].
440** The part about the ''speed'' of space travel is played straight with travel between stars occurring in seconds, but [[JustifiedTrope this is necessary]] [[AcceptableBreaksFromReality to make it playable.]] The odd part is that enemy ships can still pursue and shoot at you at the same speed they would in-atmosphere...
441** For planets, on the other hand, see SpaceCompression.
442* ScienceHero: If you have a scientist empire, then your captain will become this.
443* SdrawkcabName: The Grox. Flip it around and you get "Xorg", which doesn't seem like a word...until you change that 'X' to a [[Franchise/StarTrek 'B']].[[note]]The Grox are actually named the "Grob" in the game files, but it was changed for unknown reasons.[[/note]]
444* SerialEscalation: Any Clark & Stanley mission will be this. Just what can kill them [[spoiler: or the player, other characters, and possibly even the entire planet, depending on the creator's imagination for the plot]] can be rather... odd.
445* ShockAndAwe: The "Lightning Strike" captain gear.
446* ShopFodder: A big part of the Space stage is gathering spice, which only exists to be sold for absurdly high prices.
447* ShoutOut: The strange disturbance at the center of the galaxy, the only even somewhat arguable ENDING to this game, turns out to be [[spoiler: "Steve", who looks inexplicably like the UFO from ''VideoGame/SimCity 2000'', released 15 years earlier. The real kicker is the opening cinematic in 2000 even SHOWS the UFO traveling to the center of a spiral galaxy!]]
448** The achievement that you can get by having three pack members from different species in the creature stage is called, "[[Music/VillagePeople Village Folks,]]" and is represented by four creatures spelling out, "YMCA."
449** Also, multiple references to ''2001: A Space Odyssey'' and ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''. To get an idea of how much Maxis ''loves'' these two titles, the cutscene that takes place when your creature becomes sapient mirrors the monkeys in ''2001''. It even plays the ''same music'', for crying out loud. Not to mention that you can place a ''monolith'' to make a creature on a different planet sapient. Hitchhiker references are all around too, most significantly being that [[spoiler: the achievement you get for reaching the center of the galaxy is 42. You obtain an item called the Staff of Life, which has 42 usages.]]
450** And ''Franchise/{{Dune}},'' of course, with Spice.
451** One of the suggested names for a ship is "[[Literature/EndersGame Ender]]".
452** When you go to war with the Grox, they yell out the word "Exterminate!" in a manner suspiciously similar to [[Series/DoctorWho another infamous cybernetic genocidal menace]]. Their colonies are destroyed via terraforming, [[Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds perhaps by the most simple of creatures]] that go hand in hand with it.
453** The Planet Buster description from the manual earlier up on the page directly quotes ''Film/TheFifthElement'' with "BIG BADDA BOOM". The name "Planet Buster" is itself a ShoutOut to ''VideoGame/SidMeiersAlphaCentauri''.
454** [[spoiler: Steve]] is definitely a shout out to ''Literature/TheWonderfulWizardOfOz''.
455** Some of the parts reference things, like "[[Music/LedZeppelin Pb Zeppelin]]" and "More Cowebell" for example.
456** If a military nation launches the [=ICBMs=], you'll get a very loud "[[Film/DrStrangelove Yeeee Haaaawwww!!!]]" while the missiles are flying through the air.
457** A reference to when [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5TXEUiR1Xk Robin Williams demoed Spore]] his line "A creature that can kiss its own ass" came across in a rare referencing a creature "that could kiss its own toes"
458** The adventure "It Came From The Sky" is a pretty clear spoof of both ''Film/TheThing1982'' and ''Literature/TheAndromedaStrain''. Doesn't stop it from being [[NightmareFuel creepy]], though.
459** Then we have [[Creator/ArthurCClarke Clark]] & [[Creator/StanleyKubrick Stanley]].
460** To quote the [=SporeWiki=], the zealot armor is not unlike that of the space marines in ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000''.
461** An entire Maxis-made adventure is a funnier, happier version of ''Theatre/RomeoAndJuliet''.
462** Another Maxis-made adventure is a spoof of the classic ''WesternAnimation/SchoolhouseRock'' short "I'm Just a Bill", and has you, among other things, killing senators to represent the debate process and discussing taxes on Grox-held worlds.
463** If you have ''Galactic Adventures'', go into the creature creator, go to Partial Styles under Paint Mode, and select Details, you'll see a ''GA'' button. The one color scheme in that section looks suspiciously like a [[RedShirt Red]] [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries Shirt]].
464** The game features a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AA1itwphfM remix]] of the iconic theme from ''[[{{VideoGame/MULE}} M.U.L.E.]]'', which plays in the communication screen with Trader empires and can also be used as background music in Galactic Adventures.
465** One of the omnivorous bird mouths in the Creature Creator is called the [[Film/TheDarkCrystal Skexybeast]], and certainly resembles a Skeksis head.
466** Just to save ourselves from massive overloads of shout outs, players in Spore (if creative enough and with help of the editors) can create their own shout outs in adventures and creations they make.
467** In a meta shout-out, the creature on the leftmost side of the banner at the base of the SPORE forum is Franchise/{{Godzilla}}.
468* ShownTheirWork: In the Space Stage, red dwarf stars are by far the most common, blue giants the most rare, and yellow stars like [[UsefulNotes/TheSun Sol]] somewhere in between. This is accurate to real life astronomical observations.
469* {{Sidequest}}: Pretty much every mission other empires send you on in the Space phase is one of these.
470* SiliconBasedLife: The Grox will sometimes refer to the player or other empires as "slow thinking carbon-based lifeforms" and "carbon wads", implying that their biochemistry is different. This could explain why they perish if you attempt to terraform any of their planets.
471* SingleBiomePlanet: Planets have "Tiers" of life, with up 9 different plants, 6 different herbivores, and 3 omnivore/carnivores; and you can customize them down to the color of the land, sea, & sky. And they can be anything from a lifeless T0 moons to a thriving city-speckled T3 gardens.
472* SlapOnTheWristNuke: Military civilizations eventually gain the ability "[=ICBMs=]," which nukes every other nation on the planet into submission. Rather than leaving the cities and the surrounding areas in irradiated ruins, it causes the cities to ''switch sides'', ending the phase and letting you launch your spacecraft.
473** Also, using the [=ICBMs=] creates piles of rubble in the nuked cities that cannot be rebuilt on. The Military strategy is arguably the hardest to rebuild from when you reach the Space stage, since the other methods of capturing cities at least leave the buildings and population intact.
474** Averted with the Planet Busters. Using them causes a huge hit to your relationships with every alien race within twenty parsecs and will cause them to declare war on you, in addition to not ever being able to use that planet or any moon orbiting it ever again.
475* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: As a rule of thumb, the "Red" evolutionary choices lead to more cynical archetypes and the "Green" ones lead to idealistic ones. The cynical archetypes mainly focus on how to survive in a nasty and hostile universe. Warriors believe in being stronger than anyone else, Scientists believe understanding the universe better increases chances of survival. The idealistic ones focus on how it can be improved. Shamans believe everything is connected and want to foster that sense of one-ness. Diplomats are huge believers in ThePowerOfFriendship. And then there's [[ScaryDogmaticAliens The Zealots]] who show that mixing the two leads to a very bad place indeed.
476** Of course, nobody mentions those non-extremist "Blue" evolutionary choices, which will usually reside into the more "best of both" approach. Traders make alliances based on who's got money and is friendly to them and won't hurt anyone. Bards are the entertainers of the galaxy and do what they can to stay out of trouble. Scientists may be cynical, but they'd rather study about a race rather than kill off a race. Bards are actually ChaoticNeutral to the point of inviting another species over for a party then ''[[IAmAHumanitarian eating them]]'' and even ask the player if they are ready to be eaten as one of their greetings.
477** Knights (with 2 red choices, one green and one blue) fall kinda in the center, believing in an ideal of peace and justice but willing to fight to get it. Curiously it's an archetype that is only available to the player's civilization. AI civilizations will never be created with it, and if you visit a Knight save file with another save, it will be treated as a Warrior empire.
478* SlidingScaleOfLinearityVersusOpenness: Varies by stage.
479** Cell: Level 3. You can move freely about the pond and have a choice of whether your creature eats algae, meat, or both, but pretty much all you can do is move and eat until you accrue enough DNA to move on.
480** Creature: Level 4. You can move freely, though strong Creatures serve as a sort of BeefGate until you've gotten enough DNA points to upgrade to their level, but at a couple points are forced to follow your species to a new nest before you can upgrade. There's still only one objective (get enough DNA to proceed,) but you can choose between violent or peaceful means (or a combination) to get there.
481** Tribe: Level 3. You can again choose violent or peaceful means, and the order in which to take on other tribes, but either way the only thing to do is conquer/befriend all opposing tribes while occasionally stopping to get food.
482** Civ: Level 3. See Tribe, replacing "tribe" with "city" and "food" with "Spice."
483** Space: Level 6. You can ignore all but the very first couple tutorial/storyline missions if you'd like, and the galaxy is so big it's likely impossible to visit every star in it.
484* SlippySlideyIceWorld The Maxis adventure "Shake It Up" has you travel into a magic snow globe to find the Ice Princess... until you press a BigRedButton and melt everything.
485* SocializationBonus: Averted. The game is kind enough to download player-created content automatically if you leave off the option to only download your Buddies' content.
486* SoundtrackDissonance: When using [[LimitBreak ICBM]] in the Civilization Stage, during the entire victory cutscene you can hear joyful whistling accompanied by marching drums... all while the entire planet is [[NukeEm bombarded with nukes]].
487** ''Galactic Adventures'' offers some very nice music to use in your adventures, but due to the overall quality of most adventures, sometimes the music doesn't even belong and will literally drive you nuts.
488** Many lazy authors will simply use the first songs on the list for their adventures. Thusly, "Angelic Dream", "Ancient Kingdom", and "Ambush!" tend to be used a LOT.
489* SpaceCompression: Either that, or the planets in the ''Spore''-verse are very, very small. Seriously. It's possible to circumnavigate them in less than thirty seconds at sub-light speed in a spaceship, and by scale your cities are as big as Europe. You can't actually put one ''on'' [[EasterEgg Europe]] without it distorting the land under it.
490** In addition, gas giants appear as big as the stars they orbit, not to mention most star systems have planets that appear to be too close together to not be affected by each other's gravity.
491** The planet seems much bigger from ground level (Creature and Tribal Stages) due to the view being more zoomed in; this trope mainly becomes apparent once you hit Civ.
492* SpacePirates: They'll periodically raid your colonies, [[ForTheEvulz for no real reason beyond the fact that they can]] (though they'll sometimes steal supplies) and ambush you when you go looking for artifacts on uninhabited planets. They pose no real threat; not much more than an annoyance, really.
493** You can also sort of play as a Space Pirate - just find a Civ planet and then swipe the spice crates off the cities. There is even an achievement for stealing enough spice.
494* SpeakingSimlish: Less grating than usual, since there's no logical reason for Simlish ''not'' to be spoken.
495** Except that the aliens all have mostly humanoid voices, even if their mouths resemble those of birds or insects.
496** In the space phase, other alien races have solid Simlish dialects that give away their archetype. Robotic monotone voice filter? It's a scientist. Rough, Klingon sounding voice? Then it's a warrior. Your own race and other save-file races for each colony chooses from three normal sounding Simlish dialects.
497* SpeculativeBiology: There's a reason why a big chunk of this game's fanbase are amateur authors of this type. The game's original premise was the creation of alien species, and making them adapt to the environment and evolve into sapient beings. However, it changed direction mid-production, leading to more cartoonish and unrealistic gameplay and art style. Despite all that, that hasn't stop the aforementioned part of the fanbase from reviving the original premise in some form.
498* SpeculativeDocumentary: The "Xenoplanets" adventures that have been growing in prominence, in which creators can frame their species and/or civilizations as part of a futuristic television show.
499* StandardSciFiFleet: Averted with the player's empire, which has exactly one ship: [[TheOnlyOne yours]]. NPC empires have patrol ships that defend their planets, as well as cruisers and fighters they use to attack others.
500* StandardSciFiSetting: The Space Stage has many characteristics of this: CasualInterstellarTravel, a community of space-faring races at about the same technological level, and the Grox are the HordeOfAlienLocusts.
501* StarfishAliens: Many of the creatures you may encounter in the game, actually. Of course, there's nothing stopping you from making your species this.
502* StarfishLanguage: If your Tribal Stage hnau has the Gobsterclaw, Handibles, Handtennae, Pincernaut, Toucan't, Buzzbeak, Buzzmuzzle, Skexybeast, Cantovis, Splatypus, Snapgator, and/or Grubblemaw mouths.
503* StatGrinding: A variant of this occurs during the creature stage: when unlocking new creature parts, it's more likely to encounter upgraded versions of the parts currently being used by your creature, meaning it's usually easier to enhance abilities you already have than to respecialize with different ones.
504* StepfordSmiler: Judging by the Blocks of Chance, the Bard cultures in Space Stage are this.
505-->"There is no purpose. There is no value. There is no point. Life is ridiculous."
506* StockFootage: ''GA'' will always show one of two animations for the "beam down" sequence and the "beam up" sequence. What can make it really jarring, is the fact that some adventures can end with every character being horribly killed... and your captain bursts into a dance while cheering and laughing. Some adventures can even ''lampshade'' this!
507* StupidNeutral: Creatures that aim for the "neutral" alignments on the second and third stages must go bipolar befriending and killing random species or villages, for there is no way to evolve without tilting your alignment towards "aggressive" or "pacific" alignments. The neutral position gets an actual alignment in the Civilization stage, though ([[ProudMerchantRace Economic]]).
508* SuicidalOverconfidence: Comes up surprisingly often in the Space phase if you get the upgraded Proton Missiles early.
509* SummonBiggerFish:
510** It isn't easy to pull off, but if you're having trouble with a particularly difficult enemy in the Tribal Stage, you can set one of your villagers in front of an Epic creature and carefully lure it toward the enemy village... HilarityEnsues.
511** If you're a Religious civ, you can convert Epics temporarily and lure them to an enemy nation. Trying the bait trick is harder with Military and Economic civs, however, as Epics can destroy vehicles in one hit.
512** In the Civilization and Space stages, you can pay an ally to attack another nation/empire. Distress calls from allied empires are basically your allies trying to summon you as the bigger fish against their attackers.
513* SuperDrowningSkills: Played straight and averted. When you go swimming in the creature phase, a [[BorderPatrol giant sea monster]] will eat you. However, in ''Galactic Adventures'', it's possible for you to ''swim across an entire planet'' if you want to.
514* SuspiciousVideoGameGenerosity: Fields where Epic creatures reside in the Creature stage tend to be littered with high-level skeletons.
515* TakeAThirdOption:
516** Don't want to play favorites when two of your allies declare war on each other? Go to whatever planet is calling for help, but don't attack any attacking ships. As long as you're there, the defending empire will still thank you for helping, and as long as you leave the ships alone, the attacking empire won't get upset with you. However, this only works if the defending empire wins.
517** Instead of fighting or allying with [[spoiler: the Grox]], raise their approval just high enough so that they'll be willing to open trade routes with your empire. This will allow you to (eventually) buy all of their systems.
518* TakeYourTime: Largely averted with many missions, as they have a timer attached to them, such as "kill 5 infected animals" or "kidnap a citizen from another (usually non-spacefaring) civilization". However, the main story missions such as contacting the Grox, and doing various other things such as collecting spice or colonizing planets, or even going to war with other empires, can be done however fast you want. Still played somewhat straight, however: the timer for most missions only starts when you get there. You can jump in and out of a few wormholes and then come back to do the mission.
519* TechTree: Downplayed in Creature and Space, Averted in every other stage.
520** In the Cell Stage, you get new parts for your cell from meteor fragments or other cells you kill. In the Tribal Stage, your tribe gains new tools by conquering or allying with other tribes. In the Civilization Stage, your nation gets new powers and the ability to build air units by converting, conquering or purchasing other cities.
521** In the Creature Stage, you gain new parts for your creature from skeletons, or they're given to you by other creatures you befriend or kill. However, you're more likely to gain upgraded versions of parts you already have on your creature; if you're wearing the Gobsterclaw mouth and find a level 2 skeleton, you're more likely to get the Handibles mouth from it than the Terrorpin. The space phase goes about acquiring new tools in a strange way: they're unlocked by earning specific badges, and then have to be purchased from an alien empire which sells them (or your own, but at a large price premium.) However, you need to have the previous level tool purchased before you can purchase the next one; you're not getting Interstellar Drive 4 while you still have Interstellar Drive 2.
522* {{Technobabble}}: In the stage and mission loading screens.
523* TechnologyUplift: The player can do this on planets they visit by planting a [[TheMonolith Monolith]] there. If there are already civilized beings, they'll soon achieve spacefaring status; if not, whichever animal species has a nest closest to the monolith will be quickly evolved to that level.
524* TechnoWreckage: The Adventure "It Came From The Sky" takes place in the dilapidated research station known as Project Icewater.
525* TempleOfDoom: The Maxis adventure "[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin The Ruins of Doom]]", in which you are dispatched to recover the mythical Golden Llama.
526* {{Terraform}}: Found a system in a convenient position, but want your colony to be ''worth'' something? No problem! Just break out the terraforming tools, fill out the ecosystem with some wildlife, and you're ready to go!
527* TerrainSculpting: In the Space Stage, there are numerous tools to modify the shape of any planet you care to visit. However, these are entirely cosmetic and have no tactical or political effects (but using them on a foreign spacefaring planet leads to a relationship penalty). Also, colonies automatically flatten an area around them when placed.
528* ThereAreNoTents: Your tribal warband never seems to think to take some food with them when they head out to exterminate the enemy tribe and burn their village.
529%%* TheyKilledKennyAgain: The [[TheChewToy Clark and Stanley]] adventures in the ''Galactic Adventure'' expansion.
530* ThoseMagnificentFlyingMachines: You can build these... even as spaceships too.
531* ThreeStatSystem: You can choose to defeat your enemies via combat, diplomacy, or just buying out all their colonies. While the game allows for much variation so you don't have to go all in one path, three of the ten archetypes (Warrior, Shaman, and Trader respectively) that are granted at the start of the Space stage act as this.
532** Warriors center around combat and follow the Philosophy of Force. Their unique power ''Raider Rally'' [[ZergRush summons swarms of pirates to attack the planet that you're currently on]] allowing you to ease tension. It's received if your playthrough mainly consists of red cards (the "kill/destroy" options).
533** Shamans are more focused on creating alliances with others and follow the Philosophy of Harmony. If all else fails and you're in a tight spot or you're simply lost you can use ''Return Ticket'' which will [[EscapeRope teleport you back to your home planet free of charge]] besides the immediate cooldown. It's received if your playthrough mainly consists of green cards (the "social" options).
534** Traders are able to expand their colonies faster along with the addition of making them more profitable and follow the Philosophy of Prosperity. If you have already established a trade route with another space-faring race, their unique power ''Cash Infusion'' will instantly make the system available for purchase. It's received if your playthrough mainly consists of blue cards (the "neutral/economical" choices).
535* TimedMission: Most of the missions you can take from alien empires are at least partly timed.
536* TooAwesomeToUse: Some of the spaceship tools for which you can only buy one expensive charge at a time are like this.
537** The Zealots can take over a system with a socialization tool, leaving the cities and people intact. However, this results in a huge relationship penalty.
538** Also, the Staff of Life. You get 42 uses, and you can never get more uses.
539* TooDumbToLive: The AI in the Space Stage. One can't start to imagine the thought processes of a species, that owns a single planet, that leads them to declare war on a species of [[LizardFolk superevolved predatorial lizards]], with a hundred times larger Empire than them. Even more if said Empire destroyed an entire planet five seconds ago in their vicinity just because it would be faster than bombing each city there into oblivion using [[ApocalypseHow antimatter]]. The outcome is as expected.
540** At some point in the space stage don't be surprised if two of your allies declare war on each other.
541** BullyingADragon: Zealots and Warrior races will still demand tribute if they don't like you, even if you are a colossal space empire with far more advanced technology and they are a single planet species...
542** On the highest difficulty level, it isn't uncommon for an empire to demand tribute from you not five sectons after you beat them into surrender.
543* TooManyMouths: One of many possibilities.
544* TransplantedAliens: the process of terraforming a world requires the player to gather species of flora and fauna from inhabited worlds and transplant them onto ones that may or may not have their own inhabitants, resulting in many worlds being populated by creatures who originated elsewhere. Sometimes, the player will also encounter offshoots of their own species on other worlds, presumably planted there by other terraforming civilizations.
545* UnexpectedlyHumanPerception: All spore creatures with eyes can see as perfectly well as a human. Also, all creatures can hear, even without the physiological equipment to do so.
546* UnintentionallyUnwinnable: The "Badge Outta Heck" from destroying all Grox colonies used to be impossible to obtain in the game's early history, because the area close to the Galactic Core imposed a 3 parsec limit on travel distance (compared to the maximum 20 parsecs elsewhere), yet the game would spawn stars that were otherwise unreachable with this limit. This prompted Maxis to release an official Expanded Travel Radius mod to correct this. In addition, versions of the game from Patch 1.04 onward would [[ObviousRulePatch remove the travel radius limit]] after you've entered the Galactic Core.
547* UnusableEnemyEquipment: Most cell body parts cannot be obtained by players; only the most basic of four sets is available for player cells. This is averted in later stages -- once you conquer or ally with another tribe in the Tribal phase, for instance, you get their tools.
548* UselessUsefulStealth: Played straight in creature where the only time stealth is useful is running from an epic. Inverted in Galactic Adventures though since only "[[ActionBomb Kamikaze Creatures]]" will attack the captain and make them visible.
549%%* UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans: Zealot, Ecologist, and Warrior empires feel this way. Probably the Scientists, too.
550* VariableMix: The game's music is made with procedural generation.
551* VideoGameCaringPotential / VideoGameCrueltyPotential: Though it seems rather skewed toward the latter. Having a bad day? Go abduct some citizens of the empire you're at war with and throw them across the planet at high speed! One of your allies cuts off a trade route with one of their planets? Turn it into an inhospitable ball of rock and lava! They take one of your major spice-production colonies in retaliation and resist all attempts to take it back? [[EarthShatteringKaboom Well, if you can't have it, no-one can!]]
552** Heck, it's almost enforced by the mechanics of the game - if you wish to colonize a solar system already inhabited by a sapient species, even if it's in a tribal stage of development, the simplest way is to just annihilate them. The humane alternative involves uplifting them to interstellar civilization status using an expensive one use item, negotiating a trade route, and then buying out their home system after the trade route has been in place for long enough to activate that option. And even this method smacks of economic imperialism. Incidentally, if they sell your their last planet, their empire is still wiped out, and the game informs you of it. The best choice is to meet the two halfway. Uplift them to the space stage, then wipe them out and move into the colonies THEY built (and since it's their homeworld, they'll have more then the maximum number of colonies. Though it's not neutral as much as it's outright slave labor.
553** The former is encouraged in the earlier stages though: allied creatures can be added to packs, allied (and befriended) tribes give gifts, and and economic and religious tactics leave buildings as they are.
554*** Though occasionally, circumstances allow a bit of cruelty in those stages, too. Say, in the tribal stage; another tribe raids you, and once you defeat their raiders, the tribe declares you their enemy. Kite an [[GiantMook Epic creature]] to their village with one sacrificial villager. HilarityEnsues as the Spore equivalent of a Kaiju completely decimates the enemy.
555*** In the Creature Stage, genocide is usually the easiest solution (since you can focus on being a straight combat race and not worry about getting allies or food); in the Tribal stage, socialization becomes far easier and more beneficial.
556** The cruelty potential skyrockets when you realize how many ways there are to defeat an enemy in the Space stage. Bombs and lasers work just fine, but you also have the potential to use your terraforming tools to ''un-terraform'' your enemy's home planet. You can literally land on a lush, verdant planet with billions of animal and sapient inhabitants and do one of the following: make their atmosphere too dense to be livable, use a heat ray to turn the planet's surface into molten slag, use a freeze ray to turn the planet into a ball of ice, or ''suck away the atmosphere until there's nothing for the inhabitants to breathe.'' The best part is that if you do this before officially declaring war on the inhabitants, they won't realize what's going on until the planet hits T0 (uninhabitable), at which point they'll wise up and promptly declare war. At this point, though, all but one of their colonies will have vanished.
557*** This is also a great way to wreck an opponent's economy. Unless they've got a number of T3 planets with three colonies and spice storage elsewhere, it's likely their home planet is the biggest producer of spice. ''T0 planets can't produce spice.'' And you can just as easily un-terraform any other T1+ planets your opponent has colonies on as well.
558*** The inverse is a very good way to deal with [[spoiler:the Grox]]: pop in one of their planets, bust out a terraforming tool and use it. If you don't stop moving, [[spoiler:the Grox]] won't be able to hit you. Costs energy (or money, if you choose to use consumables) and you have to stabilize the atmosphere if you want to actually use the planet, but you skip the chance of getting destroyed.
559** Bear in mind also that weapons and tools in this game do NOT differentiate between friend and foe. That means that whatever you can do to your enemies, ''you can do just as easily to your own people.''
560** In the Civilization Stage, there are some tribes that will remain tribes after every other city has evolved. If you send a vehicle after them, you'll either get a decent chunk of money or a free land vehicle of any type in exchange for destroying the tribe.
561** If you're trying to get an ally to grow big enough to unlock their "Change Archetype" mission, the quickest and easiest way to do this is to uplift nearby planets, deterraform them to T1 or T0 so that they only have one weak city, then pay your ally to attack them. Yep, you can uplift intelligent races for the sole purpose of killing their planet before getting another empire to finish the job.
562** Allying with [[spoiler:the Grox]] requires you to engage in a bit of this; "Broke Galactic Code", which normally angers other empires, will please [[spoiler: the Grox]] as long as they're not on the receiving end.
563** Every save file shares the same galaxy, and in the Space Stage, you can interact with an empire from another save file just as you would the AI ones (except you can't damage their homeworld). Though the usual cruelty potential applies here, this opens up opportunities for cooperation. The key benefit is that any impact one save has on the galaxy remains for every other one. One save can leave plenty of colony checkpoints to the Galactic Core which then can be used by other saves to travel down that perilous path easier. This also makes finding the ultra-rare Storybook Planets easier, since once one of them is spawned, it will stay in the same position and other save files can just follow the path to find the ones they're missing or just increase their Wonderland Wanderer badge count. Knowing the way to get to other saved empires also makes it easier to recruit max-strength ally ships.
564* VideoGameCrueltyPunishment: If you do the above too often, don't expect allies to be easy to come by.
565** Your behaviour modifies your environment. Play as a creature who enjoys slaughtering anything in their path and your home planet will become a DeathWorld because your species has killed anything that can't kick your ass.
566** [=ICBM=], the final power Military nations get during the Civilization stage, gives you an [[InstantWinCondition instant win]] if you use it, but reduces every enemy city to rubble, forcing you to spend time and resources rebuilding them if you want any spice out of them in the Space stage. By contrast, Religious nations' Fanatical Uprising and Economic nations' Global Merger keep all affected cities intact when used.
567* VirtualPaperDoll: In the Tribal stage and beyond, you clothe your creatures using something resembling this.
568* VideoGameFlight: Played straight in creature stage and in Galactic Adventures, in which the wings only have so much flight power and glide before you fall back down to the planet. Averted in Tribal, Civilization, and Space stage, in which winged creatures will fly around with no real problems when going from location to location.
569* VillainProtagonist: If you play completely aggressively.
570* VomitIndiscretionShot: In the Creature stage, trying to force a herbivore to eat meat, or a carnivore to eat fruit, will promptly cause them to vomit (and gain no nutrition from it). Omnivores, of course, are immune to this.
571* {{Wackyland}}: Adventure Town.
572* WasOnceAMan: Using the Fanatical Frenzy unique ability of the Zealot stereotype. Suddenly all inhabitants in the world targeted turn into members of your species no matter what they used to be before.
573* WeaksauceWeakness: The Grox's great weakness is... [[spoiler:Life! Habitable planets literally kill them. Although they can still bomb you from space if you put any cities down there.]]
574* WhaleEgg: It's possible to recreate some real-life animals in the creature stage, but the'll still all lay eggs regardless.
575* WhatTheHellHero: Most of the "Clark and Stanley" adventures has the computer pretty much say this, as your captain dances shortly after they're killed.
576** Any adventure that has you kill a bunch of troops, citizens, or whatever else and then learn that it was the wrong target or that they never did any wrong... for instance one mission ending with a line "...after all this destruction you decide to dance around like an idiot..."
577** The ICBM in civilization stage... Sure, it's funny as heck with the cheesy military music and the [[ShoutOut yee-hawing]], but unless you've got only two cities left to conquer... you're gonna have a ''very'' big mess to deal with that can hurt your progress in the space stage.
578** The typical response from an empire when you refuse to do a mission for them, or try to do it and fail. If the empire in question is not your own, a relation penalty will ensue.
579* WideOpenSandbox: The Space phase is like this, for the most part.
580* WingedHumanoid: All too easy to create, and a very good GameBreaker, as flight can easily get you out of dangerous situations in the creature stage and adventures (as well as to deal with [[UnintentionallyUnwinnable poor level design by adventure makers]]). There's even four kinds of wings you can use (each with their own level of power) in the details section.
581* WipeThatSmileOffYourFace: The game won't normally let you save mouthless creatures without a mod, in which case they'll be referred to as "Starvivores". However, it's possible to create a facsimile by shrinking and hiding the mouth behind another part.
582* WizardNeedsFoodBadly: Creature and Tribal. Not so bad in Creature, since food is relatively easy to get, and worst case scenario you can reset your hunger meter by mating. In Tribal, however, it's a bit more crippling; not only do you lack the mating workaround, but food is also necessary for building new huts, birthing new tribe members, and gifting other tribes, meaning trying to proceed could mean letting your tribe members go hungry for a bit. There's a reason most walkthroughs recommend you make sure your nest is by a shore and you have a full pack of other species before you proceed to Tribal.
583* WombLevel: One Maxis-made adventure has you shrink and travel into a cell, ''Literature/MagicSchoolBus'' style, to learn about protein synthesis.
584* WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds: Any creature can be randomly selected (or transformed) into an AttackOfThe50FootWhatever.
585* WorldHealingWave: Essentially what the Staff of Life does, creating a wave that sweeps over a planet, raising it to a fully developed ecosystem instantly.
586* YouALLLookFamiliar: All individuals of a species look alike, except any captains you make from that species can have different clothing/armor.
587** Thanks to a glitch involving the Hologram Scout, you can make your citizens all look like your captain.
588* YouAreAlreadyDead: Does the creature you are fighting have fewer hit points than your spit deducts? It is a dead critter crawling.
589* YouHaveFailedMe: Unable to complete a mission or stop a biodisaster within the time limit? A relation penalty will ensue. Less damaging if you fail your own empire, but you'll still have to deal with the colony calling you out.
590* ZergRush: The main offensive strategy of your opponents in the Space stage, who like to send 20 ships to attack your planet all at once. You are unable to employ it, being limited to a maximum of six ships (five of which are AI pals who have, at best, 75% your HP, and if one of them blows up, that ship's empire is unhappy with you).
591** This is possible to employ yourself, to a extent, if you tell an ally to attack an enemy planet.
592** Also useful in the Civilization stage. Hammering that 'create land vehicle' button is ''fun''.
593*** Doubly so with air units, given that they tend to be the strongest in the Civ stage and most times, the remaining cities will be on a different land mass, and boats just take too long most times. Try not saying "Checkmate." when you've got over 30+ air units sitting next to the last opposing city waiting to blitz the shit out of it with a single click of a button.
594** Sometimes, weaker animals in the Creature Stage may do this to your stronger creature. Also, your creature and packmates may mob a stronger creature, or lure one to your nest for a serious ZergRush.
595*** Mobbing Epics in Creature is not advised since they can kill even Rogue creatures in three hits and will recover more health from eating the corpse than the thing inflicted in the first place. Mobbing them in Tribal has higher odds of success, but you'll likely still take a couple of casualties.
596** Juniors can do this to you in the Cell stage.
597** Omnivorous cells get this as a special ability later in Creature Stage.
598[[/folder]]

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