As you make your swift exit out of Tribal stage, you should be given a chance to change your species outfit. Take it. You can change it at a later date, but setting up your outfit now should save you time later. You will also be prompted to create your city hall (of which a copy will be at the center of every city you own) and create your ground vehicle. Much like your creatures, they can look like anything you want, so have fun building them! Upon finishing your land vehicle, you will start the Civilization mode proper.

The very first things you should be concerned with in Civilization mode is to secure a steady income. Your primary way (but not the only way) of doing this is to capture spice geysers. You can do this by selecting any unit and ordering it to attack the geyser. Upon ordering it, they will construct a geyser there or, alternately, capture any enemy building on the geyser. Note that capturing a building is a huge act of aggression and will dramatically piss off the player that controls it.

Building up your cities should be your primary goal, as it prepares you for Space stage's colonization efforts. But I am getting ahead of myself there. To build up your city, you can place four different buildings to increase productivity, happiness, and defense. You can check on the status of your city's status in defense, productivity, loyalty, and happiness, by scrolling over the city center.

The relationships are pretty simple. A factory will increase the productivity of your city, and will increase it more for each line from it that connects to a house or the city center. However, it generates a single unhappy citizen, and can produce more under certain conditions. An entertainment center will increase the happiness of your citizens, and increases it more for each line from it that connects to a house or the city center. However, if a line connects from it to a factory, unhappiness will be generated. Houses do nothing but augment entertainment and factories. Turrets defend your city. Depending on the city type you can produce more buildings or less, and have more turrets or less. For example, military cities can have the most turret slots.

Depending on what traits you have been leaning towards, you will end up with one of three possible civilization types: military, religious, and industrial. Each one has their own strengths and weaknesses, and must finish the stage in their own particular way. Naturally, whichever civilization you end up with accentuates a particular area that will be further elaborated upon in the Space stage.

The military civilization, much like the previous stages, is the easiest. Your entire goal is to stockpile money to afford a massive military build-up, and then steamroll the enemy. The key will be in getting a city located on the coast so you can produce sea as well as land units. At some point, you will also gain the ability to build planes, and will probably want to take advantage of that fact, since they can obviously travel over anything. Otherwise, you will end up landlocked, which is no fun at all! As a military civilization, you will take over cities by destroying everything in the city and then attacking the center until they give in to your might. The best part about being a military civilization is that you get the Gadget Bomb superpower. It's expensive, but instantly converts a city to your cause by completely reducing it to rubble.

The religious civilization is the herbivore's choice, and relies less on brute force and more or a network of friends willing to do the brute force for them. Their units cause unhappiness in enemy cities and convert them peacefully, and their special abilities emphasize this. They are also the best at forging alliances. However, keep in mind that unless you have a trade route with your ally, they will likely stab you in the back within a short period of time. A trade route will stabilize the relationship, though, and is actually the primary method of conquering for the industrialist!

The industrial nation, naturally, is focused entirely around making as much money as possible. The reason for this is that they conquer by buying out their enemies. It's an interesting twist, but here's the general strategy for this:

• Bribe another civilization until they ally with you
• Set up a trade route, which stabilizes the alliance and begins the process of buying the city out
• As soon as you can buy it out, do so

Rinse and repeat until the entire world is under your control! You'll still need an army to fight off invaders, but thanks to your awesome industrial might, it shouldn't be too hard to raise a standing army to assist you in your fight.

Upon conquering all the cities, you will be prompted to enter the space stage. You may as well do so, since much like the Tribe stage, there's nothing left for you to do after conquering everything. Throughout the course of this stage, you should get three achievements.

Starman

Conquer all the other cities in the Civilization stage and launch your first space vessel



Deja Vu

Discover something you created in another game




Space stage unlocked

Play enough of the Civilization stage to unlock the Space stage




If you want an overview of the things discussed here, check out the Civilization Stage trailer right here on Big Download. And prepare yourself for the Space Stage! Everything else in the game has been teaching you the techniques necessary for this stage, so here we go!