Tribal Phase

As soon as you upgrade your creature’s brain four times and socialize with other members of your species, you will be sent to the tribal phase of Spore. This phase also marks the end of the creature/organism editor - your creature will no longer evolve physically from this point on, though you will have access to a plethora of new editors to keep you busy. This stage is very differerent than the first two, here you must control and expand a small tribe of your creatures. It’s actually more of an real-time strategy game than anything at this point. You can order your tribesman to forage, hunt, fish and raise livestock to acquire food - your food source depends entirely upon whether you have created a carnivore, herbivore or omnivore. Food replaces DNA points as the currency of the phase, it allows you to barter for tools and upgrades. These purchases come in the form of everything from musical instruments, tools, weapons to fancier huts and an armor editor allows you to control the appearance of your tribesman’s gear. Weapons are an integral portion of this phase because for the first time players are introduced to organized warfare. Tribes are in direct competition with eachother, either for resources or simply for territory and respect. There are many ways to harm other tribes, the most obvious is physical but you can also disrupt their food supply and it appears possible (not confirmed) that tribesman may starve if withheld from food for too long. But you don’t have to be enemies with everyone, you also form alliances with friendly tribes. It’s important to note that you are not competing against other species, you are in fact in directly competition with a branch of your own species that developed a different state of thought (ie. maybe they are aggressive, passive or something else). How you choose to addorn your tribe and how you direct them to act will eventually determine their nature. While the creature phase introduced ’socialness’ and aggressiveness, the Tribal phase determines whether your species will be emotional or very analytical and this will carry on with you into other phases of Spore.

How a tribe develops is not only important in understanding how they will react, but also as to how other tribes (and later, civilizations and alien races) will deal with your creatures - especially when it comes to diplomacy and alliance making.

The Tribal phase also introduces players to numerous new editors, you should already know about the armor editor - but there is more. This will be your first taste of building design, as you will gain access to the Hut editor - it is really a prelude to the more complex building editor available in the civilization phase. Lastly, the Flora editor makes its introduction here as well and players will have the opportunity to create trees, plants and other vegetation to fit their style.

Progression through the Tribal stage involves upgrading your main hut through bartering. The more you upgrade it, the more tools and gear you have access to. Eventually, the hut will be upgraded to a small city and you will enter the fourth phase of Spore: Civilization.