Welcome to my Spore run! This is a full game run from the beginning of Cell Stage to the Center of the Galaxy on Hard difficulty. This run is considered NG or "New Game." Spore is a unique game where playing through the game once will impact future and subsequent play throughs of the game. This run is NG because it is what anyone could see on their very first time playing the game without any extra influence from other play throughs. To keep a run NG there are only Maxis made creations (no custom ones) in the game at start. And there is no help from other saved games in the space stage. Every game in the Space Stage shares the same galaxy/play area, so anything done in one game will influence and potentially help later play throughs. For this speed run, there is no help from any other games. Also, there is no use of wormholes in the Space Stage, since they are not the same for everyone, so to keep it fair they are not used here.
Spore is cool in that what you do in the game will help you later, referred to the game as consequence abilities. (This is unrelated to NG or NG+, this happens within a game not before a run). So, this run aims to become a Zealot in Space Stage, this gives the player a really helpful ability to take over a planet and make a lot of money very quickly, which is very important to the speed run. To become a zealot your game but end two stage in the "Red" areas in your Creature’s history and two stage in the "Green" area. To accomplish this, I chose to be a carnivore in Cell Stage (Red), Predator in Creature Stage (Red), Friendly in Tribal (Green), and Religious in Civ (Green).
Routing becomes very important in Tribal Stage. Tribal is very difficult because this run attempts to be Friendly but all the other rival tribes are hostile towards the player. Gifting other tribes is the best way to make them like you, however they will revert to their angry ways very quickly and then will attack your tribe. To keep them happy, only befriending other tribes and not allying them completely. Once the player allies a tribe, more spawn, and becomes over whelming. But just befriending prevents them from becoming hostile again and lets the runner control when another tribes spawn in. On Hard difficulty, more tribe members are required to perform and the tribal chieftain is always required to be present for each performance so the tribe cannot be split between tribes to ally simultaneously so strategizing when to send the entire tribe is imperative.
Civilization stage is a delicate balance between being aggressive and knowing when to wait. Civ as an RTS game is fairly basic but can become overwhelming quickly. The strategy here is to gain 6 cities which unlocks the ability to basically nuke the rest of the world and conquer the planet given enough resources.
Space Stage in this run heavily depends on becoming a zealot to gain money quickly. In the beginning of the stage there is a required mission the player must do, and since the game thinks the player is very inexperienced at this point, the space ship will not use any energy to move to another system, in this mission only. This can be used to gain the Frequent Flyer 3 badge which unlocks larger jumps later. Taking over a planet with the Fanatical Frenzy Super power gains the player control of the planet. A home planet of another empire is taken over to sell enough buildings to make enough money to buy everything needed to reach the Center of the Galaxy! The final drive through the Grox Empire is not too difficult but requires quick jumps as the pursuing ships can shoot the ship down. And being on Hard, it will not take very much to bring the ship down.
I hope you enjoy! This run was completed 11 January 2018, and was very good for the time, but recent developments show this might be possible to go under an hour with some work! And that run will be posted on SDA as soon as it happens! |