Spore Civilization Phase Video Preview

With the release of EA/Maxis's Spore (one of the most hotly anticipated games of 2008) only a mere 10 days away, more details about the $49.99 game have come out as well as another sneak-peek video of what gamers can expect come September 7.

In the meantime, players have been busy creating creatures for Spore, with the $9.99 Spore Creature Creator, which has been available since June 17. And the many varied user-created creators have been quickly populating the Sporepedia for users to admire and even download if they wish. For the truly die-hard Spore wannabe, EA/Maxis even sponsored an "Ultimate Spore Creature Creator Dance Off Contest" on YouTube, where users uploaded videos of their creatures dancing to popular music soundtracks. The contest is down to the final ten contestants, with voting ending tomorrow.

Spore is made up of five phases: the Cell Phase, Creature Phase, Tribal Phase, Civilization Phase, and Space Phase. EA/Maxis has been releasing sneak-peek videos of the different phases, such as the Cell Phase video we reported on back in May. Since then, EA/Maxis has released videos of the Creature Stage, Tribal Stage, and Space Stage. The latest video to be released highlights the Civilization Stage, which looks to be the most detailed and exciting stage of the bunch:

In the Civilization Stage you choose whether your civilization will evolve as a military, economic, or religious society. Your civilization competes against other civilizations on the planet, with the goal of building up your civilization and outcompeting them--until you essentially take over the world. You do this through vehicles--each type society gets different kind of vehicles. For instance, economic society vehicles can develop trade routes with other civilizations, and military society vehicles can attack other civilizations. Even if you choose a military society, it does not necessarily mean that you have to attack everyone else. In fact, you can become allies with other civilizations and together defend your civilizations against your enemies. You can even conquer the planet together and move on the Space Stage together.

The Maxis developers appear to be fans of military societies, with such fun war toys as "super weapons." Although they warn, however, that the game includes a "deep diplomacy model" that "keeps track of your actions over the course of the game with each of the other countries. So they will remember what you've done--whether you fought with them or you attacked them. That plays very much into whether they help you later in the game themselves or fight against you."

If you have any vacation time or sick days left, you want might want to plan on using them come September, as Spore is looking to be at least as addictive as the Sims series was, if not even more so. Of course, Spore isn't the only hot game title scheduled to hit the shelves next month. On September 16, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is due out. And as luck would have it, the kind folks at LucasArts just released a new sneak-peek video of their own:

September is shaping up to be a very fun month.