Tribal Stage

Tribal Stage
Game	Spore
Stage genre	RTS
Unit controlled	Tribe
Previous stage	Creature Stage
Following stage	Civilization Stage

When the player's creatures become sapient, or have enough Brain Power, they enter the Tribal stage.

Anatomy

The Tribal stage occurs when the player's creature discovers fire and gathers members for surviving, attacking, allying, working and defending from other tribes of other sentient species, which may or may not have been met in the Creature Stage, to become the dominant tribe. Plus, any creatures you befriended in the creature stage and were in your pack will be in the pet pen of your village. It is helpful to keep all the maximally aggressive parts from the creature stage, as they will help you fight off other tribe members from other tribes who will steal your food. They also help when attacking another tribe.

In this stage the player stops controlling one creature and a pack and now controls many, organized into one tribe. New tribe members will be acquired through mating. Each tribe member costs 10 food points. After a short childhood stage, a tribal member will enter adulthood, and be available to interact with the environment.

The tribe has a village at this stage, which may be expanded with additional huts providing more items such as: weapons, music instruments and culture-themed items with which tribe members can interact, instead of using them to extinct or ally with other tribes. Food can be gathered by gathering, hunting, fishing (if your tribe is a herbivore your tribe will gather seaweed instead of fishing for fish) and domesticating animals, and eating their eggs.

Depending on what the player gives his or her creatures and how they play the game they will become friendly, industrious, or aggressive. When a tribe conquers all rival tribes they can advance to the Civilization Stage (this advance is optional, and can be taken when ever wanted).

There are two ways to deal with other tribes: subdue them culturally and diplomatically or exterminate and destroy them. To exterminate a tribe, one must destroy its main hut, using weapons. Once the main hut is destroyed the tribe falls, and all tribe members that may still be alive run around screaming, and soon die. Rarely, an Epic creature will appear and kill rival tribes.

File:Spore 2010-02-13 14-01-29.png

An epic creature.

There are specializations in tribal stage: for example by building different buildings, the player can give its tribe members the ability to fish or gather seaweed, gather more fruit, attack from range with throwing spears, burn enemy houses with flaming torches or close attack tribe members or creatures with stone axes. You unlock the majority of the buildings by allying/killing off the other tribes. What you beat the creature stage as determines what the huts you start with will be. Predators will get Stone Axes and Didgeridoos, Adaptable creatures will get Maracas and Spears and Social creatures will get Wooden horns and Torches. To change a tribe members specialization, the player selects him or her and sends the tribal member to the desired house by right-clicking on it. For example, to arm fishermen with a fishing spear, you send him to the "Fishing Spear" building, which will cause the fisherman to drop the item he or she is holding, and grab a spear instead. There is an occasional glitch where a tribe member will hold two different tools at once, however he can only use the tool that was last equipped.

Tribe members with tools will be entitled with denonym(s) of the tool(s) that the tribe member(s) is/are using, for example:

• Hornists use the Wooden Horns tool.
• Maracans use the Maracas tool.
• Aerophonists use the Didgeridoos tool.
• Shamans use the Healing Rods tool.
• Farmers use the Gathering Canes tool.
• Fishermen use the Fishing Spears tool.
• Firestarters use the Flaming Torches tool.
• Axelings use the Stone Axes tool.
• Spearmen use the Throwing Spears tool.

The Chieftain leads your tribal village, and cannot acquire tools like normal tribal members. However, the Chieftain has the best tool in the game which is better than the other weapons, instruments, and other special tools. His staff doubles as a gathering cane, and a fishing spear, and as a sort of club used for attacking other tribes' members. If killed, a new chieftan will soon appear at your hut.

The player should never leave his food unguarded, as small wild animals will sneak in and drain your food supply.

Some times a space ship will show up hovering around your village, but it will not attack you at all. It may abduct one of your pets though.

TIP: If you end up as Friendly in the Tribal stage, your first city in Civilization Stage will be a Religious one. If you finish as Industrious, you'll start as an Economic city, and if you finish as Aggressive, your starting city will be Military.

Check out the list of Tribal stage stubs if you're looking to contribute to Tribal stage articles.

Consequence Abilities

The following table lists the consequence abilities that can be gained by playing in the previous stages for use in the Tribal stage.

Color of card earned	Cell stage Consequence ability for Tribal stage	Creature stage consequence ability for Tribal stage
Green	Refreshing Storm: Summons a storm that causes fruit to be replenished and fall from trees.	Fireworks: Your chieftain sets off fireworks increasing relationships with neighbors. (Note: This will only work when they have yellow, orange, or red faces, it has no affect on blue faces)
Blue	Flying Fish: Summon a serpent to scare fish from the sea. NOTE: You have to be near a large body of water for it to work.	Beastmaster: Your chieftain enchants nearby animals who will help you socialize or fight.
Red	Traps: Lay a trap to ensnare wild animals.	Fire Bombs: Your chieftain will throw fire bombs that damage nearby opponents and structures.

The following table lists the consequence abilities given by the different types of victory in the Tribal stage.

Behaviour in Tribal stage	Civilization stage consequence ability	Space stage Consequence ability
Friendly	Black Cloud: Shuts down entertainment buildings and turrets causing unhappiness	Gracious Greeting: Boosts your initial relationship with alien races (+10)
Industrious	Ad Blitz: Allows faster city buyout	Colony Craze: Gives you a 20% discount on colonization tools from your own worlds.
Aggressive	Gadget Bomb: Damages buildings and vehicles and can help capture cities	Arms Dealer: Gives you a 20% discount on combat tools from your own worlds.

Tribal stage Achievements

Main article: Tribal stage achievements

Hidden achievements

• Medic - Heal one of your tribal members back to full health 5x in a single game.

Strategies to use

Hard Difficulty

• Remember that your creatures will sometimes use their natural abilities to fight, so attach the strongest fighting abilities you can when you're about to evolve, and don't get rid of social abilities -- after you've played music for a tribe, the extra social abilities will further boost your relationship.

• Any animals of another species a player has in his/her Pack at the time they evolve to the Tribal stage will automatically start out as domesticated animals. This might save a small amount of time at the start as the player doesn't need to domesticate animals if he takes them from the Creature stage, eliminating the food use.

• The easiest way to win is a purely social route. Gifts are cheap and safe (see below) so use them on anybody who isn't neutral with you. Early on, it shouldn't take your whole Tribe to impress other Tribes, so leave behind someone on egg detail (see below). Later you may have to have everyone on music duty, but you should have so much food it shouldn't matter if some of it gets stolen by an animal and, if you have been giving gifts lavishly, you shouldn't be in any danger from raiders either.

• Style Matters: Make sure you are wearing the best social clothes you can.

• The fastest way to earn food is if your tribe is near a fishing spot send out your whole tribe to go fishing. Don't worry about creatures stealing food, if you alternate tribe members it scares away the creature by being so close to the food supply. This works for all difficulties. (Note your chieftain can fish too, and he gathers as much as a tribe member with a fishing spear.)

• Before you go into the tribal stage, as a creature, find a nest next to the sea so you're close to a fishing spot.

• Domestic animals will lay eggs, which will appear in a bin next to their pens. This is a really great source of food - both Herbivores and Carnivores can eat eggs, and they will automatically build up without limit while you are doing anything else. Domestic animals will also protect your tribe from rival attacks, always try to domesticate alpha animals or, even better, rogues, as they have a higher HP and will survive longer if you do get attacked.

• Don't be afraid to run out of food. The worst that could happen is a few members starving after a very long time, so it may be useful to have some good gathering clothes on, too.

• If you're using a nearby nest of animals as a source of food, attack only the fully grown ones, as babies don't offer as much food. You can still kill babies, and they'll regenerate eventually. As a rule, you can never fully kill off any wild animal nest in Tribal stage, although it might take several minutes for an eradicated species to repopulate the old nest if your tribes kills all of the babies, adults, and the Alpha.

• When allying or attacking another tribe, if you happen to have babies at the village, make sure you leave someone behind, as the wild animals will sometimes attack the baby rather than steal your food. Sometimes the babies can grow up fast enough to defend themselves instead of needing someone to do it for them.

• Your tribal Chieftain is more powerful than the other tribesmen, so use him when giving gifts to hostile Tribes or for stealing food. Also, he automatically re-spawns when killed after a few minutes.

• If playing an aggressive tribe, do not attack without being provoked. Wait for an enemy tribe to attack you, wipe out their attacking force, which will lower their population (a tribe will never send all of its members to fight, so if your tribe is full, you will always win without many casualties), and send a counter-attack to finish them off, which will be easy since they have low population. It is important to always leave your chieftain at "home" if you do that, though - not only do you lose the game if your attack force happens to be killed, but also with the Fireworks consequence power, your chieftain can single-handedly repel any assault against your tribe while most of its members are out. Sometimes, your tribe can kill a tribe if its members are far away, for example fishing.

• Respond to an unexpected attack from another Tribe by offering them a gift. They will become "Neutral" with you, stop attacking, and won't expect you to attack back, giving you a chance to equip instruments and ally if you want to. You can also use the Fireworks power to instantly befriend another tribe, useful if they're attacking your village.

• When fighting, if you destroy the tribe's weapon building they won't have any weapons to attack with, making it much easier to attack their Hut. Kill the tribal Chieftain and a small amount of tribe members first, then you won't have to worry about a few "leftovers", so go ahead and attack the Hut. The remaining members will run around screaming and die soon after.

• Don't forget to steal another tribe's food when you attack their village, this prevents them from producing more babies. You can also take the remaining food after the tribe is destroyed.

• UFOs will sometimes abduct your domesticated animals, and sometimes even allied or your own tribe members. This can happen to your Chieftain, if this is the case you will permanently lose your consequence abilities and the ability to click the tribe button to highlight all your tribe. If a UFO comes onto the Planet don't be afraid to Save your game so if you do lose the Chieftain you can quit the game and restart it.

• Remember that setting up certain tools or outfits can greatly affect your ability to achieve social or aggressive traits, so set some tool huts up if you want to have a certain consequence ability later on.

• Take as many tribe members as possible when socializing, even if they don't use instruments. Tribe members without instruments will become dancers in your band, and they add their own little bonus to the social meter. (They don't work as well as musicians, but they add their small bonus during all 5 requests)

• Sometimes multiple tribes will come and attempt to destroy your tribe. You can counter this by giving one (or more) tribe gifts while you take on another tribe.

• If you want to win Tribe stage quickly, then get the fireworks ability. Then, go to the tribe you wish to kill, with weapons. Begin killing their tribe members, and when they begin to hate you, use fireworks. they will become your friend, so they won't fight back. Kill their remaining tribe members and destroy their main hut. There is no effect on your personality chart either, as they were befriended before they were killed. This can help you easily beat Tribe stage and get the consequence ability of your choice with ease.

• If you use the fireworks ability while attacking a tribe that is hostile with you, they will become friendly and sometimes offer you gifts. if you defeat the tribe members giving the gifts, the population of the rival tribe will decrease, making them easier to defeat.

• Send gifts to every tribe on the map with an orange face or less. Quickly socialize the highest relations tribe, then get back and hunker down for a possible fight.

• The Fireworks ability is valuable while socializing, instantly raising the relation face of the tribe you are trying to socialize with to Blue. This makes it easier and faster to socialize and get back for defence. Although after a while the message will display, "The (tribe colour) tribe is ambivalent to your existence," it gives you a head start and allows you to permanently befriend even hostile tribes.

• If you have sufficient weaponry and numbers, then it would be wise to kill the epic creature in the game if it suits your personality. This will provide an abundance of food if you are a carnivore or omnivore.

• If you have traps, use them against epics. Traps will kill epics in a single blow, providing plenty of food for Carnivores and Omnivores.

• Two of the "sworn enemy" tribes will spawn in the second wave of tribes when the first tribe to spawn is allied/destroyed. Wait until they both attack and defeat the raiders. This way, you have plenty of time to ally/destroy them both before they replenish their numbers enough for another attack.

• Focus on red face tribes first; the worst orange face tribes will do is steal food occasionally. However, make sure none of your tribe attacks the thief, as that will bring the orange face tribe to a red face.

• Gifts don't placate the tribes for long in this mode. To get around this, send your Chieftain to an angry tribe with a gift, then send your musicians to follow him so you can befriend the tribe as soon as they receive the gift.
  • If you're attempting this and the tribe you're trying to befriend sends a team to attack your tribe, ignore the raiders. Once you get the tribe to the friendly blue face, they'll call off the raid. Make sure any tribe members left behind are off doing something else(like fishing in a farther location), or just take everyone with you to socialize, as fighting back will anger the tribe and ruin the befriending attempt.

• If a tribe is brought to a blue face through music(as opposed to fireworks, which will eventually wear off), it will never go down unless they are attacked or stolen from. As such, it might be a good idea to bring every tribe to a blue face before destroying/fully allying them so none of them attack you in the meantime.
• Do not let your tribe members leave food plates on the ground, since animals nearly will come to wolf the food.

Difficulties

Easy

In the Tribal stage on easy:

• Other tribe progression is one tribe of 6, followed by three tribes of 9, and one tribe of 12. Only one tribe will hate you and won't attack often, sending only 3 of their tribe members to raid you (if you anger the final tribe of 12, they can send 6, but it shouldn't be a problem at the point of their spawning). One of the tribes of 9 and the final tribe of 12 will dislike you, but they hardly ever attempt to steal your food (only when they first spawn or first start to dislike you after relations are improved).
• There are no carnivorous wild animals that naturally dislike you.

Normal

In the Tribal Stage on Normal:

• Other tribe progression is one tribe of 6, followed by three tribes of 9 and then one tribe of 12. Two of the tribes of 9 will dislike you, and the final tribe of 12 will hate you. Enemies send 4 - 6 of their tribe members to attack your tribe (the final tribe of 12 sometimes sends more to attack as well, up to 7 or 8).
• There is the occasional carnivorous nest that attacks your tribe and the surrounding animals

Hard

In the Tribal Stage on Hard:

• Other tribe progression is one tribe of 6, followed by three tribes of 9 and then one tribe of 12. The first tribe of 6 and one of the tribes of 9 will dislike you and often attempt to steal your food, and the rest will hate you, attacking frequently and sending 5 - 8 of their tribe members to attack your tribe (the final tribe of 12 can send up to 10 members as well). If more than one tribe hates you, then they will commonly raid you at the same time, and tribes that dislike you seize the opportunity to steal your food, which they seem to do more often outside of raids, too.
• Carnivorous nests are quite common and can spawn near your tribes.
• 1 or 2 are spawned, and they may or may not be the same species as rival tribes.

Notes

Glitches

• Sometimes your tribe will attack their pets or vise-versa for no apparent reason.
• Sometimes, the chieftain proves a chronic fidget and is unable to conduct the band, thus making the friendly route seem impossible. However, you can fix this by clicking for him to go elsewhere then attempting to socialize again(having your band also selected seems to help). If that fails, you can solve the problem by killing your chieftain. If you have an enemy, this is easy, just let them kill him. Otherwise, you can let creatures kill him. While this glitch is active you can still give gifts.

• Sometimes, your chieftain is holding two staffs. This usually happens after finishing with a creature that has multiple hands (more than two).

• There is a way to keep the domestication staff held when domesticating wild animals. If you start domesticating, then you try collecting some food, the staff will move to the left hand and you will keep it there no matter what, until you re-domesticate or die.

• Sometimes in the game one of your tribe members will go into space. It is possible to view your solar system by clicking on this tribe member and moving the camera. Let them starve to death and then get a new tribe member. If this is your chieftain then you can't socialize or use consequence abilities for the rest of the game because when the chieftain is reborn he will be in space again. The best way to deal with this is to quit the game and go back to it. The chieftain should be back on your planet.

• If you lose a domesticated creature during an attack or abduction, you can go back to the same nest of the creature you lost and just take another without giving it a bone. (not really a glitch, as the bone just makes the creature friendly toward you (friendly face) and make them stop being aggressive)

• If someone is carrying a food basket or a stolen bag of food in your tribal grounds and you progress he'll drop the basket/bag and it will stay there throughout the civilization stage.

• Sometimes if you have the Maraca tool and you change the tribesman into a warrior he will keep the Maraca end and add the tip of the weapon ie. Spearhead, Fire, or Stone Axe to the end of the Maraca.

• If you killed a baby in a wild nest and you want to give a gift to a tribe and the route goes through the aggresive nest, you might get attacked. If one member gets attacked the other members attack including the chieftain, the gift basket that the chieftain carries will be dropped and unpickable for the rest of the game

• Right clicking a tribe's food pile to send a gift lots of times wastes your food very quickly (no limit on how many gifts you can send at one time)

• Rarely, a tribe will not be able to eat, no matter how many times you click on their food pile. They will all stand in line and do nothing. They may eat when they are just about to starve, or just stand there and die.

• A common version of the above glitch is on the third level; the bounding box causes tribe members to not be able to eat or put food in the food area.

• Occasionally, a tribe will not be able to collect food from a tree.

• When you play the instruments exactly what the selected tribe requested, sometimes the tribe can't accept what you played, perhaps inviting more tribe members over or commanding them to get instruments could solve this problem.

• Sometimes (especially on hard mode), when you try to send a hostile tribe a gift, the tribe members will ignore the gift and attack your tribesmen. Fortunately, when this happens, the gift basket can be picked up and brought back to your food stock.
• Sometimes one of your tribe members might get stuck in the ground and cannot move at all, meaning they will not be able to eat or in general do anything, therefore leaving the member no choice but to starve to death.

Easter Eggs

Main article: Easter eggs

• When two tribe members engage in conversation, occasionally above one's head will be a speech bubble with the galaxy/Spore icon. The other one will begin to laugh. Eventually, the first one will hit the second one on the head and tackle him. Also sometimes one will dance and they'll laugh after that.

• When your creatures go on to the Tribal Stage (only if you were in at least Creature stage), a scene will play with your (future) Chieftain discovering fire. This is a reference to the scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which the primitive humans discovered tools in a similar scene. The same music from the movie is also heard. By rare, random luck, you'll see a moon or another planet in the background in the sky during this scene. This could open for another easter egg, as the player could see this as a foreshadowing of the fact that your creature's newly-evolved sentience will eventually lead to exploration of the cosmos.

• When your tribe is about to enter the Civilization Stage, your tribe engages in a discussion of what to do. One of them suggests pie, but the other creatures have no idea what he is talking about.

• Depending on if you are Social or Aggressive your tribe members will either play rough or play nice. For example, if your tribe is aggressive, tribe members may push one another down or engage in roughhousing.

• If you select a tribe member and right-click on the fire that is in the middle of the tribe, he will start to dance. You can also select multiple villagers and follow these steps to have them perform a celebratory salsa.
• Sometimes if two tribesmen talk to each other, one tribe member's speech bubble will have Will Wright's head in it.

Trivia

• Even if the player befriends every tribe, all the other sentient races disappear when going into Civilization Stage, leaving only the one the player controls. This might be because the different tribes are meant to remain on the planet when the players' species reaches the Civilization Stage, but the remaining tribes on the planet are the players' own species.
• In the tribal stage your creature attacks other tribes that are home to different creatures, this implies that the human tribes fought off tribes of non-human creatures. However, this could also represent some sort of racism, with the other tribes representing different races as opposed to different species.
• Tribal Stage could be compared with the Neolithic Era on Earth.
• With monkey mouths (2nd row of omnivorous mouths in Creature Editor), many tribal shouts are spelled exactly the same way as in Populous: The Beginning.
• It is notable that Tribal and Civilization stages bear a remarkable gameplay similarity to LoTR: Battle for Middle Earth.
• The "at least one alive" rule (you must have either one Regular or Chieftain alive) is the same as in Populous: The Beginning. Overall, Tribal Stage plays very much like that game.
• The Chieftain is mostly left-handed, but sometimes in rare cases, can be right-handed, whereas regular members of the tribe may be either left- or right-handed.
• If you domesticate a species, when you approach that species they may say "Hello!".
• The game controls are also similar to the game "Age of Mythology."
• The beginning of Tribal stage is your last chance to physically upgrade your creature. After that, you can no longer add or remove body parts, though you can still add clothing and change your creature's color scheme throughout this stage, as well as throughout the Civilization and Space stages.
• For your tribe, you have to have at least one member alive to stay in the game. However, for NPC tribes, all of their members can be killed, yet if they have enough food, they can make babies and grow back to life after their population reaches zero.

See Also

• Tribal stage images
• Hut editor
• Spore.com The official Spore site by EA.
• E3 Spore Presentation

Game stages Stages in final game Cell Stage  · Creature Stage  · Tribal Stage  · Civilization Stage  · Space Stage Stages not in final game Molecular Stage  · Aquatic Stage  · City Stage  · Terraforming Stage