Spore

[XMEN Gambit]

Check received! Do you want this sent to the addy on the check (11th St.) or the return addy on the envelope (Woodhaven)? If it's not one of those, just PM or email me.

[TimberWolf]

The Woodhaven address please. The addy on the check was only a temp but still valid as grandparents live there.

[TimberWolf]

Got the game today. Quickly installed it and it wont let me use my own login. When I get a chance I will try to contact EA and see if I can get them to give me a new activation key.

[TimberWolf]

First off, I still haven't gotten around to getting a new key but I have been enjoying the game. Its interesting to come upon your own creatures and then best them.

Second, I just had an epic game in the civ stage with my new creature. My actions made them economy based culture at this stage. I also have the game on medium for once.

When the stage started, I quickly set my land units out to capture as many spice geysers as possible before the other towns spawned. Well, I got three before the next town spawned. With my luck all the towns on my continent were economy but one, great. I was able to setup a trade route with two of the towns but not the third, the military. They were to "high and mighty" to need such things. Unfortunately they took out one of the towns I was trading with. The other town quickly became on the market and I bought it. With that I launched some ships to get the geysers out in the oceans and try to setup trade with the other continent.

It was at this time that third culture on my land attacked. I could do nothing which angered me. They destroyed my turrets quickly, then took my home town. With that done they called peace, leaving me with a hic town with no real ability to do anything. I was hoping that they would finish me off so I could restart, but nope. So there I sat, with a small army of economy tanks that couldn't do anything as the only other culture I could reach refused to trade.

I did still have two boats floating around but was unable to get any trade routes. A religious group on the other continent swept across their coastal cities and was attacking me by air. Luckily a military city on the other continent grew powerful enough to push the radicals back into their home city. I was able to ally myself with this military culture but with no sea port of my own I couldn't trade. I had them attack my home town in hopes that they could take it over but the two military powers were evenly matched at that time.

At this time, having been nearly 2 hours into the game, I was still the little hick town with worthless economy tanks sitting outside of my city and military armies blasting away at each other along the shores of my continent. And the religious nuts were still trying to convert me by air, but my turrets protected me from them. Every chance I got I would bribe the military power on my continent, but my income was slow as all the geysers had been tapped and my town could only support one factory., one entertainment, and three houses. About an hour later I was able to start opening trade routes with the military power on my continent, who had originally put me into the position I still sat in. This caused my allie to get mad at me over time, but he was too busy with the other military force to spare anything for me.

About 4 or so hours after having started the stage, and having lost my home city, I was able to buy it back as a military town. I then bought the next closes town to me and was working on buying the last city on my continent. At the same time the other military power became more aggressive as they had created a new plane. They were striking at the water ways with boats and planes. I lost the last economy ship that had survived for hours alone, but I now had an armada of my own military ships working on clearing the ocean.

I found that their planes went down easy as I sacrificed speed for weapon power and health. After 30 minutes of constant battle my fleet entered the nearest enemy harbor and began bombing the city. They continued to send boats and planes, as well as the occasional tank, to try and stop me. They could have stopped me if the military power from my continent hadn't gotten a foothold before I bought them off my land. Those two military powers continued to bash it out and the side I had allied with early on was loosing badly.

Now that I have my own foothold, I have gained access to launch land attacks and now have enough towns to build planes. The war turns even more into my direction after having spent hours as a bystander. After creating an army of 8 military tanks, I finish off the religious nuts that had caused me such pains early on and take their geysers for what little they could provide for me. My this time my cities were so well developed and I owned almost every geyser on the map that I was rolling in the money. There was also only one city left of the hostile military culture, their home town. The strength of my tanks as well as the numbers, over powered their defenses with no problems. Revenge felt good. With all other powers out of the way, it was just me and the military power that had caused me problems early on as my ally. They quickly called me up and offered to merge together, ending the stage. I took that time to take my military force around the world destroying the epic creatures that the game had spawned. Didn't think they would be a problem (even though all but one were of my own creation). But when each of them could take out one of my planes in one hit, or a tank in two, I realized I needed more fire power. In the end I lost 30 some vehicles to the 3 epic creatures I found, one of which is an enlarged and over powered version of the very creature I was playing.

Over all I thought I had lost the game in the first 30 minutes. I don't know why the enemy didn't finish me off early on or how I was able to turn the tide to have such an overwhelming victory. Now will have to see what the space stage holds for this species.