8. First, protect your hut.
Take care of your home before venturing out into the world. Once I’d reached the Tribe stage of the game, in which my little tribe of sapient Spikes had developed crude weapons and loincloths and were domesticating stupider animals, I discovered that I had to go out and attack neighboring tribes to wipe them off the continent. But I got cocky after an earlier victory, and sent my whole village out to raze the next tribe. Big mistake: Another tribe came over and sacked my village, and the Spikes were no more. I had to start the entire stage over again: This was how I found out that Spore has no auto-save feature, and that you have to manually save your progress. What’s more, there’s only one save slot and you can’t backtrack, which means that your decisions become finalized once you commit to them.
One of the biggest flaws in the game is that if you leave a tribe/civilization unattended and do something, their AI sucks and they usually are destroyed if they are attacked and you are nowhere near to help. Since the game doesn’t include an auto-save feature, it’s best if you quicksave before you head on out somewhere. Better safe than sorry!
