A Patch for Spore has been released. http://www.spore.com/patch
full change log below- (when you start the game and are logged in it will
say updates available.)
This patch upgrades Spore from 1.0 to 1.01. It fixes a lot of problems in the space stage (including the constant enemy empire attacks and spode races demanding outrageous amounts of money)) and provides a few more cheats including using a previously evolved creature in the Sporepedia in a new game.
Full Changelog:
Features

* New Cheat: "evoadvantage". Enter this cheat when are starting a new Creature game to choose any creature from the Sporepedia. Start a new game with one of your more evolved creatures!
* Display part statistics when you are in Build mode. Rollover any part and hold down the 'i' key.
* New Cheat: "blocksmode". Turns creatures into their blocky representations.
* More style filters. Open the cheat window and type: "stylefilter -microscope" or "stylefilter -norainbows" or "stylefilter -nextgen" to see the new styles
* Added 70 new planet scripts with a low terraform score, especially of the "hot and high atmosphere" type

Graphics/Aesthetics

* Animation improvements
* Improved the planets fogging, blooming and lighting
* Fixed animation issues with tool handling, hand walking and some of the more oddly shaped creatures

Tuning

* Creature phase: Improved the pacing towards the end of the game, and increased the challenge in Normal and Hard modes.
* Tribe phase: Increased the challenge in Normal and Hard difficulty modes.
* Civilization phase: Increased the challenge in Normal and Hard difficulty modes.
* Space phase: Made Empires in Easy and Normal modes demand reasonable amounts of money in exchange for peace and adjust the level of punishment if the player doesn't pay
* Space phase: Made disasters less likely to occur in Easy and Normal modes and increased the time between each attack from the enemy empire when the player is at war.

Miscellaneous

* Creature phase: Improved the way posse members behave during threatening situations and fights.
* Space phase: Made finding your home world and colonies easier in the Galactic view.
* Tribe phase: Made it so that tribe members can travel on steep hills if they need to do so now, but their speed will be reduced a lot.
* Fixed an issue with attacks not working on some bigger animals and larger animals not dying correctly
* Fixed collect mission not completing correctly when all parts have been collected
* Fixed problems with the "Rolling Thunder" and "Déjà Vu" achievements not being awarded as they should
* Fixed floating parts not being deducted from the budget when loaded into creator
* Fixed an issue with the rotation rings not resizing correctly when a part was resized and improved their look
* Fixed an issue where the terraforming score of planet could differ when revisiting a solar system
* Fixed the keyboard controls for zoom & pitch in the Colony Planner not working properly
* Fixed a crash that could occur when watching an epic creature attack a city
* Fixed some issues where the game would freeze when using the Creature Tweaker tool or when capturing a planet in solar view
* Fixed an issue where not all tribe members would obey the raid order when a large group was ordered to raid
* Fixed an issue where banning a creation from one of your other saved games would black out the main menu

http://i33.tinypic.com/14v3gcn.png
Seriously, what kind of . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . patch is this. I assume if you mod or hack your game in any way it just refuses to update. Looks like I'll have to reinstall in order to patch the game, let's see if the DRM kicks in

Hmm that is not good, The DRM won't be affected. I've heard if it is on the same computer HDD, some people have re-installed up to 5 times with no bad effects.
Did you mod the game in some way?

Yay. So what do they mean by "planet scripts". I thought planets were just random or something. And I'm not sure I get the evoadvantage thing either. Oh well.

EvoAdvantage: normally you can only start a creature game with a slightly-improved cell, right? Using that cheat, you can pick any creature from the Sporepedia (so you can download a creature from CFC, say, and then play a creature game AS it, instead of AGAINST it). This is a good thing.

Personally, though, I want to know what they mean by 'increased the challenge'.

Wow that was ridiculously fast, especially from EA Games!

Hopefully I won't have too much trouble installing it.

I had issue where the game refused to patch and I did not mod the game in any way.

Mine patched no probs? Space seems only a bit better ie:less empire attacks.
Haven't tried the creature addons/cheats

Can someone explain how to install the patch? I started the game, it asked if I wanted to download the patch, I said yes, it downloads, it asked if I wanted to install, I said yes, and the game closes, so I'm back to my desktop. I opened the EA Download Manager and tried "Connect for Updates", but that doesn't seem like it does anything (Settings? About? Help? What's the point of it?)

That's weird? I downloaded from inside the game (it came up with updates avialbale-then when it is downloaded (took 1 hour)=slow ISDN, )it says do you wish to install and just keep clicking next.
Try playing the game and see if you can apply the new cheat
"evoadvantage". Enter this cheat when are starting a new Creature game

I see its about 92 megabytes (how/what?). I can't download that on my connection :(

Maybe I can find it on a games magazine DVD - of course I'd have to spend another £5 on that.

I think I'll just use one of those custom mods to reduce pirate attacks.

well I am now finding the attacks are pretty much the same as before?
if not more frequent???
The creature stage goes straight to sporepedia but all my creature are not in "my creations?"
The blocky creature look works. "ecoadvantage" seems not to do anything?

I see its about 92 megabytes (how/what?). I can't download that on my connection :(

Maybe I can find it on a games magazine DVD - of course I'd have to spend another £5 on that.

I think I'll just use one of those custom mods to reduce pirate attacks.

Oh god, I remember when I had a Sat internet connection. I feel your pain if you're on dial-up or some . .. .. .. .

Nice. Now we only need the remaining 53% crap to be fixed! :D

Do you need a new game?