Choice of stage

[King of Town]

I have been curious about this for a while. i know you can terraform planets, i was curious if once you got to the space stage there was an oppurtunity that you could terraform a planet and then go into it and sort of play from the cell phase and start over again, but still be able to go back to your other civ? It looked like there was an option on a recent preview I saw on IGN where you could choose which evolutionary stage you wanted to start in, but maybe I just couldn't read the screen very well...

[salty mud]

I suppsoe the true answer will be to wait another week.

But I don't think that's possible. I haven't even seen a video where, upon entering the Space Stage, the player has left thier spaceship! Can we go back to city management even, or are we stuck with the ship?

[leonel]

Originally Posted by salty mud

I suppsoe the true answer will be to wait another week.

But I don't think that's possible. I haven't even seen a video where, upon entering the Space Stage, the player has left thier spaceship! Can we go back to city management even, or are we stuck with the ship?

I have! I think it was the NASA presentation. It's in one of these;

Part 1; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yl4jKXNzP6E
Part 2;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDmNYI458FA
Part 3;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY1mU8LerE8
Part 4;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id3heUMKg2s

I think it's in one of those.

[a space oddity]

In the Space stage the UFO is your avatar. You can send out a "hologram" of your creature to walk over the alien planet's surface.

City management is possible in Space. You can still put buildings in your colony (only when you've successfully terra-formed it). You can also still make vehicles, but you can't directly control them, like you did in the Civ stage. Which is probably just as well since you're going to have lots of colonies to fund your extensive Space traveling.

[leonel]

Originally Posted by a space oddity

In the Space stage the UFO is your avatar. You can send out a "hologram" of your creature to walk over the alien planet's surface.

Yes that's what I saw! That'll be cool. Flying to randomly generated planets is cool enough but getting out and walking on the surface is the reason.

[a space oddity]

The planets are not randomly generated. They found that handmade planets are more interesting. They used an editor that wont be used in the game, but might be released in some shape or form later. There's a YouTube with part of a presentation Maxis gave at SIGGRAPH 2007:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duzHn3n6ZUs

[leonel]

Originally Posted by a space oddity

The planets are not randomly generated. They found that handmade planets are more interesting. They used an editor that wont be used in the game, but might be released in some shape or form later. There's a YouTube with part of a presentation Maxis gave at SIGGRAPH 2007:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duzHn3n6ZUs

Wait how hand crafted are these planets to be? I mean what I'm seeing is that it is randomly generated to a degree.

[a space oddity]

True there's some randomness in the editor, but it's a human designer approving the planet to be in the game or not. The planet is not randomly generated from scratch, the "sliders" are set by a human for each and every one of them, thats what you're seeing in the video. It shows what the designer can use to make those planets.

[leonel]

Well I guess that's okay as long as the planets are diverse enough.