«Spore: Civilization Stage»

Now your species has reigned supreme on your planet, and it's time to start a civilization. Build your very own city. However, not all of your species think alike, so different nations form.

Your first job is to design what your city hall will look like. Then you get a cute little cut scene involving pie, and you design what your land vehicles look like, and their properties. The 3 properties are health, attack power, and speed. As they are all percentages, if you increase one the others go down. That little point took me a bit to figure out.

You're still paying an RTS at this point. You have to defend your city, and take over all the other 9 cities through either religions, economic, or military means. This is what you use your vehicles for.

You also can design and place different types of buildings in your city; homes, factories, and entertainment. Their placement matters. Factories must be places adjacent to homes in order to make money. Entertainment must also be placed adjacent to homes to make the people happier. If entertainment and factory buildings are adjacent, it causes an unhappy effect. You want to keep your people happy, because they make more money and are less susceptible to being taken over religiously.

Global unification is required before you go on to the space phase. Perhaps that's why we don't have interstellar space travel yet?