Spore: Hard Mode

In Spore there are 4 achievements for completing Hard mode; Aluminum Cell, Iron Creature, Steel Tribe and Adamantium Civilization. Space stage hard does not have an achievement, but I will cover it. I will also give recommendations on which traits are best for Hard mode.

In Hard cell stage algae are scarce and meteor shards don’t show up at all, however predatory cells are common. This doesn’t make things too difficult, it just means cell stage will take a while.

I recommend herbivore, as siren song will give us flexibility in the creature stage.
Only equip herbivore mouth, with all the predators and meat bits popping the amount of meat will overpower algae and push you into omnivore or likely carnivore.

Aside from that we follow the usual cell stage, get a long spike tail to poke predators in the mouth, replace flagella with cilia, get electric emitters and maybe get poison too.

Before moving on make sure to spend all DNA on parts and add flagella. Also save.

When entering creature stage we start in the editor. Most cell parts are cheaper than creature stage parts. Particularly useful are the jet, spike and flagella. You may also want to keep electric for its unique appearance.
Also decides on your creature’s appearance(coat color, details) if you haven’t already.
You can win hard creature stage as a 3-mouthed limbless slug for 2 additional achievements, it just requires a bit more care, reloading and cilia/wings. You can get help from other species for socialization or stack the meter with sing or charm and hope that the last move they use is sing or charm.
If you want Pose and Dance on yourself you will need arms and legs. You can get cheap legs and arms by cutting the lower part by holding CTRL.

I recommend remaining herbivore and going for friendship as the Fireworks ability can really save your life during tribal stage. Keep sustainable hunting on the more friendly side.
In Hard mode many creatures dislike you, and almost as many are completely hostile, only a handful are neutral. Once again Hard mode is pushing you toward the red.
Here’s where the siren song comes into play, if we lure an angry creature away from its kind, we can sing to it and socialize to make them neutral.

During the meteor shower avoid the shadows that appear. When the ship starts flying around, save and try to avoid it, you don’t want your party members abducted.

As always, have followers with you to help socialize, but be very careful about positioning so as to stay out of other creatures range.
Always save before approaching hostile nests.
Get optimal social abilities to help with making friends, after that equip the best weapons as well. We want both of these for tribal stage.
Eventually we want 3 different rogue creatures in the party, this will give us the Village Folks achievement as well as produce a few eggs for the tribe.

Select your Home nest to be close to ocean. You can set the home nest by finding one of your nest and pressing the ground of the nest. Coastal village/city is generally best and for Hard mode we really need to be on the coast this will make it easy to fish for tribute and we really need a shipyard during civilization.
And also save before forming a tribe in case you missed something or ended up as adaptable/predator by mistake.

Tribal stage can go very wrong very quickly, and in hard mode everyone already dislikes or hates you. Plus there’s more epic creatures around. Additionally concerts require more band members than usual, the meter fills more slowly and can fall quickly if you make a mistake or lack an instrument.
Thankfully, Mystery_Player has already created a great guide on the tribal stage specifically.
See full details:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2295844339

The main points are to constantly produce food(probably fishing) but not going over 70, be friendly(not allied) with the 1st tribe, pause and give gifts to the other tribes to keep them happy. Keep giving gifts and slowly accumulate instruments.
If you are getting attacked, have your Chieftain go to their hut and set off fireworks to stop the attack.
Eventually make all tribes friendly with music.

Also watch out for yet another ship appears, it can abduct pets, tribe members, and even Chieftain. You must reload a save if it takes the chieftain.

Once you have them all friendly save.
We want to end tribal stage as Industrious as we really need an economic city. Since we are a friendly creature we should destroy more than we ally, 3/5 or 4/5 depending on how much gifts pushed you toward green.

Civilization is the hardest stage of spore.
Make your townhall and vehicle. For the vehicle we want a combination of trade power and speed, we shouldn’t be doing any fighting so health can be kept minimal.

As soon as you finish the movement tutorial pause and command your vehicle to the nearest geyser. Save now. While still paused build a boat and command it to the nearest geyser in water.
Command each vehicle to Propose trade with a city.
A city will not accept a new trade route if it has less than 25 disposition, so you may need to butter them up by complimenting their large tracts of land or gifting them 1000 sb.

Remember that in hard mode disposition decreases are as big as -40. They occur for various reasons, such as getting to large, being on the same continent, refusing an offer, capturing one of their cities, having a certain philosophy, etc.

Everything from here is a balancing act. You gotta balance how much you develop your city and trade routes with how much to keep on hand for bribes and slowly buying cities.
The strategy is to be friendly with the largest nation and 2nd largest, never letting their disposition drop below. We want all the trade routes, giving priority to the largest nation, that will help a bit with disposition too. Sometimes one nation will force you into war with another and you can recoup a bit of money from this. We don’t want any war in hard mode so compliment and bribe the offended nation until disposition above -25, so they wont attack. The key here is to grow slowly and only when you can afford. You can usually buy a city 16000 sb, anything less will just offend them. Buy the most productive cities from whoever is largest and convert them to economic. Keep the nations of even size so they fight each other instead of you. When the last nation has only one city they will surrender eventually, or just buy them. Afterward you can capture all spice geysers to earn an achievement.

There is no achievement for playing Space Stage in hard mode, but of course, you can.
If you’ve followed the guide the whole way you will be Diplomat class and earn the Diplomat Passion badge just for entering space. The Diplomat Hero badge on the other hand requires earning 275 points from badges.

In hard mode some empires will dislike you immediately and tribute is higher than normal.
But the real pain is the events. Every 5min an event will occur; ecodisasters, pirates, invasions(if you’re at war which you probably will be shortly). Sometimes 2 events appear at once. Hard mode will have you zooming around your empire putting out fires. You may get the Careless Parent achievement for losing control of 5 planets. Additionally spice sells for much less and your ship has embarrassingly low hp.

However, like the rest of this playthrough getting all those badges will take much longer than it normally would and space stage is far longer all other stages already, so long in fact that describing how to get them all would triple the size of this guide.
So I recommend earning the Diplomat Hero badge on a lower difficulty

Once again, thank Mystery_Player for his guide on the tribal stage.