Talk:Spice

=Spice Values= I have added pictures of each spice and the best sale price I can find for them. If anyone can find better sell prices please edit the pictures or artical to let people know and take the "advisory sell price" out from the picture, Thanks Dd7900 20:28, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The pink spice you linked is actually purple, and yes, pink and purple ARE different (both rare) also I got paid up to 50k for green spice, the prices are prone to fluctuation and local demand.--88.149.246.128 22:55, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I haven't found purple yet, but I've got lots of pink, green, and tons of blue, red and yellow. While prices are random, it seems that the same planets have consistently high prices, and that prices stay the same or go up when the player is absent. This information could probably be added to a spice strategy page? Parthon 20:23, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

What's the best price people have seen for pink? We've got a good listing here of all the others. --Agamenoar 18:19, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Never mind, I found a place buying it for good money, and posted a picture. --Agamenoar 20:45, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

The Advisory Price images... I just realized, those are only valid for the 'easy' mode of the game, aren't they? We should really make up a chart listing the best possible prices on each of Easy, Normal, and Hard. Based on the link to the spice calculation chart someone else posted, we should be able to just calculate this out. --Agamenoar 03:41, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

The official guide is wrong on the base prices, extracting the game files got me the following: Other empires charge you base price for their spice, and I've personally never seen an empire want 6750 for their yellow.
 * Red: 3375
 * Yellow: 4500
 * Blue: 5230
 * Green: 10125
 * Pink: 11242
 * Purple: 14625

The way the game calculates sale prices seems to be:

$$Sale Price = Base Price * (1 + Premium)$$

where Premium is the value obtained from the table in the game guide.

An aside on "advisory sale prices": Please note, this will get a little long and probablity heavy, skip down to "Conclusions" if you don't care for the reasoning, but, here I go.

The max sale price happens too rarely to be considered something to strive for.

Assuming the game guide is correct;
 * Each planet chooses three kinds of spice it will buy, and two it will not buy, and;
 * Each planet chooses one of ten different premiums to charge for spices it will buy.

I'm adding an eleventh premium (0), because I've seen Red spice (base price = 3375) have a sale price of 3374. I'm also assuming each premium is equally likely to occur.

Continuing the Red spice example, the probability of a non-Red producing planet charging max price for Red is:

$$(oddsOfPlanetChoosingRed) * (oddsOfGettingMaximumPremium)$$

$$(3/5) * (1/11) = (3/55) $$, which is approximately 5.5%/one of every nineteen non-Red producing planets. Fairly rare, and especially hard to find in the beginning of the game, where you may not have nineteen non-Red planets to go to!

I'm going to introduce expected value here. Expected value, like the die-rolling scenario, says if a die is rolled a large number of times, the value per die roll will approach 3.5. In Spore, we're not rolling dice, we're selling spice. Eventually, after selling lots of spice, we'll approach the "true value" of the spice. And, thus, to make a large profit without a large fuss, all we'll need to do is find a buyer at some price higher than this "true value"!

The expected value (of the premium) is dependent on difficulty level:
 * Easy: 1.81
 * Normal: 1.36
 * Hard: .90

And, keeping this in mind with the way the game calculates sale prices:
 * Easy: 2.81 * BasePrice
 * Normal: 2.36 * BasePrice
 * Hard: 1.9 * BasePrice

In tabular form:
 * Easy
 * Red: 9483
 * Yellow: 12645
 * Blue: 14696
 * Green: 28451
 * Pink: 31590
 * Purple: 41096
 * Normal
 * Red: 7965
 * Yellow: 10620
 * Blue: 13242
 * Green: 23895
 * Pink: 26531
 * Purple: 34515
 * Hard
 * Red: 6412
 * Yellow: 8550
 * Blue: 9937
 * Green: 19237
 * Pink: 21359
 * Purple: 27787

Again, continuing with the Red spice example:

$$ (oddsOfPlanetChoosingRed) * (oddsOfPremium > EV) $$

$$ (3/5) * (5/11) = (15/55) $$, which is approximately 27%/one in every three and a half planets. Considerably more common.

Conclusions: The max sale price doesn't occur often enough to use as an advised sale price. The values in the table above essentially give the true value of the spice, and a large profit can easily be made by selling the spice above its true value, not needing it to be at maximum price. Cobaltate 00:28, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

though logical, im afraid that in hard mode in spore, i have seen a best price of blue spice in hard mode, 55064

Price Tables
I've just gone in and overhauled the Selling Spice section and corrected the Spice Types section, as per the fancy (and, so var, pleasingly accurate) spreadsheet I've cobbled together to show predicted spice prices. I've just spent a few hours on the formatting and so will be taking a break before posting (on a sub-page) the actual spreadsheet and math.

In the meantime, the page now shows in italics all values that I haven't yet personally verified. If any of you find one of these "missing" prices in-game, I'd sure appreciate an edit; I don't look forward to putting as much work into the Normal/Hard chart as the Easy one took. >.<

By extension, though, all values which are not in italics have been personally verified by me in-game and all the italic values are calculated from those. So far, the Easy chart has almost no error at all and the Normal/Hard chart starts accurate at low prices and slowly increases to an error of 5 or 6 sporebucks for the really high values. Still, that's more than close enough for most people. :-)

--DarkRyder 19:33, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

I've noticed in my game that green sells for $60K or something like that, not the maximum $50K like it imposes, also a nifty little trick that i MIGHT make a new secion about tells me that green is rarer, and so it sells for more. Even though pink IS rarer, i will not deny that, it is not worth as much. Lone Helper 07:43, 15 March 2009 (UTC)


 * It's probably because they aren't at the same level, it's probably Green's next level of price up so it defeats Pink's price at the previous level. It's like getting expensive red and cheap purple. Thanks, TimeMaster Talk Main Contribs 16:37, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I know that, but i am just saying that i could sell it for 60K MAXIMUM, and that sais that you can only sell it for 50K MAXIMUM, but I cannot go through the prices to change them because A) I don't know how they are coded and B) I don't have all the prices. i might get a pic soon, if i can find an empire that buys them for that 60K on easy. Lone Helper 20:13, 16 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Can you test Pink for the MAXIMUM, please? Thanks, TimeMaster Talk Main Contribs 21:58, 16 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I found that max for pink a lot of times while serching for it, but not that 60K that i think you might think i mistook it for.Lone Helper 04:30, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Terraforming and spice
Is the color of spice affected by terraforming the planet? And is this predictable? - Redmess 21:38, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Only the amount of spice changes due to the amount of buildings your colony can sustain due to the terra score. Wormulon 21:41, 14 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Nope, it depends on the star is orbits and if it is in the goldilocks zone or not. Thanks, TimeMaster Talk Main Contribs 21:45, 14 March 2009 (UTC)


 * And a degree of probability. Lone Helper 08:35, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

OK, well, how do you know
I know since that secion has been up for MORE than a day that it wasn't cross editing. And since it has been deleted i have come to the conclusion that i WILL go ON TO my spore, FIND AN EMPIRE that buys it for 60K and THEN prove it to you ALL that you are wrong. Lone Helper 20:19, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I noticed the price of spice goes up and down, and games can vary slightly. I to have had spice with the price greater than maximum, though it probably is a glitch. Wormulon 20:48, 16 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm not talking about the prices going up and down, i KNOW that, i'm talking about the people that have it DRILLED into their skulls that the maximum price of green spice is 50.something K. I come across it MULTIPLE times and in that section, i showed something that surports that theory, now i have a picture. Getting it soon.

Lone Helper 21:12, 16 March 2009 (UTC)




 * Can you give a screenshot as proof? - Redmess 22:54, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I couldn't find one in time for school, i'm going to keep trying to find it.

Also, that picture, it shows that green is rarer than pink because it's more to the right than pink. Hope that makes senceLone Helper 04:25, 17 March 2009 (UTC)]

Lone Helper, are you claiming that green spice is rarer than pink, because everyone knows that pink is rarer than green. I have an explanation: the value of green spice can exceed pink spice, but most of the time it doesn't.  Also a glitch in the game could be causing the spice to reach over 50 K.  Everyone experiences the Spore game differently. I have never had green spice at 60K. Wormulon 10:19, 17 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Also, the order in my game goes "Re, Ye, Bl, Gr, Pi, Pu," unlike in yours. Otherwise, Wormulon is right, and I haven't gotten Green for 60K yet, and I've got 60K for Pink, but that's the highest. Thanks, TimeMaster Talk Main Contribs 16:13, 17 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Well then i have had a gliched installation. It makes sence anyway (well at least for me) that green would be inbetween pink and purple, gives a break about colour, ya know? Well i guess now that whenever i come across a price chart, i swap around the prices of pink and green. Lone Helper 19:41, 17 March 2009 (UTC)