Sporebuck

The Sporebuck is the currency of the Civilization stage and Space stage. The currency symbol in game is similar to the "section" symbol (§). It also resembles the "Simoleon," the currency used in Maxis's other games, SimCity and The Sims, in the shape of a barred-spiral galaxy. The maximum attainable amount is §99,999,999 (one less than 100 million). Sporebucks received in excess of this limit are discarded.

Sporebucks can be used to buy everything from tools and weapons to buildings and eventually entire star systems (what depends from the T-Score of the planets).

Precursor to the Sporebuck
Cell Stage: DNA can be collected by eating Meat chunks and Plants. Can be used in the Cell Editor to buy new parts.

Creature Stage: DNA is also harvested for money in the Creature stage. Collect it by befriending or killing creatures, or selling old parts in the Creature editor. Can be used in the Creature Editor to buy new parts, upgrade parts.

Tribal Stage: Food (Seen as chicken leg, apple, or chicken leg+apple in the toolbar), can be harvested by gathering fish (seaweed if herbivore), eggs, meat, or fruit with gathering methods. Can be used in the Tribal Planner for buying new huts and making more tribesmen.

Civilization stage
In the civilization stage, Sporebucks are made from trade routes with other nations, from refining mined spice, and from city income (made by pairing factories, houses, and city halls).

Civilization Stage Money Management and a Trader's tutorial
When you start out, immediately pause the game, purchase as many vehicles as you can with your starting cash (usually 3 extra) and assign each of them to capture a spice geyser, starting with the furthest from your city first. Unpause the game and wait for them to capture the geysers. Be sure to watch out for supersized creatures, as they can destroy your vehicles in one hit. Ignore the tutorial, claim as many geysers as you can before another city rises, this is difficult when playing on a hard setting as other cities are founded very quickly. When you have claimed as many geysers as possible, or when there are no more left to claim, go to your city, give it a factory, house, and entertainment center. Connect the factory to the house and city hall, and the entertainment center to the house (but not the factory). This will not only jump your economy to a higher foothold, but will decrease chances of revolt, and religious takeover.

Later in-game, when more cities appear, conquer them using military or religious means (the quickest thing to do). Take control of your continent (with spice, remember money is everything), and get a port city rolling to claim off-shore spice nodes. (More Spice, more Sporebucks)

Nearing the end of the game, get an air force or navy and start hitting some cities hard. When they surrender, get converted, or get bought out, claim their spice geysers, and spend a pinch of money to give them a factory, house, and entertainment block. Increased productivity in spice will lead to thousands of Sporebucks per minute. Then, use Fanatical Uprising, ICBMs, or Global Buyout. The cost of using these depends on how many cities there are left to capture, also be aware when using the ICBM it will leave much of the remaining cities in ruins and you'll be unable to rebuild for some time. After every city is captured be sure to maximise spice production, but without compromising happiness. Doing this before entering space stage is vital, you won't waste any money since you always start space stage with the same amount of money.

In short, Spice is your Sporebuck.

Space stage
In the space stage, Sporebucks are mainly earned by...


 * ...selling Spice or Artifacts to colonies or to other empires (Although you can not trade with The Grox)
 * ...completing missions for other species (with rewards from §5,000 to over §1,200,000 Sporebucks, even for the Grox.)
 * ...collecting loot from destroyed UFOs and Cities.
 * ...allied empires' gifts (starting from § 10,000 Sporebucks).

Space Stage Money Management and Spice Collection
Tip 1: If an empire demands "unbeliever tribute", or a war threat you should not pay up if you have a military force.
 * This is debatable. Refusal leads to relationship penalties which leads to war which is costly in terms of time and resources. Empires will only demand tribute if you have a negative relationship. Often ally or at least get them to the "Blue face" them and the sign will go away.

Tip 2: If you see something that looks way too expensive, like 150,000 Sporebucks for a Colony Pack, turn down the offer. There is always a cheaper price.

Tip 3: If you have a colony that has a low spice capacity, buy Spice Storage and plant it on the colony. It helps spice capacity, so you don't have to go on a tax collecting run every two minutes.

Tip 4: If you see an Empire offering you Sporebucks, take the offer. Free money. Don't rely on these people, either.

Tip 5: Don't "buy" Badges like Jack Of All Trades just for the badge points. Only buy a tool when you need it.

Tip 6: You can't run around the galaxy, taking mission offers and delivering species without visiting your empire! Your colonies have spice up for collection.

Tip 7: Don't go off selling Spice for the minimum price. You can sell red spice at a red spice-producing colony for 281 Sporebucks, sure. But some places have it up for over 16,000 Sporebucks, sometimes even in the same system.

Tip 8: If you're near your homeworld (within three flight away) and low on energy, don't stop at a nearby empire. Just go to your home-world.

Tip 9: If you want quick money, go on "tax collecting runs" on your colonies to collect spice.

Tip 10: Maximize all colony production power. More spice production=More Sporebuck Production

Tip 11: Try to get your hands on planet that has purple or pink spice (It can be sold for much more than most spices)

Tip 12: Try to ally or defeat any nearby empires that do not like your empire because they may demand tributes from you that cost up to 750,000 sporebucks and refusing to pay will make that Empire angry at you! This is also debatable, because those sporebucks could be better used to negotiate an alliance. Tip 1 is contradictory to this statement. Decide whether you want to pay the money or not.

Tip 13: Use a monolith on a purple spice T-score 3 planet and wait for evolution (make sure the planet is large, you can see the size of the planet on the interstellar view). Once it reaches space stage, it will be a purple spice alien homeworld. Take over this planet, and with maxed buildings and spice storage, you will have a planet that produces 100 purple spice in less than ten minutes. Find a empire that buys purple for 70,000, and you have 7,000,000 in less than ten minutes, unlimitedly.

Tip 14: You can plunder spice from a civilized planet by using the Abduction Beam. They will not attack your space ship unless you abduct one of the civilians from the city.

Tip 15: If you and another empire have some bad history, and you want to cripple their economy, drop into one of their major colony planets and destroy their entertainment and factory buildings, or just terraform gigantic rivers and seas of lava to slow them down and prevent them from putting any more colonies on that planet.

Tip 16: Please, please, PLEASE, don't leave your homeworld before entering the space stage without putting collecting devices on all your spice geysers for maximum economic output. Also, give all your cities their maximum economic spice output (they cost a lot less in the Civ Stage, because no matter what you do, you start out with around 100,000 Sporebucks in the space stage.

Tip 17: Don't give more gifts than you have to. Often a careless or cash-strapped player desperate for an alliance or at least an end to a war will spend too much money for a peace treaty or even a simple relations boost. Do it tentatively, nickel at a time, or at least, don't waste a few million on it. Also, you can only get +50 from money.

Tip 18: Always look for planets with other types of spice colors than what you already have when looking for a new planet to colonize. This strategy will pay off later on when trading rare spice with other colonies.

Tip 19: Tutorial mission objectives ARE NOT MANDATORY. Your empire will often ask you to make a red spice planet your first colony. Ignore this if you see a planet with better spice and a T-Score of 1 (ecosystem is irrelevant). Colonize that planet and the mission will still be counted as complete. If possible, complete the ecosystem and up-terraform the planet to start raking in cash.

Trivia

 * Sporebucks can also be attained by the "MoreMoney" cheat (2,000 in the Civilization stage and 1,000,000 in the Space stage). Using any cheat will earn you the Joker Badge and disable achievements on that game.
 * The Sporebuck symbol (§) looks very much like the galaxy NGC 1365
 * Simply typing the $ sign when in the editors can trigger the Sporebuck symbol.
 * On another Maxis game The Sims, the money, the Simoleans use the same symbol (§).