What to do with early gold pile?

Finn 80

Chieftain
Joined
Apr 5, 2015
Messages
6
Hi all, some advise or a different idea perhaps..... I play on standard, king/emperor levels and inital build order is scout, monument, granary with good dirt or shrine. I have been buying my second scout $140 with the gold i've received from meeting cs and possible ruin gold. Seems like saving for settler $500 or library $400 takes way to long and like having my gold work for me as early as possible. So i was wondering what do other players invest their early gold in?
 
Usually settler or library for 3rd city. But I do spend some gold to buy some important tiles to be worked in the city.
Archer is also a good option


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Settlers or buildings/workers in newly settled cities to get them off the ground. I usually play on Quick/king so your mileage may vary though.
 
There's a few things you can spend on

-If your capital is production poor and you are playing Tradition (i.e no settler bonus) then 500 gold to buy an early settleris probably one of the better uses. It gets a new city going earlier (preventing AIs from claiming that land) & saves your capital from lost growth as well as removing an item from your build queue.

-Buying a caravan can be useful as early trade routes can bring gold and science or be used internally for feeding a new city.

-if you want to get your National College out of the way buying a library can be useful

-if a city has stone & marble I think a Stoneworks can be very useful to buy. For some reason you pay 320 gold for 75 hammers as opposed to 400 gold for other buildings that cost 75 hammers (i.e library). So this saves you 80 gold, so its more efficient to buy a stoneworks than to build it relative to the cost of other items at this point. The extra hammers and happiness are very desirable.

-if you have lots of pastures buying a stables can be incredibly powerful. High production is disproportionately powerful in the early game as it has a real strong snowballing effect. You will notice the difference immediately
 
I always spend my gold for on a settler.
However, Redaxe's post has opened up my eyes to some other possibilities, so tyvm.
 
Thanks all replies, guess general concensus is that optimal play is to hold out and save for the settler/2nd city library. Though redaxes 320 stoneworks is interesting and i even think stable is abit cheaper too, if i remember right. I do a full tradition start, prolly should have mentioned that, meet 2-3 local cs and early +1-2 economy so at,say, turn 20 i have the 140 scout cost but would have to wait till turns 40-50 to reach the 400-500 for the library/settler costs. Just seems an earlier investment in (something) would be more OP.
 
I usually play on immortal quick small pangea, sometimes deity standard size and time.
I just don't pile up gold. I don't work gold tile early, just food and hammer and I love buying tiles, I want to work the best tile possible, so almost every gold I have early goes to buying tiles. therefore, I rarely have a pile of gold.
I tend to hard build everything, and take AI cities as my third or forth city, so rush buy buildings, settlers and libraries is out of the picture too, anyway I spent all my gold on tiles already. And it's just faster for me to hard build a settler than waiting to have that much gold, by then all the room for expand would be taken up by the AI (maybe it's because I play on small).
But if I do pile up some gold early, from getting lots of ruins or just meeting a lot of city states and there's no tile to buy, I'd spend it on a cultural or religious city state. The culture from cs is huge at that stage of the game or in case of religious cs I don't have to build shine early in my other cities, save up quite some hammer and maintenance.
 
I'm usually buying some good tiles to work very early, and can barely save up enough for that 3rd or 4th library. But that is where my gold goes, almost never a settler. Maybe an archer in the right situation.
 
My first game I played I didn't know you could buy units and building with gold until 1960...I had 50,000 saved up and I was allied with every CS on the map...lel
 
Settlers. Too short answer :D

I usually don't buy buildings in early game. I'm saving money to buy Archer, Spearmen etc. but not for rushing another civ but defending my cities against a random DoW from a nearby civ. I usually never build units in early game. So, some civs think I'm defenseless but I'm preparing myself to war with saving golds :) That's why I need gold in safe.
 
Caravan if the area is clear and have a good chance of staying clear AND there's no rush to expand.

If not, archers. They are usually worth saving the 60 extra gold for instead of buying a scout. Most of the ruins have probably been taken by this point. This is especially true on higher difficulties where the AI gets a lot of units to start with. Archers are great for clearing barbs and actually useful if an AI decides to attack. They also increase troops numbers more than scouts -- possibly making the AI think twice before attacking or (most likely) attack someone else. Lastly, if you don't need them for barb-duty, they are ideal units to station in your cities and make use of the Legalism SP. Settling in someone's face and immediately buying an archer while taking advantage of the increased city-damage and no upkeep is always fun :)
 
Caravan if the area is clear and have a good chance of staying clear AND there's no rush to expand.

Cargo ship > Caravan if you happen to be located on the coast btw (and have a valid target in range); the 2x yield tastes very good.
 
I almost always buy a worker with this early gold. I don't steal workers from CSs. I also buy tiles to increase gold and hammers.
 
Save it. I assume I will need to buy units/walled when attacked, but sometimes you are far enough away, or some other luck civ gets Askia/Ghengis/Ghandi's attention first. If you hold on to the gold you can minimize maintenance costs or even wait for policy cost savings. If I don't need the combat units, I spend them on essential one per city upgrades to build wonders.
 
-Buying a caravan can be useful as early trade routes can bring gold and science or be used internally for feeding a new city.

I've never understood why spending early gold-in-hand for a caravan to get gold-per-turn is a good idea. Doesn't it take longer to recover the gold than it would to hard-build the caravan?

Of course, the science will only be worth spending the gold up front if you are playing on high enough difficulties that your neighbors start out pretty advanced.
 
I've never understood why spending early gold-in-hand for a caravan to get gold-per-turn is a good idea. Doesn't it take longer to recover the gold than it would to hard-build the caravan?

Of course, the science will only be worth spending the gold up front if you are playing on high enough difficulties that your neighbors start out pretty advanced.

Bying a caravan to use solely for gold on the lower difficulties prolly isn't worth it. But on the higher difficulties the science is really nice to get. And internal trade routes are ofc paying off straight away.
 
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