gold v production

[craney1987]

so I've seen some people who say gold is king and some people say production is king.

id like to see the debate. What side do you land on? And why?
I havnt really decided personally yet. I'm not good enough to be achieving either optimal production or income. Yet.

 

[spfun]

Both? Its what I did.

 

[stinkubus]

Production from Ancient through Medieval eras, and gold from Renaissance through the end of the game, imo.

 

[craney1987]

Production from Ancient through Medieval eras, and gold from Renaissance through the end of the game, imo.

do you change your approach to cities by ear to match this?

 

[MaximusPlatypus]

In my experience, it's easier to get gold. So I tend to focus yields on production. Gold is nice, but you won't be swimming in it unless you are England until the midgame. Also, you can sell stuff to the AI for flat gold (or failing that, GPT). You can't trade for production

 

[Victoria]

Production is king, gold is god, quite different in my view and both have their place.

You will not get anywhere enough gold in the game to buy everything and not everything can be bought with gold. You need production to make stuff in each city and the more production you have the faster you can pump stuff out and so win faster or build better, whatever floats your boat. Production is king over everything else because it is vital.

Saying that we will accumulate gold and quite quickly. The cards for gold are favourites and available in much larger numbers than production cards. Every now and then we want something, wether it be Adam smith, a university quickly for a eureka or an archaeologist asap for speed. This is when we pray to god for a miracle and gold is that miracle that allows us to buy the odd expensive thing when we most need it.

Which is more important... neither. They do different things. Production is a must and in good amounts, I personally do not squeeze every cog as there is district contention and it does not seem to hurt my victory.
I will push a lot of gold and it's nice to get over those bottlenecks when you have been waiting for a tech and now you have it you must wait for production to do its job, a push with gold makes a visible difference so I love it but I just cannot get enough so production is important too.

 

[MaximusPlatypus]

Gold gives you more flexibility in general. If you need to do something right now, gold can solve a lot of problems. Production is more like your meat and potatoes that will sustain your empire over the long term. In Civ 5, I felt like food was king. Food gave you more of everything, more citizens, more x science and culture, and specialists were actually good. In Civ 6, amenities and district costs keep make growth not as important.

 

[cll3]

I'd say production is more integral towards winning you the game, early to mid, when all the little things actually matter. Gold snowballs you into infinity once you're ahead. The most important gold early on is when you're a pauper. Upgrading those 3-6 crossbowmen, or that timing window you saved up for to dump everything into X unique units, maybe a mass melee upgrade the moment you hit mercenaries. But the rest is all production. Early game production is of course compounded by agoge. It helps so much to spam warriors to sit around blocking barbarian spawns, and they remain seeds all game for half priced upgrades later on, and melee is the most efficient pound-for-pound military unit with big upgrades available in pretty much every timing window for aggression.

The gold purchases later on, to get things right here right now, circumventing travel times etc... those are mainly luxuries to win harder. At the most crucial points in the game where the game is more or less "decided" it's all about production*civicbonuses, so I'd say production is overall more crucial. I end every game with pretty much all gold though. Like others have said it's just more flexible and convenient, versatile.

Once you're winning and sorta just "closing out" a game, you switch to mainly gold. But production is what got you to that point moreso than gold income. There are just so many more production variables early on. That's my opinion. But everyone has their own playstyle, especially between different civs.

 

[historix69]

Gold is quite useful to buy normal buildings (especially to push new cities or push a wonder city), buy Great Persons, buy or upgrade units, support a larger military force, buy tiles to expand border, etc....
You can also use gold to buy artefacts (art, music, ...) from AI.
But you cannot buy districts or wonders, so at least some of your core cities should favour growth and production. A city with many districts gives high bonus for food and production (depending on districts) on internal trade routes and may support other cities when builing districts or wonders.

So you need both : Production in core cities and Gold from your empire.

 

[Canadian Bluebeer]

I look at it this way. With production you can get gold.

You do need enough early on to support your armies of course, and stockpiling some for the mass upgrades yes.
Production to build traders fast, which brings gold and more production (and food)

So, you need both, but I prefer to work on production then gold.

 

[historix69]

You need production to build commercial hub, harbor, trade route wonders but you can buy traders, markets, banks, ...

 

[Tacgnol]

Gold > production.

I mean, obviously you can't completely neglect production, you need it to get districts up, you can't do anything without districts, and you need to build at least a few units, you also won't be able to afford to buy all the buildings you want and will have to hard build some of them.

But the game is quite imbalanced right now, science and culture are far too cheap resulting in a very fast tech pace, production doesn't keep up with this, it increases much more slowly as you improve your lands, grow your population and build buildings.

So, production is quite undervalued, at higher difficulties at least it never keeps pace with tech and culture, leaving your production in all but your top handful of industrial cities lacking and painfully slow.

Gold, on the other hand, grows much faster through policies, spending gold and population, so it manages to keep pace with science and culture and is balanced somewhat similarly.

So, you need some of both, you need some production to get your first few units up and running, if you're doing Domination, you need it to train reinforcements for your army, if you're doing a SV, you need one, preferably two high-production cities for the victory, in a CV it's not worth much but you still have to build theater squares. You can't neglect production completely, but outside of those niche situations, gold is generally worth more and you're better off choosing gold over production when you have to make a choice (in everything except map tile yields). That's why a CH is generally a priority to build in every city, while IZ/Encampments are typically a third or optional build.

 

[Canadian Bluebeer]

Well, since Germany gets an extra district anyway, and Hansas are cheap... Thats why I do them first.
(except for really good harbor spots, then those go first)

To each their own.

 

[gettingfat]

Production helps us to get money, money helps us to get more money, with enough money we can buy a victory.

 

[isau]

They are both extremely important. In the early turns, Production is very useful because it is what you mainly need to trigger Eurekas. Gold generally becomes more useful later on. That said, stumbling on a pile of Gold in the first 10 turns (e.g. multiple luck villages) can be game changing by allowing you to rush a Settler or Worker and bypass many turns for construction. Starting near a resource like Cocoa can also give a big advantage.

Where Gold becomes extremely important is later on when what matters is portability. Gold can instantly buy you an army in the exact spot you need it to ward off or launch an invasion. It can also buy you a fast Settler or Worker in a location that would otherwise take many turns to produce it.

Gold is generally easier to get than Production. However, civs with abilities that boost Gold have a pretty big advantage.

 

[cazaderonus]

Gold is superior to production over the course of a game. Production is mostly needed to build the infrastructures that will lead to a massive gold income aka commercial hub and harbors.

Then it's not difficult to reach 400+ gpt and you're basically just buying everything in 1/3 of the time you'd need to hard build it.

Also gold has the versatility to be equally powerfull for any VC.

 

[Victoria]

I am not sure about religion but using gold for science and cultural victories can certainly knock many turns off

 

[cazaderonus]

I am not sure about religion but using gold for science and cultural victories can certainly knock many turns off

If just for the fact that gold can guarantee getting the key GPs for a SV and a CV, gold is god. Production wont even matter to build the space projects if you're guaranteed to be able to buy the 3 +XXXX hammers for space projects GP.

 

[UWHabs]

The biggest advantage gold has is that it's transferable. One of my cities is out of housing? Buy something there to help. Another cities could use a university? Buy it there. Racing for a Great Scientist? Buy it.

Whereas production, I can really load up production in a city, but if they actually ran out of things to build, that doesn't really help me, does it? Sure, I can run a project to turn that into other yields, or use it for a builder to help improve land around some other city, but it's really not very transferable to where it may be needed most.

The main advantage to production is that it's a lot easier to maximize production in a city. Maximizing gold is an empire-wide strategy in building CH/Harbors, traders, focusing on gold buildings, etc... But maximizing production in a single city simply involves planning the best mix of farms/mines/lumber mills, setting your IZ in the right spot, and then making sure that the city has the housing and amenities to grow. Which is also why I don't think it's really an either/or question. Best strategy I think is to pick one or two cities where you manage them and do everything you can to make them as strong as possible, and then let the rest of your empire basically live in filth, but as long as they build a CH, then I don't really care about what they do other than that.

 

[Kyro]

Gold can't get you Districts/Wonders and each unit of Production gets you much, much more than each unit of Gold.

Gold costs for units inflate throughout the game without cap, gold essentially reduces in value as the game progresses, making any gain in gold generation merely a losing war against inflation.

Production values with the exception of Districts/Builders/Settlers remain consistent throughout the game, making them a far better investment compared to Gold. (Then again you can't buy crucial districts and builder/settler costs are still very manageable despite the inflation.)

The only time Gold is better is when you need infrastructure for new cities, although late game expansion is quite weak compared to early expansion.

Or when you desperately need a particular great person; though most of the great person points should have been generated through projects if that was the case.

Tldr: Production is better because it
a: Builds Districts and Wonders which Gold cannot.
b: Covers more costs per unit and is not as subject to inflation as gold is.