The state of Gold in the game

[Starwars]

So... gold gold gold.

How do you feel about this particular economy in the game? I can't really recall the journey of gold throughout the history of Civ VI but as it is right now, I feel like gold is really easy to come by. I honestly cannot remember when I last went into negative GPT.
I'm not sure if this is due to me just becoming better at the game over time or if there have been changes made to it throughout the life of the game.

I would love for it to feel more valuable overall. I mean... it IS valuable as it's useful of course, but it never feels like I'm struggling to get it.

Even in games where your GPT might not be as good as in other games, it never sends you into a bad place. Similar with Amenities I guess, where you might be lacking some but I don't think I've ever seen it come to the point where I get rebels or whatever.

 

[Bibor]

If you have enough gold, you’re not doing something right

even with high gpt, i burn through gold like butter.

 

[Cerilis]

The design philosophy for gold in civ6 is simply different to the one in previous titles.
You are supposed to have a relatively high gpt but also to spend gold more actively.

 

[newbie2]

The only reason to have a lot of gold in your treasury, is when you are saving up to buy a spaceport so you don't have to build it, shaving of 15 turns of your victory

otherwise, spend it as much as possible.

 

[kryat]

I agree that there seems to be a design change philosophy between past titles and VI. In V (pre-BNW especially), I remember going bankrupt many times in the first 50 turns of the game while desperately waiting for my builders to connect roads. In VI, I’ve practically never gone bankrupt because it seems like there’s less emphasis on maintenance and more on buying things. It’s definitely more fun to play the shopper than the accountant.

That said, to me a poor game is one where I’m not earning fast enough. There’s a big difference between watching your treasury slowly fill at 10GPT vs watching it at 100 or 1000 GPT.

 

[Myomoto]

I literally almost always go for an economic playstyle, so it's hard for me to say if gold is generally too easy to come by, but definitely if going for a strong economy it's easy to get to +600gpt by the Renaissance/Industrial era.

I think definitely some of the stronger policy cards could be rebalanced by adding increased upkeep (Rationalism especially). In general, I would also like to see more things to spend gold on from Renaissance/Industrial era forward (such as manufactured goods, corporations, etc).

Perhaps upkeep costs could also be impacted by amenities/corruption somehow. Having a larger and wider empire should result in larger bureaucracy with more risk of corruption. In general, the empire management aspects of VI are very very light, and besides getting less yields, there doesn't seem to be many ways to be actively punished for poor management. Loyalty was supposed to deal with this I guess, but that seems honestly more of a rubber band on warmongering or a directly aggressive tool to be used to flip enemy cities.

 

[Hans Castorp]

The only way I've found to struggle with gold is to play OCC, have a large army, and get hit time after time by spies on Siphon Funds missions. It almost makes you proud when you pull it off and your units get disbanded one by one...

 

[Pfeffersack]

Up to the current game, I always had the "problem" of starting to accumulate Gold at some point in the game, getting surprised by it and then hesitating to spend it. Just too much in old mode, where rush buying was more of an emergency thing...always having the feeling "to waste precious gold" for what just could be built with better planning. But after realizing how wrong that approach is in Civ6 (your bottleneck are hammers, not coins), I decided to to cure myself with the strongest medicine Civ6 offers here: The Mali. Can't it be wrong to buy your way through the game, if you are penalized with production and get nice discounts everywhere? No and that way I learned to burn my treasury as Mansa Musa regularly. Up to the point I started DF selling and finally taking loans (purchasing lump sums of Gold for GPT - the "interest rates" the AI take are steep, but I'm now justifying this regularly by thinking that getting X a few turns earlier will surely pay for it ). Even if the Mali are the obvious extremcase, I think this particularly game will change my playstyle in future - I will now anticipate that at some point there is a certain budget for instant purchases. And the challenge is to get most out of it by spending it wisely.

 

[acluewithout]

There’s a lot of gold and very little meaningful to spend it on. Faith has a similar issue, but at least what you can spend faith on is generally gated. Indeed, all the yields seem too easy to come by.

People asked for better yields. I was one of them. Maybe FXS over corrected, or maybe there needs to be more of a drain on gold and faith. Maybe this is where FXS wanted the balance, but if so I’m not really loving it.

It doesn’t help that Bankruptcy has such dire consequences, which means to categorically make sure you never go Bankrupt.

My jam would be something where gold was harder to earn and or there were bigger gold sinks, and a softer Bankruptcy system where you’d actually be okay going into debt situationally. Maybe with Maintenance costs scaling with Difficulty.

 

[Wielki Hegemon]

There’s a lot of gold and very little meaningful to spend it on. Faith has a similar issue

Spending gold is as meaningful as chopping You just convert your resource into time - it means you are savings turns

 

[Naeshar]

You are right the design is somewhat different. I havent played C4 or C5 enough, but Civ6 offers little control over your gpt. There is no reason to overextend and go negative and no real options to actively do so. I only went negative when producing double units as with Scythian horsemen, double Venetian ships (rare) or simply building large army early.

Why this design? It promotes gold as a resource to be used like production, but instantaneous. We complain about how production is hard to come by, but right when it slows down (late medieval), I get the envoys-to-gold diplo card and suddenly boom with money. Only when you have high enough gpt you can afford to spend it meaningfully. If you go back and forth positive-negative gpt, it feels risky to buy anything. But when you are always in positive numbers, it is much better to buy what you need. Or do not need . But you can save the valuable production turns and instabuy factories and builders, when you need them.

Perhaps that is why faith economy feels so good. There is no upkeep by faith. You are always in positive fpt numbers.

Needless to say, I like it this way. Having a slider to increase or decrease gpt gave us agency, but it was always best to keep science running instead of gold.

 

[tedhebert]

i think the main problem is in fact a balance one, with the trade routes. The Gold return from trade routes is just too high. Especially when the right civic cards are slotted in. My experience is that early game on, you DON'T swim in it. it's when you've gotten all your trade routes going that this happens (I'm going to bar exploiting other civs via the trade panel from this conversation; if you spend time making Xgpt trades for crappy stuff, then this discussion is moot)

Of course, Trade routes Gold yields should always be higher than food/hammer/science/culture/faith yeileds. But not by a factor of 5:1 or even 10:1 as is current. I very often in my games get to 15-20 trade routes returning between 20 and 30Gpt each... that's just way too much

 

[kaspergm]

i think the main problem is in fact a balance one, with the trade routes. The Gold return from trade routes is just too high. Especially when the right civic cards are slotted in. My experience is that early game on, you DON'T swim in it. it's when you've gotten all your trade routes going that this happens (I'm going to bar exploiting other civs via the trade panel from this conversation; if you spend time making Xgpt trades for crappy stuff, then this discussion is moot)

Of course, Trade routes Gold yields should always be higher than food/hammer/science/culture/faith yeileds. But not by a factor of 5:1 or even 10:1 as is current. I very often in my games get to 15-20 trade routes returning between 20 and 30Gpt each... that's just way too much

I'll turn this argument slightly and say from my personal point of view, the problem is not so much the gold yields from trade routes, that's the problem, but the fact that with democracy, you can have international trade routes and get gold AND AT THE SAME TIME more food and production from international trade routes that you get from your internal ones. That's where things start breaking down for me. I know I'm a bit unusual because I play the game more as a builder, so I actually really like the food and production from internal trade routes, and therefore I actually find the balance between international and internal trade routes fairly good. But of course, if you play from a min/max point of view, where growing cities beyond 10 is just wasted amenities, I reckon the picture is different.

 

[tedhebert]

I'll turn this argument slightly and say from my personal point of view, the problem is not so much the gold yields from trade routes, that's the problem, but the fact that with democracy, you can have international trade routes and get gold AND AT THE SAME TIME more food and production from international trade routes that you get from your internal ones. That's where things start breaking down for me. I know I'm a bit unusual because I play the game more as a builder, so I actually really like the food and production from internal trade routes, and therefore I actually find the balance between international and internal trade routes fairly good. But of course, if you play from a min/max point of view, where growing cities beyond 10 is just wasted amenities, I reckon the picture is different.

I pretty much go internal up until the point where I my sities have grown enough that I don't much need the extra food and prod, and then go international. But I'm very far from a min/max player.

Your argument about food and prod from international routes is an interesting one, but keep in mind that in order to get it, you DO have to slot in a civic that gives you ONLY that.

 

[kaspergm]

Your argument about food and prod from international routes is an interesting one, but keep in mind that in order to get it, you DO have to slot in a civic that gives you ONLY that.

Well if you adopt democracy as your tier 3 government (and who doesn't?), you get 4 food and 4 production from the government inherent bonus. Then it's true that you can slot the green card for an additional 2 food and 2 production - and given that green card slots are generally less contested, this is often a fairly low-cost investment. Of course you do need an ally within trade route distance, so again, if you play all out domination, this is not going to help you (but then again, if you play all-out domination, you've probably won before tier 3 governments are even a thing), but in most game, this is also not a hindrance. As the icing on the cake, if you can get the golden age dedication that adds gold to international trade routes, you can usually get trade routes giving 6+ food, 6+ production, 30-50 GPT plus the occasional science, culture and faith each.

 

[Big J Money]

In VI, I’ve practically never gone bankrupt because it seems like there’s less emphasis on maintenance and more on buying things. It’s definitely more fun to play the shopper than the accountant.

I couldn't have said this better. I hadn't even noticed this, but this is definitely an area of improvement to me in the series. Adding trade routes to the series is a big part of this evolution.

 

[Bibor]

Nothing prevents the player from going all food and hammers, disregarding both faith and gold, but if you want to optimize, you’ll use both od these “non-vital” resources for your gameplay.

case in point, 6 crossbows the turn you reach machinery are worth more than 10 turns later. Same goes for libraries or wharever faith or gold can buy.

 

[leandrombraz]

The only reason to have a lot of gold in your treasury, is when you are saving up to buy a spaceport so you don't have to build it, shaving of 15 turns of your victory

otherwise, spend it as much as possible.

or saving to double it with the Big Ben

 

[acluewithout]

It’s definitely more fun to play the shopper than the accountant.

Hmm. Maybe it is.

I'd like managing my empire to be more challenging, and had thought gold economy / maintenance being more difficult would be a good route to doing that. But perhaps it's better for gold to be something you can splash around, and more maintenance would just undercut that. If so, perhaps empire management should come from something else, eg happiness, amenities, whatever.

Gold mostly doesn't feel very interesting to me overall, because I feel like I mostly just buy stuff I could have hard built or chopped anyway. But maybe I'm being too hasty. Gold does let you do a few unique things like buy tiles, it also lets you buy Great People (like Faith), Upgrade Units, Levy Units and buy Resources from other Civs (although I almost never do that). Gold is also very helpful for setting up new Cities and for filling out Tall Cities with Buildings (while my Tall Cities focus on Wonders and things like that).

Gold might benefit from a few more unique uses (Faith feels like it has more unique uses given all the Faith Only units you can buy). But perhaps I've also been giving Gold short shrift in terms of fun stuff to do with it.

I also think Gold and Faith would be a little more dynamic and or interesting if you could sort of go into debt sometimes. I don't know how that would work without getting crazy complicated, but maybe something more like War Weariness where your empire just gets more and more unhappy (which is sort of how Bankruptcy work, except you can't keep buying stuff and your units get disbanded - so, like Bankruptcy, but you can keep buying deeper into the negatives and units don't just disappear). I think it would be fun to plunge my empire into debt and abject misery, just so I could spend a few more ducats rolling out my National Archaeological Museum Program ("Leave No Archaeologist Behind!").

Anyway. Good thread. Got me thinking about things in a different way.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

Trade routes(and other gold accumulators) may yield a lot in numbers, but divide them by 4 you will have a better idea of how they really value.