What is the true value of gold?

[Victoria]

We know we need gold for maintenance and ideally for upgrades because it is efficient. The amount of gold you get from trading and tiles can normally cover most of this.
So the additional gold we get from trade routes, districts, buildings and plunder goes toward what and can we quantify it?

Buying a unit costs 4x production value
Buying a building costs 4x production value
Buying a tile is the only way we can expand beyond culture but can we quantify that value?
Buying GPP costs twice as much as faith but can we quantify it?

Certainly the last 2 are not cheap and I would argue they match the 4 = 1 production for the other 2.

So considering you can normally cover maintenance/upgrade from other sources should not our gold producing building be making 4x the production value? If not why not?

I can see a market or lighthouse trader validating those buildings, but a bank produces 5 gold... so 290 production for a 1.25 production per turn return? How much gold does a CS provide in comparison to and industrial CS or a science CS?

Gold does have the benefit of being able to spend it at any location for immediate effect which is a benefit.

I thought it would be good to thrash this topic out if there is a possibility of a commercial victory.

I find it fascinating that value wise campus and theatre are so high and we rubbish industrial as not being worth it but not had a deep look at gold producing ones which seem worse.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I find Gold to be of very easy access, it's not hard to get the ball rolling and mass a huge amount of gold, if you make about +100 gold per turn you're pretty much sitting golden, since anything you desire is easily accessible.

 

[Kwami]

Gold does have the benefit of being able to spend it at any location for immediate effect which is a benefit.

That's a pretty big benefit, though! You're saving not just production, but time when you buy a unit or building. You start to benefit from that purchase right away, or at most in one turn. Surely, this benefit would cut down the 4:1 ratio for Banks, etc.

 

[Victoria]

you're pretty much sitting golden

Are you? Could you have progressed better with more science or culture?
I have had 4K gold before and spent it in a turn on a few things... it did not end up going that far and took a while to accumulate.
A T2 building is over 1k
A few ring 3 tile buys are 1k

 

[BenitoChavez]

That's a pretty big benefit, though! You're saving not just production, but time when you buy a unit or building. You start to benefit from that purchase right away, or at most in one turn. Surely, this benefit would cut down the 4:1 ratio for Banks, etc.

Agreed. Being able to buy an army instantly if necessary, or buying a bunch of baseline infrastructure in new cities is one of the major advantages of gold. Putting an exact number on its value though is almost impossible because time saved is scenario specific and can't really be calculated in terms of hammers. And gold is used for other reasons that hammers can't be used for. Same goes for other yields like faith or even culture and science.

I'd just estimate that gold is between 1/3 and 1/4 the value of production and leave it at that.

 

[tedhebert]

Over the time, I've become quite addicted to games where gold flows. As you know, @Victoria, I'm not in the 'play only in proficient' camp, so... I don't really care about it's value compared to other.

When I have a lot coming in, i buy pretty much ALL my builders with it. I will also sometimes buy settlers, but that's more rare, because the income is usually not really there when I need to get them.
I will also use it to buy any building under 1000 G in my cities with it. Yes, I know, it's NOT as efficient as making them, but... Hey, I NEED my production on something ELSE than those buildings. So what's the real value of THAT ?
I wonder if there's a mathy way of putting a value on 'opportunity' ?

Anyways, I used to disregard this, and not make many CH or Harbors (to get Trade Routes going). I've changed my take on this in the last year, mostly from comments I read in here, and I must say that the diversity of what I
can choose to do with my G has made me addicted to it. I have also played some very fun ans interesting 'faith buy' games, but I find it much more situational and not as easy to control.

 

[MaryKB]

I find gold really useful, and when you're gathering like 2,000 on each of your turns, you can buy pretty much anything you want. I find it's really nice when you can react to something instantly, and really helps too when you're building new cities. And with Reyna you can start a city and just buy a district, and that also helps when you take over cities. When I'm playing as Eleanor and I annex a city, I send Reyna or Moksha to help me make sure I have a Theatre Square so I can move my Great Works forward, and doing so is expensive!

 

[Jkchart]

Gold does allow one to essentially "build" things at the same time. It does take time to accumulate and the production-to-gold conversion isn't great.

It can be extended/increased in value if you are able to make faith purchases on units with Grand Master's Chapel so you can funnel gold towards buildings instead of units.

The true value is the "instant build" like you say. But it's not a perfect conversion for value/return, especially for later buildings.

 

[SxSnts9]

I personally think of Gold as God in this game and it has served me well as I consistently win on Immortal (I avoid Deity as it becomes a bit tedious, but won 5 or 6 games on there before I realized that I'd rather have a bit more fun and went down to Immortal). Since gold is always an important part of the game for me, civs like Persia are S tier for me...though I'm pretty sure Persia is S tier for everyone.

Anyway, my love for gold stems from the fact that it's basically a better version of production. Once your economy is up and running you can buy whatever you need and it is done instantly (It's major advantage over good clean cogs). On top of that you can use gold for upgrades, GP purchasing, trade deals, etc. I always like to have at least one or two production focused cities if I need a wonder or to put up Spaceports when I'm going science, but honestly gold is my go to in nearly every case.

It may not be perfectly optimal in every case, but if you put a harbor or CH in every city you'll see what I mean. Throw in Persia's ridiculous Pairdizeas (I'm sure I butchered the spelling there) and you're swimming in gold (and culture).

 

[Archon_Wing]

Well hubs would be bad without the trade route... Buildings not very impressive.

Though it is funny people talk about banking like 50000 gold at the end of the game. Grats that's 50000 wasted yields you never needed.

Safety net tho.

 

[Kaan Boztepe]

Gold is not situational , it is always useful.

i like to play a builder style game so for me gold is important. once i hit 1000 per turn with all the CH&H&CC triangles i pretty much stop building city center buildings ( read i buy them ) and also market or lighthouse for the traderoute. I also spent an ungodly amount on builders early game since i believe that investment returns before the game is over ( also helps a lot with snowballing ) . Usually i do a few wars of attrition ( read pillaging purposes and no land&city gain ) at industrial age to get the gold&faith to go on a spending spree.

With the new patch giving production bonuses maybe i wont need to do that anymore , which would be a blessing to my playstyle.

 

[EgonSpengler]

In addition to the immediacy of buying something with Gold, Gold also represents transferable production. This is more evident and most impactful later in the game, when you can establish a new city - or 4 or 5 - and then purchase a Monument, a Granary, a Water Wheel, etc. etc. for your new, 1-population city. This is also when being able to purchase tiles is most useful, particularly if the purpose of the new cities is to grab Resource hexes.

All that said, I still find myself generating way more Gold than I need. I posted over in the other thread before I saw this one, but it's not hard to be generating a couple-hundred Gold per turn by the middle of the game. 8-10 Trade Routes to your Level 2 Economic Ally, plus a couple of Policy Cards is, like, 350-500 GPT all by itself. Then you add the inherent GPT of your cities, the other trade routes that you're using for other things, and the GPT of any trades you've made with the other Civs, and you've got excess Gold coming out of your ears.

In my last game, I was well on my way to a Cultural Victory, but I just ended up buying a Diplomatic Victory, because it was faster. The upcoming update is going to tweak the Diplomatic Victory, so I'm interested to see how that changes.

 

[Scaramanga]

I definitely see gold as transferable production. It's a form of liquidity that can be stored up and spent all at once.

 

[UWHabs]

The biggest advantages to gold are that they help ANYWHERE and RIGHT NOW, plus it can be used for ANYTHING (almost). While production is very useful overall, and as mentioned, the general ration of 4:1 is applied throughout the game, the fact that it has a wider usage means it's much better value than that. Also, upgrades don't come in 4:1, and even less with the policy card, so if you only use gold to upgrade troops, you don't need it to come at a 4:1 rate.

Gold also being able to use immediately means you can use it to get that eureka without shifting your science, or you can buy the building or upgrade the turn that you get a new tech instead of waiting to build something new. So how much is it worth?

To me, I'd probably set the rate around 2.5:1. It's not always true - if I have a higher production city, I'm going to want to keep pushing that production since being able to actually build wonders there, or to make it so that it can actually hard-build a university in 8 turns instead of 10 has some value. But especially for cities on the fringe of my empire, gold is king. That's why Mali is such a nice civ - last time I played them I had so much money (and faith) coming in that I kept running out of things to actually build in most cities.

 

[EgonSpengler]

The biggest advantages to gold are that they help ANYWHERE and RIGHT NOW, plus it can be used for ANYTHING (almost).

Gold is also storable (? - not a word, but you know what I mean), where Production is ephemeral. You can't build up a pile of Production in anticipation of a new tech, for example, and then apply it to the newly-available item; it's 'use it or lose it.'

 

[DanQuayle]

Inbetween 4:1 and 1:1
Rush buying units/buildings 4x the production cost (4:1)
Mali UA: -1 production from mines and +4g (4:1)
CS bonuses: 4g in capital for trade CSes versus 2 production in capital for industrial CSes (2:1)
Upgrading units and ignoring the 10g starting cost (2:1)
Upgrading units using the Professional Army card and ignoring the 10g starting cost (1:1)

Someone on the forum mentioned that you should take into account the tier level building maintenance cost when evaluating commercial hub buildings.
In your example, a bank is +5g + tier2 building maintenance cost saving of 2g = +7g which is a bit below what a ratio of (2:1) would suggest versus the workshop at +2 production.
However, the Free Market card will double count this implicit building maintenance cost saving when used.
In the same example, a bank with the Free Market card in a 10pop city with +4adj bonus: +10g versus +14g

 

[pkaem]

Well currency is an abstract concept, in this game aswell. You can trade it out or in for crucial resources. You can take your gold and tranform it into other resources. Most often the trade would be gold for production because it is the hardest to come by. Personally I tend to use it to compensate. So if I miss the harvest pantheon I need gold to buy builders. If I want to go to space, I'll buy a space port or buy research labs with big ben and democracy. This is inefficent due to the 4:1 ratio and I will try to get as much production as possible where I need it. But I can't have enough production in every city to build a resonable research lab. Keeping this in mind, a commerce hub with a market is cheap on production and might be build everywhere in addition to a campus if selling all my stuff doesen't fullfill my needs. Same applies if I want to go to war and buy units. It's hard to tell the exact value because spending goldnis always a tranformation with loss. But since we focus on our victory condition, we take the loss and leave out the opportunity to buy other stuff. I think we always have two primary resources. Production and our victory condition resource which may be science, culture or faith. Gold is easier to come buy than any of these and so we take it to sharpen the srategy. It's always a good idea to scale it as 3rd priority, to avoid losses from tranformation but take it if you can't get more production and science/culture/faith.

 

[Tabarnak]

The amount of turns saved is the hardest calculation. But everyone knows how getting a stuff right away is much more beneficial. But is it the right thing to do? Like buying a 3rd ring tile only because it's a hill and you don't have any around? Earlier the better i guess in this case.

Gold= Rush helper.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

To me the break even point is the P -> G conversion rate under running a project.

As others have pointed out, gold gets you what you want, where you want it, now. Therefore, 1 G > 1 P. I'd even go as far as to say that 1 G > any amount of P, except to the extent that you can convert that P to more than 1 G. Which is the project conversion rate.

 

[acluewithout]

The "gold gets you stuff fast and anywhere v production takes time and is local" is a fallacious. You can always chop in what you want to get things instantly, and many things have empire wide effects or can move so the location something spawns isn't a big deal.

How long your games last, and how you play, also impacts the value of gold relative to production. Play ICS and chop chop chop to get turn 58 science victory, and gold probably isn't that valuable. Play with a smaller number of cities and cap how many campuses (and so universities) you have, and gold will be worth more.

The availability of gold also matters. If you're playing efficiently, then often not really choosing between gold and production. You chop what you want. Build what you have to. Gold is mostly just a bonus from the AI for having some useless horses or luxes.