What is the true value of gold?

[bengalryan9]

Also worth mentioning is that there are methods - government choice, policy cards, congress votes - to cut down on gold costs for buying things. Couple these with the immediacy of gold buying versus spending production and I find myself spending gold on things a lot, though I admittedly don't worry too much about the overall efficiency of my gameplay.

I do think you should be able to spend gold to repair districts, though, because that would not only give it yet another use but would really help out low production cities (like on the coast) after a disaster. I'd like to be able to gold rush flood barriers for the same reason.

 

[Kimurae]

Doesn't chopping require a builder charge? Hence you should subtract the production cost of the builder / the charge count from what you gain by the chop; as well as the opportunity penalty of building/buying a builder in lieu of something else.

Also, only so many choppable tiles.

 

[acluewithout]

Doesn't chopping require a builder charge? Hence you should subtract the production cost of the builder / the charge count from what you gain by the chop; as well as the opportunity penalty of building/buying a builder in lieu of something else.

Also, only so many choppable tiles.

Yes, agreed. I think you should subtract the cost of the charge because they get cheaper over time. Also, the production you get from a chop goes up over time, effectively making each chop cheaper as time goes on.

 

[Ziad]

Honestly it's my favorite resource, if only because of its flexibility. I always make it goal to maximize my gold income.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

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.

In the context of the question about the value of gold relative to production, though, I think that can only be measured in the context of situations where you have a choice between which of these to generate. Builders can only chop hammers, not gold, so you don't have a choice there. Three situations that come to mind where there are direct gold or hammers decisions are:

• do you build an IZ or a CH/Harbour?
• do you run an internal trade route or an external one?
• do you work a tile that gives hammers or one that gives gold?

The first two are thrown off because the ancillary bonuses of the gold-producing option are better than the ancillary bonuses of the hammer-producing option.

That just leaves worker placement, where I'd personally still lean towards gold unless the amount of hammers exceeds the P -> G conversion rate for projects (the ratio for which escapes my poor addled memory at this time).

In game, though, I can certainly envision situations where you'd choose to work hammers, to finish off a particular building/unit/etc. that you've chosen to hard build. Unless there was a very specific thing I wanted and had no faster way to get it than hard-building it, though, I'd still chose to produce G directly and run projects for any ancillary production that can't be redirected (but projects for direct science/culture, not gold).

 

[DanQuayle]

Builders can only chop hammers, not gold, so you don't have a choice there.

Harvesting Crab and Copper yields gold.

 

[acluewithout]

In the context of the question about the value of gold relative to production, though, I think that can only be measured in the context of situations where you have a choice between which of these to generate. Builders can only chop hammers, not gold, so you don't have a choice there. Three situations that come to mind where there are direct gold or hammers decisions are:

• do you build an IZ or a CH/Harbour?
• do you run an internal trade route or an external one?
• do you work a tile that gives hammers or one that gives gold?

The first two are thrown off because the ancillary bonuses of the gold-producing option are better than the ancillary bonuses of the hammer-producing option.

That just leaves worker placement, where I'd personally still lean towards gold unless the amount of hammers exceeds the P -> G conversion rate for projects (the ratio for which escapes my poor addled memory at this time).

In game, though, I can certainly envision situations where you'd choose to work hammers, to finish off a particular building/unit/etc. that you've chosen to hard build. Unless there was a very specific thing I wanted and had no faster way to get it than hard-building it, though, I'd still chose to produce G directly and run projects for any ancillary production that can't be redirected (but projects for direct science/culture, not gold).

I think Victoria is just trying to work out a more accurate conversion rate. Once one has a better conversion rate, one could try using that rate to evaluate various decisions. What building to build is one decision. But another would be which Government to choose - assuming a yellow card slots give gold and red slots give production bonus, it might turn out more efficient to generate gold and use that to buy units v build with hammers.

That conversion rate will change based on what your goals are and the stage of the game and situation, but that can hopefully roughly added in too.

Good rule of thumb: get the data first. Work out what to do with the data later...

But yeah, often the choice between gold and hammers boils down to this - is this a "core" city? Okay, hammers are better. Is this a non-core City? Yeah, this only needs to produce gold and or faith, and give me somewhere to stick great works maybe. Is this a City, like, literally anywhere on the map? Okay, campus...

 

[ezysquire]

The efficiency of gold purchasing in less developed and smaller cities to cut down on awful hammer build times is one of the best things about gold.

 

[_hero_]

It is very difficult to quantify because there are just too many variables. If gold buys you an extra settler and gets you a city that you otherwise would have missed out on, you could make an argument that the gold you spent on the settler was worth the entirety of everything that the city yielded over the course of the game from then on.

And if you're buying something that you were going to build anyway, say a Library for example, you have to account for the extra science you're getting over however many turns you have the library in advance of when it would have otherwise gotten built. You also have to factor in that this, in turn, means everything you build the rest of the game is also coming in earlier because you started them that many turns earlier since you didn't spend the time to build the library.

The question should not be "What is the value of gold" but rather "how can I get the most value out of my gold?" If all you're doing is buying tiles with gold, then you're probably not going to see that much return on it. If you're using it to buy the buildings that you don't really care to build just to get them out of the way, you're also not getting that much value out of it. If you're using gold to get the important things faster, you're getting tons of value.

 

[_hero_]

Yes, agreed. I think you should subtract the cost of the charge because they get cheaper over time. Also, the production you get from a chop goes up over time, effectively making each chop cheaper as time goes on.

This is offset by the fact that each builder is progressively more expensive.

 

[Victoria]

I think Victoria is just trying to work out a more accurate conversion rate.

Correct. Thank you... all great stuff to chat about and ponder over, so based on everything read, what does everyone think?
Do people feel it is 3:1 or more like 4:1 or 2:1?

 

[myclan]

I will summary the usage of gold as follow:
1. For upgrading units, which means faster. And with Professional Army it has the best gold-production ratio.
2. For buying tiles. Because of the expanding mechanism you need to buy a 3-ring tile if 2-ring not fully owned. Buying a luxury/strategy resource is important. To buy a high production tile is also usally worthy. Especially during early game when the price is not so high.
3. Gold is a "bank" of production. Sometimes you just run out important thing to build in some cities or during sometime of the game. But you may need production urgently in other cities or during other period of the game. So you just turn the excessive production to gold buy building a market. And you take all the money you had saved to buy what you need.
4. For great person. It would be better to run project in most of the cities and take the final beat with gold if really he is the one you must get.

For conversion ratio, I think it is just too difficult to get a "right" answer. Take a example, you just need to boost your research, and 1stCity have built the research lab. So you have nothing more to build and the production in 1stCity just of low value. But in the same time, your 2ndCity is of low production and need a library. In this case, 300gold in stock is just more important than 300 production in the 1stCity.

 

[Jerovich]

If we're talking about efficiency... production wins the game by far.

It's for sure gold can instantly "build" things, and has its uses. But if you are relying on it to develop your win condition, you're pretty much wasting resources.

Something unpredictable can happen - a war, an urgent garrison, a natural disaster - but for developing strategies you should always use production.

A well planned strategy around production from land/chops is the key for a fast victory in my opinion - being the exception some Research Labs in late founded cities.

 

[Victoria]

A well planned strategy around production from land/chops is the key for a fast victory

+ gold to by spaceports will speed things up.
+ faith for rockbands
+ gold for a dip victory?

 

[kryat]

Gold is also useful as a means to concurrently produce things in cities. Sometimes it’s not just about saving turns, it can also be for not having to pick between things in a given city at a specific point in time. Let’s say I need a university in Paris, because I just unlocked the tech, but Genghis is on Paris’s front door, and my army is on the other end of my empire, but I also don’t want to miss the chance to build the Forbidden City, also in Paris, because Paris has the best production. With enough gold, all of these are possible simultaneously. It did save turns, yes, but it also helped bypass missed opportunities.

While in raw number turns it’s about 3-4:1, in the less tangible terms, it might be closer to 1-2:1.

 

[incroc]

Buying a tile is the only way we can expand beyond culture but can we quantify that value?

If you can sell what's on the tile you buy, partially. Take the sum of the present value of the builder charge and the yield and gold for selling (like lux or horse e.g) you get before you would've gotten the tile with culture. Then compare with the alternative options you have to see if they pay off more.

If you buy for a chop to ensure a wonder, it comes down to how you measure the risk of losing it. You'll need to estimate the probability of getting the wonder with buying vs not buying and estimate the total value of the wonder throughout the game. Same if you buy tiles to chop settlers to secure land.

Gold is easy to get without any gold buildings though. Whether a bank or a market pays off compared with other buildings is a different discussion than valuing gold. It also changes depending on difficulty level. On higher levels, it's easier to convert other resources to gold.

 

[S1AL]

The value of gold lies in upgrading units with Professional Army (or at any point in the early game). Buying early tiles is also useful. Beyond that it's inefficient.

EDIT: This excludes, of course, any discount stacking on purchases. And trade routes are relatively hyper-efficient, so enabling them is high-value.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Fascinating discussion, but just a moment or two:

The trade-off/comparison is not just Gold versus Production.

It is also Gold versus Faith, which can also be used, under the proper pre-conditions, to 'buy' Settlers, Builders, Buildings, Cultural Artifacts (Great Writers, Artists, etc) and some Units.
Of course, Faith is also fundamentally required for a Religious Victory, whereas Gold at the moment has no Victory Type directly related to it - but then, neither does Production (NOT talking about Indirect relationships, which get very difficult to measure, but certainly also apply).

And at the moment, the relationship between Faith accumulation and use and Gold/Production seems to be heavily weighted in favor of Faith.

For instance, in my last game, with Suzereighty over the Valetta City State and 80 Gold each I bought Ancient Walls for every single city in my little Empire in 3 turns flat. When your neighbors are Alexander, Genghis and Shaka, that is an Immeasurable advantage. It is also an advantage not available with any amount of Gold.
Likewise, the advantage of 'buying' Settlers and Builders during a Golden Age with Faith, leaving your Gold and Production available for other tactical/strategic usage, is Huge.

Ironically, it means that having no intention of going for a Religious Victory makes Faith even more powerful: almost all of the Faith points you accumulate can be used for Expansion, Protection, or accumulation of Great People. It's very much like having supplemental Gold and Production available without having to resort to Chopping or building Less-Than-Optimal Industrial Zones and/or Commercial Hubs.

Faith requires more Pre-conditions to be realized to make it really useful compared to Gold or Production, but I don't think they are any more difficult to realize than the requirements to produce similar amounts of Gold or Production, and Faith can start piling up earlier than either of the other two given the early Pantheons and Holy Sites compared to the possible dates of Commercial Hubs, Sea Trade Routes, or Industrial Zones.
Any more, whenever I get one of the seemingly Ubiquitous Tundra Starts, I beeline as fast as I can for Dance of the Aurora, set up a +7 Adjacency Holy Site or two, and replace much of my early game 'expenditures' with Faith instead of Gold or Production.

 

[Jerovich]

+ gold to by spaceports will speed things up.
+ faith for rockbands
+ gold for a dip victory?

In my last game as Seondeok I felt my final push 'bottlenecked' - is that how you say that? - since I misplayed building the Government Plaza in the Spaceport city. Having to build the Spaceport, Royal Society and the projects at the same time is not ideal.

Ofc GP will go in a different city next time, and buying the SP seems like a good way to shave some turns, despite consuming four governor promotions - I rarely use the first three.

 

[Victoria]

is that how you say that?

Just fine