Era 5 - 17 production on stone walls costs 1186 gold. That is 69 gold (nice) per 1 production. Is gold somehow way easier to get than production? NO! The opposite actually, production per pop is far easier to go higher, merchant quarters give based on adjacency so there's not really super juicy spots based on terrain, there's luxuries but those give 3 extra. There are some cultures that have extremely powerful gold gain like the Dutch, but require a very specific setup of harbors that you kinda have to focus your entire build around and if you get the Dutch picked by someone else it falls apart entirely.

I tried multiple times to play FULL GOLD focused builds and they never really work half as well as a food or science build that lets me beat high difficulty AIs, I even did the 70% discount build with Phoenicians and Carthaginians, and the amount of gold stuff cost in THAT run, was what I felt the baseline should be. It's INSANE to me that gold could ever be anything other than a shave 1 turn off a building every 10 to 40 turns. I usually own Emperor pretty easily with Food, Science or even Huns builds - though the Huns are an OP culture that need discussing another time - but with the gold builds I just get last place at the start and kinda manage to climb up to like 3 or 4th place towards the end.

And I know the reason why it's this bad, it's vassalage. Vassals give an insane amount of gold and they're extremely easy to obtain with the current setup of war score. You're not meant to be a peaceful trader if you want gold, you're meant to be a conqueror of worlds, and the fact that vassalage gives thousands of gold means buying power of that gold has to suffer inflation like you wouldn't believe.

I tried the whole trade empire, but trade routes get CONSTANTLY destroyed by the AI warring with each other and even if you get a ton of them, it's not that strong, not strong enough to rival industry.

There isn't a no production only gold build that you can get on an even footing with Emperor or Humankind difficulty with at least I don't know of one, feel free to enlighten me if you saw one.

PS - Phoenicia and Carthage also suffer from not having a good unit that you can easily build to defend yourself with, but that's a whole other issue.

A number of people (even myself at one point) gave feedback about how super duper intense overpowered the money strategy was back in victor. Where, combined with religion and decent cultural picks, player commonly posted amazing cities that carpeted regions and such with the A.I hopelessly behind.

I suspect the overcorrection on gold is the end result of that feedback.

Personally, I find that Phoenicia -> Carthaginians need to have two strong vassals in order to make enough money to remain competitive with money buy out, at least on higher difficulties. But, other cultures, are really under the need of using money as an emergency "I want it now!" button for rare uses, as it's simply not worth it to build Market quarters, when Makers, food, and science quarters can vastly prove themselves more useful.

Changlini wrote:

A number of people (even myself at one point) gave feedback about how super duper intense overpowered the money strategy was back in victor. Where, combined with religion and decent cultural picks, player commonly posted amazing cities that carpeted regions and such with the A.I hopelessly behind.

I suspect the overcorrection on gold is the end result of that feedback.

Personally, I find that Phoenicia -> Carthaginians need to have two strong vassals in order to make enough money to remain competitive with money buy out, at least on higher difficulties. But, other cultures, are really under the need of using money as an emergency "I want it now!" button for rare uses, as it's simply not worth it to build Market quarters, when Makers, food, and science quarters can vastly prove themselves more useful.

Yeah money was kinda useful in Viktor, I never found myself going for a full gold build back then so I don't know how OP that was, but if it's an overcorrection I figure a 20-50% discount on the current level might be enough.