Let's establish first what I mean by unequal.

Here are 4 examples, same turn, different cities, different times in their construction. For context this is the start of the medieval era on normal speed, Empire difficulty.

Example 1:

This is relatively early in its construction, it would take 164 more industry to finish this building and 719 gold. That means this takes 4.35 gold per point of industry to finish.

Example 3:

This is barely touched and it would cost exactly 1400 industry to finish or 5466 gold. this means it takes 3.9 gold per point of industry to finish

Example 4: - 4.135

This is entirely untouched, just placed into the queue and it would cost 200 industry or 827 gold to finish. This means 4.135 gold per point of industry to finish.

Now for context 1 trader and 1 maker create the same amount of points of their respective fields at the start. This can change with certain empire bonuses and technologies, we will go over all of those, but for now let's look at the game start:

For example, let's take the Phoenicians. They get the AMAZING ability of gaining 8 gold instead of 6 per worker. If there were parity between makers and traders this would mean you would gain 1.33 gold per point of industry and therefore you would prioritize traders before makers, however this is just not the reality. You can only support so many workers in the early game. So your first couple workers are very important, you will always prioritize food and industry over gold (and sometimes science that one is more situational). If all your maker slots are filled and your food is where you want it to be, that's when you can put in traders (and scientists).

This is why:

A granary same as in example 4, except this is turn 30 instead of 102 and we're in the ancient era not medieval. Same playthrough, same difficulty same game speed.

Even in the ancient era, the gold rate is still 2.665 gold per industry.

Yeah you get a FABULOUS +2 gold per worker, which means you gain 1.33 times the amount of gold that you would industry from the same worker, but that's not even close to how much gold a single point of industry is worth. I checked at one point and even a super early city, the best gold rate I had was 1.7 gold per industry for buying out a building.

So the +2 bonus is basically useless, apart from a couple turns when you have your makers all full, you won't be using it if you want to play ideally. Unless you prioritize the gold fame star above establishing your city quicker, but that's really short-sighted in the long-run.

If industry and gold were equal then this wouldn't really be the case, you'd prioritize traders first and then makers, but as things stand, you really shouldn't ever do that in the early game, even as Phoenicians.

Now here's the thing the gold/industry disparity wouldn't be an issue if the game didn't treat the bonuses for industry and gold roughly equally. If the game didn't imply that 1 gold is worth 1 industry, then we wouldn't have this problem. But it totally does.

For example, the civics - collectivism vs individualism - give +5% industry or +5% gold. But let's remember that 1 industry is worth anywhere between 2 to 4 gold in terms of producing buildings in the ancient to medieval eras.

So the industry is almost always better, unless you do specific full gold run with all gold cultures as a personal challenge or playthrough, going industry will be better. Meaning in any normal run, you should always go collectivism. I mean you should do that because the civics themselves are usually better anyways, like the extra food is just amazing in pretty much any playthrough, but that's for another discussion.

Let's move onto the quarters. Because that's where gold and industry are not only treated equally by the game, the game itself outright prioritizes industry.

First let's talk about the differences between a makers quarter and a market quarter.

Makers quarters give industry based on terrain exploitation primarily. By default on sterile tiles with no exploitation around one, it would give +1 industry only.

Market quarters are more flexible, they always start out as +3 even if they're in literally the worst possible location.

However, the game is rarely just sterile tiles everywhere. In truth, the lower end of makers quarters is usually 4-8 by default with no building bonuses and they can go up to 9-12 on higher ends.

Krikkitone wrote:

They need to make units unable to be produced by Industry (only Money), and Districts unable to buy With Money.  (Maybe late game civics could allow it)

This would require an entire overhaul for how many features work in the game along with culture balancing. Thracia would completely be at odds with this too for example.

I think the OP is on to some good coverage of why gold and industry aren't balanced atm and what they could possibly do to rectify this.

Dekodzi wrote:

Maybe the money should be treated more like currency than an alternative for industry. I don't think the game needs industry and worse industry but with other icon. More advanced trading and a global market (especially in industrial and contemporary eras) could make money way more useful. Maybe some new diplomacy actions should involve investing money (e.g. bribery or espionage). Enabling empires to exchange mercenaries might be clever, as it will make money and reputation crucial when empire want to wage a war. Also it will enable empires to gain advantage by saving money.

That would be neat, though you would probably have to remove or drastically rework buyout of buildings/units in that case.

I raised the option for buyout to cost less based on how finished a building is, that would move gold more into a supportive currency role, it could be an option or partial option.

Technically you can already have mercenaries from independents, but I find independents kind of unreliable. You need to have a relationship with them already which also requires gold/influence and you never know when/where they pop up as they just randomly spawn in areas that you don't have vision over and they also just get randomly assigned civic balance so they may or may not be close to yours. It's just honestly not worth using mercenaries at the moment because building your own units is easier and it's permanent. Like, I rarely find them worth their value, usually if I do use them I basically use them as meat shields for my actual army.

A big issue is also that you can't have a formal relationship with independents, like, you can't really ally with them or have them attack who you're attacking. They just do their own thing.

I think Civ6 actually has a mercenary system with regards to cities that's honestly better, as you can basically ally with independents more officially and levy their entire army, meaning all of their units with the click of a button and some spent gold. It's still turn limited, but it's not as expensive/hard to do as it is here nor is building your own army as easy as it is here.

Another option for mercenaries imho would be a system where if you have independent peoples under your influence, you would gain an option to build units that you either don't have the right tech or culture for, however they would cost have a gold cost tied in rather than production. Like, either it takes gold to build them, or building them is free/instant - not even costing you population - but they have massively increased upkeep and don't give you any population when disbanded.

Certain cultures could even gain bonuses to the upkeep of mercenaries like Carthage historically used to rely heavily on mercs afaik.

StorytellerDave wrote:
Certain cultures could even gain bonuses to the upkeep of mercenaries like Carthage historically used to rely heavily on mercs afaik.

This was the Roving Clans' role in Endless Legend, a previous AMPLITUDE 4X game. Granted, in that Game the Roving Clans couldn't declare war, but to compensate they were given the ability to research Mercenary Technology earlier than other factions--which gave them the strongest mercenaries in the game (25% stronger than any mercenaries hired by other factions), and Mercenary Units were designated as Freelance Units ("Barbarians")--which allowed them to attack cities and armies without needing a formal declaration of war. Mercenaries, of course, were bought from an in-game market, and any player/Independent faction could sell their armies for money, but players could not sell their armies and buy them back to hire as mercenaries. Endless Space 2, AMPLITUDE's Space 4X game, changed the mercenary system to allow for players to buy back their units and fly them under a Pirate Banner.

If HUMANKIND introduces a more in-depth Mercenary System, I would be quite interested to see it be the Evolution of Endless Space 2's Mercenary System--as I'm very much fond of that system AMPLITUDE made.

Units : it's one of the most balanced game elements and I won't change this in a mod. 

Because units need :

- Industry cost.

- Food cost, it's an indirect cost because units need pop.

- Money cost. Because of the upkeep.

BuyOuts : I'm nostalgic of EL Broken Lords. I just made the mod I dreamed about that "BuyThis!".

Make the buyouts like x1.5 the Industry cost, buy with pop as well.

Conclusion: yes, it work maybe like the game should be, Money is as competitive than Industry. Food too (need to work on this a little more).

But the official game couldn't be like that maybe because it cause a lot of impacts and balance issues. Faster pace. I understand now the official game choose a more conservative way. It need to be released, tested, stable. Not to break all! Well... with this exponential district cost, only one parameter, we can see it already break all.

But it's not so a problem for mods, there is time and freedom to try and test, I just spot what should be tweaked too, so the Balance will be more accurate. And I already made some others mods to test that, with the purpose to use it later in the main mod : OnlyProdDistrictsScale, ExpensivesStars, and actualy working on Growth.