I've touched on this subject multiple times in the various feedback threads. But I feel I needed a standalone post to put all of these ideas together.

To put it simply, the overall problem with money is that it is the only resource that isn't essential. It is always nice to have some extra, but, unlike food, industry and science, you don't need to pay much attention to it to have a prosperous empire, at least in this last build.

I think this issue arises from the uses it has, mainly the buyout mechanic. I don't understand why 4X developers insist on the idea that money/gold should work, in the words of the wise Potato McWhiskey, like magic. The main use of gold in most 4X games is to make stuff that would take your people a long time to build, appear out of thin air. Another way to look at it is that buyout is essentially an industry burst you buy with money and, as this and previous OpenDevs have shown, this is a very hard thing to balance: Either you make it very cheap to the point you can basically replace industry with money altogether, or you make it extremely expensive to the point where industry just has a higher value and you don't need to bother trying to make money. The problem here is that, at their core, both resources are interchangeable, they do the same thing, so you'll just end up focusing on the one that does it more efficiently. Sure, you need money for trade, to upgrade your military (although if you just cycle them through your cities, disbanding the obsolete unit and producing the modern one, you actually don't, making money and industry, yet again, interchangeable) and other things, but these are very small in importance compared to the buyout mechanic and most them are, as the money resource itself, a luxury, rather than a necessity (hiring mercenaries; bribing independent people, which you can also do with influence).

Money should, instead, serve the purpose it always has throughout history: To pay for your empire's upkeep. You want to field a large army to go on a conquest campaign? You have to pay for it, especially elite troops. You want to have large and prosperous cities? You need to pay for the upkeep of their public infrastructure.

The buyout mechanic is not bad in itself, and although I'd personally like to see it gone, it works in other 4X games, but this is because it does not have as big of a role as it does in Humankind. It is useful as a way to dump any extra money you have after paying for your empire's upkeep, but it's not its only main use. So, all in all, it's ok for EXCESS money to be a luxury, but money in general shouldn't be.

One of the main reasons that so many 4X games have a buyout feature, I suspect, is that without such a mechanic, settling cities later in the game would be difficult because those cities would have to produce all of the basic infrastructure with very low production/industry. Gold lets you speed up the process.

Humankind actually solved this problem with Settlers and the flat-pack cities that you can unlock through techs, though they seem rather buggy at the moment. So, maybe the buyout mechanic isn't so necessary.

The buyout price is insane anyway, no one can afford it after 3rd era.

I found that if you built your empire around money generation you could actually do a decent Money-based economy (although Phonecian + Carthage obviously helped this strategy). Industry is still stronger in my opinion, if only because it is a bit more "order and forget." Didn't try this beyond Empire difficulty though,

The dreaded feeling that money is, to steal a term from the Paradox world "mana" isn't that big IMO. In Endless Space and Endless Legend we accepted the concept of "Dust" that could instantly build anything, and the buyout mechanic is such a staple of the genre anyways that it would feel weirder to exclude it.

I do also think Money has more than enough uses, and if you don't at least make a token effort into generating some (A vassal, good trade or a few market districts) the mid and late game became a struggle, as you could no longer afford the incidental gold expenditures like unit upgrades or treaty payments. Can you make your empire work with basically no Money infrastructure? Yes, but that leaves you barely in the black, or even in the red, and that is a problem when you suddenly need the gold.

whartanto wrote:

The buyout price is insane anyway, no one can afford it after 3rd era.

I didn't find that to be true at all. If you take even one merchant culture during the game, then you'll be making thousands of Money every turn.

All true, and let's not forget that pops are a resource as well. They can be killed off to spam build expensive infrastructure, further reducing the need for gold.

Pops however are however slow to grow and their growth don't scale like other resources, meaning killing them to get things done can be very costly.

Kwami wrote:

whartanto wrote:

The buyout price is insane anyway, no one can afford it after 3rd era.

I didn't find that to be true at all. If you take even one merchant culture during the game, then you'll be making thousands of Money every turn.

Is this any merchant culture or the Carthaginians? Because the Carthaginians reduce the buyout cost by 50%, which kind of warps the buyout around them. In Poe it was only feasible if you had picked them and in Victor it was feasible for all cultures and ridiculously inexpensive for Carthaginians. It's a difficult thing to balance imo.

roger212 wrote:

Kwami wrote:

whartanto wrote:

The buyout price is insane anyway, no one can afford it after 3rd era.

I didn't find that to be true at all. If you take even one merchant culture during the game, then you'll be making thousands of Money every turn.

Is this any merchant culture or the Carthaginians? Because the Carthaginians reduce the buyout cost by 50%, which kind of warps the buyout around them. In Poe it was only feasible if you had picked them and in Victor it was feasible for all cultures and ridiculously inexpensive for Carthaginians. It's a difficult thing to balance imo.

I didn't try every culture, of course. But, as an example, the Dutch let you build V.O.C. Warehouses, which each gave me something like 120 Money per turn. Build ten of those and you're already at 1200 Money just from those improvements. You can probably build more than 10, too, if you expanded at all early on. The Byzantine +5% Money from each alliance ability adds up quickly, too. I was able to ally every AI player in one of my games! But really, all of the +Money abilities and quarters are pretty good. I was usually making a few thousand Money per turn if I took at least one Merchant culture and I actually didn't get a chance to play Carthage in this beta.

Kwami wrote:

roger212 wrote:

Kwami wrote:

whartanto wrote:

The buyout price is insane anyway, no one can afford it after 3rd era.

I didn't find that to be true at all. If you take even one merchant culture during the game, then you'll be making thousands of Money every turn.

Is this any merchant culture or the Carthaginians? Because the Carthaginians reduce the buyout cost by 50%, which kind of warps the buyout around them. In Poe it was only feasible if you had picked them and in Victor it was feasible for all cultures and ridiculously inexpensive for Carthaginians. It's a difficult thing to balance imo.

I didn't try every culture, of course. But, as an example, the Dutch let you build V.O.C. Warehouses, which each gave me something like 120 Money per turn. Build ten of those and you're already at 1200 Money just from those improvements. You can probably build more than 10, too, if you expanded at all early on. The Byzantine +5% Money from each alliance ability adds up quickly, too. I was able to ally every AI player in one of my games! But really, all of the +Money abilities and quarters are pretty good. I was usually making a few thousand Money per turn if I took at least one Merchant culture and I actually didn't get a chance to play Carthage in this beta.

Oh I see, I didn't have the chance to exploit the Byzantine +5% money per alliance because the AI was so agressive all the time but I agree that the V.O.C. warehouse gave a lot of money (even more so if combined with Carthage and you could get adjacency from 2 ports, lol).