GOLD PRODUCTION
Is it worth it? Should I just invest in beer and convert it to coin in provisions house instead? Do these jeans make me look fat?
You have questions, Wall has answers... If you dont want to know then dont ask cause I'm no good at sugar coating. Lets begin.
You need farms, fields, and wells for stables to mass produce cav which are much needed for you to complete all the bosses/camps on the starting island. You also need those resources for making bread which becomes increasingly important as you advance in the game to make settler buffs and build your army back up much faster after fighting and taking losses. Finally, you need it for beer... just to make troops!! Now if you invest in beer to convert gold in provisions house instead of gold buildings, you will need that many more farms and wells(both require workers/settlers) so that eats up your idle population which takes away from your army size.
Finally consider the exchange, it costs 1k beer for 10 coin!!! Plus they take time to convert so that also clogs up your provisions from making other buffs. The worst part of all is you can even trade 1k beer for more than 10 coin standard, and trades are instant once someone accepts. Heck, contact me in game and I'll pay ANYONE 30 coin per 1k beer they sell Hopefully this settles this debate once and for all...
Now lets look at the first issue that normally comes up when this convo starts with gold, resource cost. It costs so much cause its so valuable!! Would it make a bit of sense if you could make each gold producing building with a few fir planks and stone? Seriously, its a great investment cause it yields great profit. You will see the haters say "ya but Wall spends real life money" and to them I say you're welcome for players like me making it possible for all of us to even have this great game thats free to play(lets face it, they need to make a profit in this game to keep it running).
Anyways, I'll try to do this for a true 100% free to play player so it will debunk any haters/trolls/anti Walls from dampering credibility. Note this, as you get higher in levels you realized how fir wood production and stone decreased for need/value right? Same will happen in time for hardwood and marble as well. That said, as it does you will accumulate it and as you dont have as much use for it a light will go off and it will dawn on you that "hey, I can use this to start gold production". So as a free player you wont be able to restock deposits(except for random rewards from adventures but we wont consider that). A gold deposit has 300 ore and a level 1 mine takes 12 minutes for base production. Thats 5 ore an hour only or 120 in a day. Keeping that mine under constant buff it will make that 300 ore into 600. Under constant buff thru smelter/s and coinage/s that will turen into 300 coins. I believe the upgrade to level 2 for a gold mine is 500 tools. Do that and your mine will still last over 24 hours before it runs dry and you need to build a new one. You can start gold production at level 23 and by then you should be able to generate enough hardwood planks, marble, and tools to make a level 2 gold mine every 30 hours easily.
Now the gold smelters and coinage are even more expensive, but these are also permanent buildings too so you wont have to rebuild them and you can upgrade them as you have the extra resources to do so and conserve licenses. I agree that yes, its a very slow process but also a small price for such a great investment. Within 2 weeks you can easily be making 300 coin a day and not having to buy ANY gems in the process(altho it sure doesnt hurt to :P). Also note that if you can be online just before a deposit depletes you can also demolish your mines to get a percentage of resources back. I believe its 20-25% depending on the structure for amount returned when you demolish a building, so if the mine hits 10 or less its worth it to demo and rebuild another.
As your coins increase you can work on further upgrading those buildings you've been wanting to since much earlier levels when you were excited at the thought of being able to produce gold regardless of resource cost. As you do that you can start making more gold mines and leveling them to stock up on more gold ore at a faster rate. Just keep on task with it and crunch some numbers. you will need 800 gold and I think 1.5k marble to upgrade smelters to level 2 so it might be best to plan ahead and have space reserved to build 2-3 of them. also, save your gems cause if you are a free player they are hard to come by but you can stock up to buy the highly sought after gold parrots which cost 75 gems for 500 gold ore. That turns out to be 500 coins if your mine, smelter, and coinage stay under constant buffs! Much cheaper than buying coin directly in shop, and look at costs of any other resource in shop. boil it down and 75 gems for 250 coins is pretty sweet.
You get 45 gems each week so long as you log in at least once a day for 7 consecutive days. Also from level 33-39 you get 170 gems with each level up. 40-44 is 200, 45-49 is 250, and level 50 is 2,500 gems!! Plus you can win gems thru the forum events and trivia questions randomly asked in global! Much more than most similar games offer for their in game currency imo and there was even an event held where you could win 10k gems!!
Update
Alternate options to get coins: Here I will discuss 2 extra options to get coins.
1. Skip making mines all together and trade for gold ore. Its quite easy to come by in trade and many gem buyers including myself will sell ore for raw materials for our own licence conservation. This will save u licences from making mines, the cost of materials for them, and needing buffs for them as well. Just build some smelters and coinages and make sure they are buffed or sleeping when they cant be for an extended time. You should have good storage capacity by level 23 and just rake in all the ore you can and find stable traders such as Emahs2 and myself as well as many others that will trade their ore on a regular basis.
2. Skip the buildings all together and invest in materials that are high in value and demand such as iron swords and steel swords. Less stable for steady coin intake but it works and its another option. Using lower end materials or raw materials like coal ore, copper ore, wheat, flour, water, etc. isn't going to generate much coin and it will cost so many licences for your own needs as well as meeting your coin demands so I suggest using higher end materials like iron/steel swords or even sausages possibly.