The Agrarian way

After expending 7000 tools, 5900 hardwood planks and 5900 marble to produce gold I was highly disappointed. The startup cost to produce 37 gold coins is ridiculous. Even if I don't count the huge cost for the three building necessary to make coins. Each coin I produce will cost me 37 hardwood, marble, coal and tools.
I would foreword the idea that an agrarian system is far better then the mining system when it comes to producing coins. Once you build your Provisions House and brewery you can exchange 1000 beer for 10 coins. On it's face it seems to be a bad deal, but it is far more cost effective then mining, smelting and minting. To make 1000 beers I will need 1 farm, 2.5 fields and 1.3 deep wells working for 58 hours. Basically it will cost me 64 hardwood planks and 30 marble for 10 coins. (not counting the startup cost of 1 farm.)

To summarize:
64 hardwood planks 30 marble = 10 coins
(total startup cost 40 fir planks 20 tools 20 stone)
In addition other products can be produced from the agrarian system such as horses and flour. The flour can be turned into buffs, settlers and resources.
vs.
80 tools 72 hardwood planks 72 marble 32 coal =10 coins ;These numbers based on two mines that produces 300 gold ore each. 8 gold ore is needed to produce 1 coin. (The production chain will require 2 mines.) Each mine costs 1500 tools, 1400 hardwood planks and 1400 marble. Each will produce enough ore to make 37 coins.
(total startup cost 8500 tools 7300 hardwood planks 7300 marble)

In defense of the mining system I will say that (in the instance and numbers stated above) it produces coins ten times faster. It also requires only 4 slots.

Unless there is another use for the gold ingots that are smelted I can't help but feel like a fool for wasting my time on this resource pit.

Ok so once you have a level 2-3 butcher, make baskets and always keep gold buildings buffed. I run 1 mine 18 hours a day, 1 smelter 18 hours a day, and 1 coinage 18 hours a day. That's 9 gift baskets per day, and it will turn that 37.5 coins per mine into 300. It's been discussed in other threads and I know this method is, at the moment still less efficient if you were to make trades for these resources for coins, but for me it has reasoning behind it. One advantage is that I don't have to babysit trades all day, worry about people not responding right away or loosing track of resources. Another is that instead of using flour/wheat for making more beer in the option stated above, you can dedicate all your beer production into your army. I know that with the prices as they are now, being affected by lots of newer players who have more gold and a need for marble/hw planks and tools, the pricing structure of mines and the associated buildings for gold production are upside down. But this might change over time, for instance if they open a new server up and the new players are funneled there, our economy on zeus would shift in favor of production and you'd be already set to go with your buildings then.