@Uhtred Ragnarsson @hunyuk I'm not a gold player but there was a world where I went a little hard and kept up with the gold spending and was one of the top gold spenders. These are the things that I have learned Playing worlds with gold and playing worlds with just enough gold to keep advisors, bc ugh, it's a nuisance without them.
1. 100% having gold is an advantage.
2. Having gold is really on advantage if you actually know how to play the game without gold. Meaning, I can spend just as much gold defending my city as Brian is attacking it and unless i do something like gold it down, he's probably still going to take it eventually. I may last longer than someone without gold, and he's just a better player. Gold enhances that, sure, and there's gotta be something there first. Like he's not sending peg nukes to kill dogs behind a 25 wall. He's not sending tri nukes to kill hydras. he's just not. He - like most golders in the big alliances - know what they're doing and have been playing for a long time. Gold just helps them do the things they know how to do faster.
3. If you don't know how to keep your city from being taken without gold, consider that you need to learn to be a better strategist. I've had a city right next to brian in moch on a Dom island as a red and he didn't take it. Defending isn't just having the right troops, the right amount of troops and timing. There's actually way more to it than that. people just default to that.
4. Consider that playing against gold players is actually a way to practice being a better player. If you take it on that way. Like i know right away which of my cities I'm almost certainly going to lose, and i build (or don't build) appropriately. and then i defend like i don't care if i lose it - because i don't (usually). Golders are the BEST way for me to practice my snipe times, or play with different ways of defending. because i've almost always mitigated my loss before I've actually become a target.
Strategy is more that a numbers game. sure numbers help, and if you're a good player, you can plan for it. And would it be my preference if all the big golders weren't mostly in the same alliance? yes.