The interesting question all Animators will face is: "How do I spend my gold?" This is something I find very awkward (in a good way). I have concluded there are two paths with your gold, each sharing obvious common factors.
Common Factors: Training workers and constructing.
Now, you could train enough workers for your military only, or you could purely use them to increase gold economy. If you are not spending your gold, this is something you should do regardless. Thus, it's beneficial for both paths. And obviously you need to construct.
Path #1: Explore.
There are two branches to exploring.
- Branch #1.1: Exclusively Explore.
In a perfect world, your economy will provide you enough Steel Guardians per hour to defend top offense. The rest of your economy is dedicated to improvements and gold production. Slave pits are a nice boost to this play style. You use all your gold to explore. - Branch #1.2: Explore while attacking.
Managing your economy will be based on your attacking style and flow of the game. But your gold cannot be invested into military. Therefore, you can explore with it and build more production buildings. It's a nice way to keep your economy raising while you sit.
Path #2: Collectors and Warehouses.
Mathematically, it takes 29,750g to fill a Warehouse with Collectors. Warehouses also give no gold boost, so they are purely for military purposes. So when do you start building Warehouses? This creates two branches from this path.
- Branch #2.1: Start early.
In a sense, you can consider Warehouses as Animators improvements. Technically speaking, you are investing gold for a return in iron/diamond/magic dust. This path will grant stronger military earlier on. - Branch #2.2: Start after exploring costs too much.
This can be considered more of a transition out of exploring. But once you do it, exploring will get more expensive because your gold economy will not increase. You are comparing 1 more land to filling a Warehouse. An extra land can provide 20 population AND (110r raw OR 10dm OR 50md, etc). While a Warehouse produces the most secondary resources from 1 land.
