- manpower (you can't buy manpower with money)
- heal unit to maximize their damage (especially plane)
- lack of unit to properly response enemy action - then gold some production and go
- gold some research that is already 8/10 done but you want to go sleep so you don't lost time efficiency

etc...etc...etc

they are best depending on situation

imagine lone enemy armored car rushing towards your core city and you have no reserve left but you still spend your goddamn limited gold to buy resources instead to speed up anti-tank production? lol

so funny that i spot enemy car rushing towards my city and no reserve or gold left....

The best way to use gold is not to. Just save it for a time you see someone trying to buy a win and you can give them a good fight.

Agreed. The best use of gold I've ever had was blowing like 250k of reward and ad gold against a guy buying a win, forcing him to spend >1M gold (by our estimates). Doing our part to help Bytro get some $

Since then I've become a hoarder, waiting for the next occasion like that.

In late game when the game is already decided but not yet formally won, many players think someone is playing with lots of gold because their economy and production capacity is so far ahead of everyone else it feels impossible to compete, because the game is essentially over and everyone is just waiting for the winner to get the VP goal.

To the original point of the thread, Ever since free gold from ads became a thing I've put a good deal of thought into how to most effectively spend gold.

Although it may not seem like it, raising province morale in your 5 starting cities first thing is huge. Rushing your first couple of techs so you can beat your neighbors easily is another strong choice. Rushing out a couple of artillery so you start bombarding your neighbor 30 minutes into the match is hard for them to defend against. That takes only about 1-2 days of free gold, or one achievement reward, to do.

If there was ever a map that had a 20k spending limit for the whole round for example, I would spend 20k gold in the first hour or less, for maximum effect.

blueprints for me, for my fav units

Blueprints are way too overpriced, so i just hoard up the gold or spend a little bit on desperate occasions.

Which blueprint level units do you build?
I've never seen a game last long enough to build one, except militia, once or twice.

In my last WAW game, which had ~12 active humans all the way until it ended on day 24, I had upgraded to blueprint interceptors, artillery, and armored cars.

In general I think there are better uses for gold, but it is pretty fun running around with blueprint units and I wouldn't hate on anyone for spending gold on something like that, even though I don't think it's necessary for winning a game. I also don't think of spending gold on blueprints as negatively as I think of spending gold in other ways, because it's an account perk and not something specific to an individual game.

If you have a resource which you definitely need a lot of for your strategy, spending 950 gold to raise the province morale, first thing the minute you join the map before doing anything, has a huge impact.

For at least the first two days, and probably more if you're not capturing many capitals early, the morale there will be much higher than it would have otherwise been.

Resource generation, money income, build times, and manpower generation are all improved.

Day 1:
Assuming you build Industry level 1 here, then onto Industry level 2 (8 hours + 14 hours). Your resource income maximum starts at 6000 and increases as industry builds up to 25%, more at the very end of the 24 hours if you can get 2 hours into Industry level 3. 0% industry to 27% industry, 6000 -> 7620 or so, average 6810 Day 1.

Without the morale boost it's only 0% to 24.3%, 6000 -> 7460ish, average 6730 Day 1.

Same for money, and about 681 for manpower. You finish with level 2 industry at 22 hours with 80% morale instead of around 25 hours with 70% morale.

So add 10% of that potential because your morale is 10% higher roughly. 80% of 6810 instead of 70% of 6730, 737 extra resources, money Day 1, 73 manpower.

Day 2 these numbers go up as well as Day 3, as your industry raises the resource maximum. Perhaps I should track these numbers from this one city with morale increased from the start, comparing it to another city with normal morale. The morale difference isn't quite 10% again on day 2 on because being closer to your target morale you increase less quickly versus starting at 70%.

Once you capture your third capital early the differences are moot, and after the second the differences are small, but that takes a while for most players/most strategies.

Day 2 let's estimate 8% higher, and day 3 6% higher, and maybe you capture a second capital near end of day 3 to bring it up to 100% anyway.

Day 2 potential 27% - > 45%, average 37.5% because you finish level 3 well before day end. Let's say you run low on resources for upgrading industry, and top out at level 3 for the first 3 days, even for your most important resource. So 8250 day 3 average (6000*1.36) with boost, versus 24.3% to 45%, about 35% increase average without boost, 8100 maximum. 86% of 8250 vs 78% of 8100, 777 extra resources Day 2.

Day 3 works out much the same, around 786 let's say, less morale % difference, but biggest resource maximum that it modifies.

737+777+786 is 2300 extra resources, 230 extra manpower, 2300 extra money, and having your level 3 industry done earlier so you can start another building earlier, all for 950 gold. That would cost you 1150+115+460, 1725 gold to get normally. Almost twice as much bang for your buck, spread out over the first 3 days, and this is your critical resource that you need for your war machine. Or the resource that the market wants most early on, either way puts you in a strong position for roughly just 1/3 of the gold cost of the free gold for watching a few minutes of ads day 1.

I personally don't use gold for honor reasons, but I guess most effective uses would be:
- Destroying enemy air bases at a vital moment (can kill entire air forces for a few K)
- quickly finish new units in remote territories (and take them over so much faster without needing days of shipping new units)

When you use it economically, of course, day 1 is best.

I think it costs way more than 2 days of free gold to boost morale up from 70% to 100% and rush your production/tecnology.

Normally what I like to do with gold is have a huge amount in stock (50k+) so incase an enemy invades me by surprise, I can quicky do new units. I also like to use gold to heal my units, specially planes, and quickly boost morale of a distant city I conquered and start producing units there (that way, I don't have to wait 1 day for my units to be transported from Spain to Egypt for example).

I also use gold to end research that is almost ending to start researching another thing before sleeping.

You mentioned the early game and I do agree that it's important to have a good early game. However, you don't need gold to do it.

To produce ranged units fast. Just wait the 1h50mins of research and produce it. Very simple.

About the morale in the early game, you can easily and quickly attack a 1 city country and boost your morale by a lot (conquering the city boosts the morale of all your provinces)