Yea. Honestly the whole gold system is kind of a bummer because no matter what you eventually run out. Have you thought about tying it to a renewable resource? like food? that way you can keep growing it to feed your troops but you still can't expand your forces to quickly because you'll have to make sure your food production keeps up? If you wanted maybe you could even do something like have gold be for buying the seeds. That way you still need gold but gold transfers to a renewable resource.

Well another idea, the keep from having to go into a whole food system or whatever would to be have gold itself as a renewable resource. Have it to where you can lay some sort of special 'mine' tile down over the gold ore, kind of like a workshop tile. And make it to where if you have someone working it like they would a workshop it steadily produces gold.

I picked up the game yesterday after wanting it for awhile. I've been playing it quite a bit since then. I'm having a lot of fun with it.

I think gold is a difficult issue balance properly. The game is built with an ending in mind. You build your dungeon, destroy the other civilizations and sort of win the game. At least that's how it seems to me so far. I ran out of money during a couple of games, and had a tough time finding more to mine. I found out that fortresses or villages have some, but sometimes my minions just aren't strong enough to take them on. Dungeon Keeper 2 had unlimited gem seams that could be mined endlessly for gold. I don't think that would work here, since you could just turtle up, build up an unstoppable army, equip and train them and basically just win the game.

Maybe a create gold spell that exchanged mana for hold like DK2 had. Or a gambling hall, where your minion can spend their gold, and basically generate it for you. The downside is that they could win and cost you gold, and that it basically wastes their time and keeps them from doing something more productive.

I know the game is early in development, and I think it's great so far. I'm looking forward to seeing it grow.

I agree with you that lakes can be annoying, on the other hand they can be used strategically and mix up the game nicely. Maybe they need to be visible from further away.