Quick Poll: Is the production scale weak?

[Agema]

Resources sort of *are* gold.

If you boil all issues down to survivability and killability, a 10GP/20Res unit is far better than a 10GP/1Res unit. So you could view a Res-heavy unit as worth X Res-light units. In every game I've played in even in the midgame there are still large armies being thrown around. Shields and armour are still making troops more survivable from all manner of spells, arrows and so on, and decent weapons are still enabling troops to kill enemies faster.

Consequently res-intensive units save you gold because you need fewer units to make an effective army, and save more money because you don't have to replace losses to the same extent. That money can go to castles, mages, and all the other funky things money can buy.

Yes, Res becomes steadily less useful as the game goes on. But it allows you to pack more punch for an equivalent gold cost (or pack the same punch for less gold), which makes it potentially a very useful tool for a head start.

[moderation]

High resource troops don't necessarily survive longer at all stages of the game. All the armor in the world won't help if you run up against AN attacks like R'yleh's and heat and cold auras will still kill your troops, not to mention SCs and thugs. Ulm has really high resource high protection troops, but they will still be squashed by tramplers. A lot of times low resource, high damage units might be more appropriate.

Armor works some of the against some things. Sometimes it's better to have blockers like MA R'yleh's 5GP/1Res Lobos. And units with natural protection like crab hybrids and hydras are fairly durable while only costing 1 resource. Of course, high resource troops can be useful, but since you have to mass them over many turns, you'll have to pay upkeep and you will have to plan ahead to have enough troops on the field.

There are pros and cons to high resource troops and productivity, but it's hard to say that resources are nearly as useful as gold the way the game is right now. If castles had to be built with resources, as others have mentioned, production might be useful.