The short version:
- There's a lot more ways to gain Silver (low $ hands, Silver gainers, Workshop variants, Delve)
There are also tons of ways to gain Gold. Soothsayer (ew), Wedding, Windfall, Governor, etc. Empires is the crazy Gold gaining expansion. Anyways, it is easier to gain Silver simply because of its price. It is more economical to obtain 2 Silvers over a Gold ($4 vs $3), but at the price an extra buy and one extra potential dead card in hand.
- Silver does not compete at cost with most powerful engine components ($5s) and thus is easier to obtain as part of your payload while building
Yes. This is not a consequence of Gold being bad, but a consequence of pricing.
- Gold only reduces the number of dead cards you have to draw by 33% versus Silver. Assume an all Treasure engine payload for a second - 8 Silvers versus 6 Golds to hit $16 - many boards can tolerate drawing 2 extra cards in exchange for getting your $5s sooner or not using a buy on Golds
Yes, in this one case that is true.
Times when this isn't true:
- Many BM variants (discard attack, etc)
- Gold-gainers (duh)
- When you value high cost cards for some reason
Those are a lot of times. Also consider this:
-When there is no +buy or gaining
But generally, I like Silver more, and prefer to avoid both if I can in an engine.
I avoid gaining Silver and Gold unless it is painfully obvious I will not be "gaining cards"/"getting to a price point" any faster with another option. As bad as Gold and Silver can be, they are still potential non-terminal payload.