Age of Warring Empires - Free Gold - Tips and Tricks

It has always been a disadvantage to play against a Gold buying player when you are yourself not buying or may be you don't buy as much as they do. Here, I am going to help you with some Gold mining strategies mentioning almost all the sources of
in-game Gold coins. This will also let you know about some of the game events. If you already aware of them, you can skim read them, you might be missing some point.

•  Dragon Invasion: This one is the most important and is the major source of gold coins for me (being a non-gold player).
  
  • This is a daily event, so you always try to get gold coins.
  • First Hit: First hit on dragon gives you 20 GC.
    
    • This is not difficult to get if you don't forget to log in to game when dragon arrives. 
    • Prepare your one single hero with a single troop (or fully loaded). You will have to make his selection and use him in Magic Tower so that the selection is saved and the same selection shows up when you start hitting the dragon. (This part keeps on changing in game, so you will have to figure out how to save a selection). 
    • Now, keep refreshing the event attack page by going to-and-fro on the rank page. 
    • As soon as you see the attack option, click it asap and tick mark the hero (troops for which you had already set in tower) and hit attack. 
    • If dragon HP was full when you made this, Congratulations! You just earned 20 GC.
  • Killing Blow: Final killing blow gets you 30 GC as a reward. You have to be very careful for this.
    
    • Keep an eye on how players are gaining over their percentage damage over the time. 
    • Also, who hits when. This will give you some idea about when to hit for the final chunk of dragon. 
    • The idea is to wait for others to hit and leave small amount of health for you to kill when dragon nears its death. 
    • If you realise that dragon won't die that day, you might not need to waste your troops and time. 
  •  Top Ranks: The top three ranker get a chest which can give 150, 100 and 50 GC respectively. If you are a heavy hitter, you need not worry about the ranks may be. In case you are not, then you might wish for a chance when the heavy hitters are not online which happens usually. Not all the top players will come and hit dragon every time. So you always have a chance. Mostly people are not even aware of these rewards. There is always a chance to get military bonus, with a sure rewards of prestige and copper. So usually there is no harm in trying for dragon.
  • Some more details on Dragon Invasion Event - Age of Warring Empires - Dragon Event

• Treasure Map Event: This is a well-known source of gold coins in game with top 5 rankers getting gold reward. It might seem to be difficult but I have seen people even who are not the top players in game get top ranks in this event.
  
  • Strategy is simple, you need to have City Protection Cards, City Moving Cards and Random Relocation Cards. Over the time, if you plan to play alternate Map event, then you can always have enough of these cards (without spending gold).
  • What you have to do is use Protection whenever you know you are not going to be online for long, i.e. at night when you sleep. For all other occasions you can always escape the attackers by using port cards and building traps.
  • Use City Moving Cards to get to locations where you can find more maps like near IC or next to people near you having good amount of maps.
  • Always keep the pace of gathering maps slow initially and faster as the event nears its end.
  • You have to be vigilant to avoid loss of maps in a single tragedy hour.
   
•  Imperial Overlord Event: This event has only small amount of gold as a reward. But for non-gold players that is also a delight.
  • Use the lowest level of spins if you think you are not going to get too many points from the event for multiple spins. It has a relatively high probability of giving a better reward especially gold coins.
  • Use the second level and higher level as per the number of points you can gain from event. Nice rewards lure you in for a higher level spin, but beware, GMs are not there to give you away stuff so easily. ;)
•  Angelic Welfare Event: This event is sometimes very lovable.
  • Event is clever enough to raise the bar of next donation by seeing the amount of gold coins you already have in hand, i.e., what is displayed at the top right of your screen.
  • It never counts the gold coins which are in your inventory. So, use the inventory gold as per the requirement set by your donation in the event.
  • Try holding on gold coin rewards from the achievements tab in daily tasks, they are also not counted by the event. Claim the reward only during this event, if you don't need gold urgently.
  • Same holds for gold coin rewards from the invitation codes accepted by your friends.
     
•  Always keep some alts and keep some port cards for them. They are usually helpful in gathering points in events like Imperial Overlord or Lily Event.
• Try to use gold for events like Gem Explore event, New Year Event etc. where returns are still better for your invested gold.
• Don't use gold for gold keys in Key Event, and other such events where returns are not good. 

I hope this was useful for some of you. Experts already nail the game, I hope the beginners don't screw it with lesser knowledge of game.
Happy Gaming! Cheers!

How to grind tower better, Read this - Age of Warring Empires - Magic Tower