Okay, in pro games, this is ill advised massing trade early in the game. But how much of a power spike can you give your allies by giving them excess gold due to your heavy trade gold income? You have a huge amount of trade carts, even before the gold mines ran out, so the gold is pouring in.
I was Spanish in one game. Every so often, I would casually give each of my allies 1000 gold every so often. I was making tons of gold due to so many trade carts early. I was never attacked once. I had a small army (about 15 conquistadors) to defend my ally, and helped him in a rush to slow down one of my enemies.
Generally not worth it. As always, there might be some extreme situation where it is, e.g. your civ is hard countered, or you get early persian douched and wont ever catch up or something, but this should be pretty rare.
SOTL did a video on how much gold trading actually generates. It’s pretty bad compared to just adding more gold miners as long as gold piles last. You’re better off making some army to help your allies.
Especially as villagers cost only 50 food, so its also much less of an immediate investment than trade carts.
Obviously, trade carts are worth making if you are getting close to exhausting all the gold piles
Errr… I had games where I had 5K to 30k (if not more) gold from trade before. Granted, these games went on for a long time. I think I had about 60 or more trades carts in some older games.
Here’s the thing. I seen it happen. The enemy team makes nearly zero trade carts. Gold mines run out. They end up dirt poor. Meanwhile I already have 20 to 40 trade carts or so. So, even if they make trade carts then, it can already be too late. The influx of gold I have gives me a huge power strike.
Granted, this may not happen in pro games.
Yeah that’s a huge mistake. You need to start making them once you can afford them without compromising army creation. So there should generally be a time window between that, and the exhaustion of gold piles. Making them as soon as you hit Castle Age is too early.
Of course, making trade carts too early is probably overall better than not making them at all, as long as you can survive the period of time while the investment into them puts you behind economically.
Oh, it’s risky. But sometimes, it can pay off big in these chill, non pro games.
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Does gold trading make your trade partners rich, too? That would seem a good thing. 
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Explains why it worked 11
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Just remember that trade is significantly more expensive than villager production, and provides a similar collection rate with a good tradeline to a villager, so as long as you’ve got plenty of gold to work with you’re better off using that to put military out and secure more resources and/or your map. Trade doesn’t do you any good if you can’t defend it, and every trade cart is 150 resources worth of military you don’t have.
If you instead lay down one less TC and go for markets with your boom, it’ll have the same problem of being much more expensive, and having a lesser return. You’re still spending more resources than villager production (50 vs 150) at what will hopefully be a similar work rate. The end result is failing to provide enough defense for the trade.
Certain civs can go into trade earlier, and those civs are generally going to provide the backline support for the team at large. When you don’t have a lot of unit turnover (britons post-mass, Spanish/Portuguese, Koreans) you can transition extra resources you aren’t losing into trade and sling, which you should if you aren’t hemorrhaging units. So not as a general case, but heavy trading in the proper circumstances is proper play if your civ lends itself to that option. Usually that means after establishing a foothold, building up your mass, and nearing population limit.