Personally, I prefer longer-lasting resources, because faster collection usually means you have to transition to other sources sooner, but it also comes with the perk of having better timings, as opposed to the generic unit and tech timings of longer-lasting resources. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Context matters, I think. Goths have longer-lasting hunt, and the speed of hunt makes it a good bonus for collecting food quickly (you get the higher gather rate for longer, which improves timings). Longer-lasting fish would likewise be a great bonus, if a bit situational. In contrast, longer-lasting berries would be somewhat weak because berries are a relatively slow gather rate, but Franks faster berries is a good bonus (if a little weak, but that is due to the percentage bonus being low - if the percentage was the same as the Mongol hunt bonus, it would be much stronger).
As an example case: Britons have faster sheep collection, which does result in sheep running out faster, but players will often have fewer vils on sheep for that reason. And so the food bonus translates into extra villager gather time for other resources (and possibly less food lost to decay). Tatar sheep bonus increases food gathered from each sheep, and so it is more food as the villagers will spend more time on sheep.
There is also the Malian bonus where villagers drop off more gold. That’s basically a combination of these two bonuses (plus extra effective carry capacity).
Longer lasting stone on Sicilians might be an interesting buff (don’t know if it would be a good change though, and no comment on if it has a historical basis) - but likely would be better to simply reduce the stone cost of Donjons a small amount (if Sicilians still need a buff).
We only need to remember how the Malians change of gold lasting 30% longer to 15% more drop off (effectively faster collection + lasting longer) instantly lifted it to No.1 win rate.
It depends if the map encourages quick games (Arabia) where you want resources quickly to strike fast and hard, or if it’s tailored for attrition (Black Forest or Fortress) where you have more time to gather resources, a longer stockpile meaning the opponent will run out of resources first.
Longer resources also matter more in 1v1 than in team games as trade doesn’t have limits.
Overall quicker gathering feels more versatile.