I was wrong about the proof

Hoarding is prudence only while it keeps a real choice open; after that, it is a slow way of losing, because what you refuse to spend cannot help you win. I used to treat a full storehouse as proof that I had planned well. I was wrong about the proof.

The trouble is that stockpiles look certain. A pile of food, coin, or materials can be counted, while the trouble you avoided by spending them cannot. So I kept waiting for a clearer reason to act. I told myself that the next turn might bring a better price, a sharper need, or a danger worth saving against. Sometimes it did. Often the opportunity had already gone by while I was admiring the pile.

In a game, unused supplies can be as costly as missing supplies. Materials left in storage do not build the road that would let a force arrive in time. Coin saved past the point where it could improve a city does not make that city stronger. And food that has no use before the game ends is not security; it is merely food that never became anything else. The loss is quiet, which is why it is easy to mistake for caution.

I also got the measure wrong in the other direction. Spending everything just because a reserve feels embarrassing is not courage. A sudden shortage can force bad choices, and some dangers do not announce themselves early enough to meet them cheaply. The point is not to keep nothing. It is to know what the reserve is for, and to notice when the reason for keeping it has disappeared.

I still do not know how far ahead a sensible person should plan. A reserve that seems wasteful in a calm turn may save a whole position later, and no tidy rule can tell me exactly how much uncertainty to buy insurance against. What I can say plainly is that a hoard is not a plan by itself. It is only a set of choices postponed, and postponement has a price even when no one sends a bill.

So I have landed on this: keep enough to survive the trouble you can name, but make the rest answer for the work it could do now. If I cannot say what I am waiting for, then I am not being careful. I am letting fear sit on the money and call itself wisdom.