well as you know, most german strats involve 120 settlers before treaty end, delete 30 to make the total 90 just before the end of the treaty.
i keep my factories on wood the entire time, and keep 30 settlers(regular) on mills, and the other 60 on gold(thats counting the 20 settler wagons.)
this allows me to keep up with the units spamming. this makes an EXTREME amount of sense due to the fact that ALL the german units cost 15-400 more gold than any other resource.
dopps i think are 50 food and 125 gold before the church card.
uhlans are 50 food and 100 gold.
war wagons are actually completely equal at 100 food and gold.
skirms are 50 food and 65 gold before church card.
and cannons of course are 100 wood and an insane amount of gold.
so yeah, plus i guess it's the way i employ my settlers before the treaty also, i dunno. my eco is usually a monster.