Lumber to gold (and NOT viceversa)

[SkyIsTheLimit]

When i was playing, the other day, someone in my team (don't remember who it was, sorry....if he is on the board, feel free to step forward) proposed a suggestion that, in my opinion, is intriguing in the very least: the chance to trade lumber for gold.
However, if it is to be done, it should be done in a manner that it does not make the game too easy, so the trad ratio should be carefully calculated (for example, something like 1000 lumber in exchange of 300 gold could work, imho).
I know, this idea has its downsides, but also has some upsides. Let's start from the latter.

UPSIDES:

1) It would allow people to recover, as long as they didn't leak in an extreme way, and as long as they get decent rolls
-a) it would reduce the number of people leaving because of awful rolls;
-b) subsequentially to a), it would allow rooms to fill more quickly and would reduce the number of the bans, reducing thus the number of appeals on the board;
2) It would reduce the amount of skill needed to play this map, potentially attracting new players (but this is also a downside, see below)


DOWNSIDES:

1) It would diminish the amount of skill required to play, because much more people could potentially recover from a bad start;
-a) Many more rookies would join this game, potentially throwing unbalance over the teams (but this can also be an upside, see above);
2) It would potentially make games longer (according to people, might be good or might be bad);



Feel free to express your opinions: further downsides or upsides will eventually be added to the first post.