Gold is used in many buildings, the Tradepost and Temple being among them. It's also required for trading, so if you want to ever get specific resources faster, you're going to need gold. It's also used in many faith upgrades, and some workshop upgrades.
Any way you look at it, gold is very useful. You need it. Lots of it. Compared against the Amphitheater, though, it depends on what your current happiness level is at. The lower your happiness, the more I would weight getting them, as they give corresponding kitten efficiency bonuses, whereas gold is used to progress.
When you reset a game you will get Karma and Paragon.
Karma: Karma is gained when you reset with more than 35 kittens. Karma gives +10% happiness for having it, and 1% happiness for each
point as well. This does have a diminishing effect to keep it from
becoming too over powering. The exact numbers on the diminishing
effect are currently unknown.
- 40 kittens -> 1.00 Karma
- 50 kittens -> 2.00 Karma
- 62 kittens -> 3.16 karma
- 67 kittens -> 4.13 karma
- 73 kittens -> 5.07 karma
- 80 kittens -> 6.00 karma
- 89 kittens -> 7.02 karma
- 99 kittens -> 8.05 karma
- 110 kittens -> 9.00 karma
- 123 kittens -> 10.03 karma
- 137 kittens ->11.05 karma
- 152 kittens ->12.05 karma
Paragon: Paragon is received for resetting at over 70 kittens.
Every paragon point will give
- 1% global production bonus
- 0.1% storage capacity
Why would you reset?
The reason a person would reset a game is to earn everything faster. Yes you have to start over again, but with all the extra happines, the production bonus and the extra storage capacity everything will go faster.
Also for getting some achievements it is neccesary to reset the game.
Reset or Wipe?
There is a difference between resetting and wiping. When you wipe the game you will destroy all your progress. You won't get any Paragon or Karma points when you do this.
If you reset you do get Paragon points and Karma and you won't lose all your game progress.
NOTE: It'll take some time before you are back at where you are now if you reset the game, don't assume it'll go much more faster.
There is also an achievement
Lotus Eater Machine - Break the cycle of reincarnations - Obtain karma by resetting game
Source
Achievement
Paragon
Karma
Best Answer
Just tried it: it turns into a Broadcast Tower that works like Amphitheatre but more effective. This reddit thread has some info.
The popup window says Culture 5/sec, Unhappiness reduction -75%, Max Culture 525.
As opposed to Amphitheatre 0.005/tick (=?), Unhappiness reduction -4.8%, Maximum Culture +50