The easiest and most effective gold I've painted goes as follows
1: scorched brown basecoat
2: liberal highlight of 2 parts scorched brown, 1 part shining gold
3: another highlight of 1 part scorched bron to 2 parts shining gold
4: Shining gold hilight, start to work towards edges and verticies only
5: edge hilight with burningshed gold
6: finally, do an extreme edge highlight of 50/50 burnished and mithril silver