I love the Spiritual trait. Being able to bounce back and forth between Civics is an absolute delight and there are all sorts of crazy things you can do with it.

Slavery is astoundingly powerful. You don't need to :whipped: every turn, though. You want to get your buildings/units started so that you don't have the "you didn't start your production" penalty to the :whipped: generated hammers. I'd say that taking a 5 turn break from Slavery every 5 turns or so is not such a bad thing if it weren't for the Anarchy you suffer.

Serfdom is also great. Having workers improve your tiles 50% faster is a great thing, especially if you have a lot of jungle to clear or if you're trying to pump out railroads in your land to speed up your invasion of a neighbor. The primary problem with Serfdom is that you can't run Slavery at the same time. That means Serfdom gets ignored by most players.

Vassalage and Theocracy are terrible civics and absolutely not something you want to run... except when they are the two civics you want more than anything else. Wouldn't it be great if you could start a ton of units in your cities' queues, get them all 1 turn from completion and switch to these civics without anarchy? "HEY, GHANDI!" :backstab:



What does that have to do with Golden Ages, you ask? As of Beyond the Sword, Golden Age, you generate no anarchy for civic switching when you are in a Golden Age. That means you can pull all of the silly tricks that a Spiritual leader can pull... all without being Spiritual. As a special bonus, it now takes only one Great Person to start a Golden Age, so you can have 3 Golden Ages for just 3 Great People (Taj + 1 GP + 2 GP)


--Did you just grab Democracy with Liberalism (okay, that's a stretch, but I've done it on Noble and Prince) and don't want to face 5 turns of Anarchy for switching 3 or 4 civics at the same time? Or do you just have a huge kingdom and have to face 3-4 turns of Anarchy for just a single civic change because an empire that big doesn't turn on a dime? Start a golden age and get those new civics off to a great start with bonus commerce and production.


--Are you running a cottage economy and wish you had those fun Great People that everyone else keeps bragging about? You'll probably generate a Great Person by accident eventually. Burn him on a Golden Age and switch to Caste System, Representation, Philosophical for most of the Golden Age. Work every farm you can and snack on all of the Bananas and Flood Plains you can find and run 100% specialists in 5-6 cities aside from that. Go ahead and let your cities starve.

As long as they have a granary, they'll probably have enough stored food to keep themselves from losing population for a while. The food bar will fill up again eventually and in the mean time, you've just generated 4+ great people from those cities in a remarkably short length of time. This is going to be especially huge for Financial leaders who avoid specialists because they don't want to be distracted from their lovely cottages. At 9 GP points per specialist, I'm betting you can generate a lot of love in a decent sized empire in a very short time.


--Finally, Boudica will get special love from this because she has the fun combination of Agressive and Charismatic. That means she can have Combat 3, Medic Melee and Gunpowder units at 8 XP (or Cavalry at 13 XP) and she can have Combat 4, Commando Melee/Gunpowder units at just 13 XP. Theocracy, Vassalage, Barracks, West Point gives 11 XP out of the gate and the addition of just one settled Great General brings you up to the magic 13 XP for Commando. 5 turns of Theocracy and Vassalage will give 3-5 units from your West Point city and should give at least 3 units out of most of your other cities with 7 XP each.



Of course, for all of these gambits, don't forget to switch back to your "permanent" civics before your Golden Age expires.

I'm sure that there are other ideas people have for Civic switching fun during a Golden Age. That's not even counting the obvious things like watching the Moai Statues peninsula double its production during the Golden Age.


What are your ideas for this BtS change?

I've already found a very nice use for them while playing the Dutch with plenty of coastal cities: Soon after researching Steam Power start a golden age and switch to Universal Suffrage. Start buying Dikes in your coastal cities with a lot of water tiles (buying one with just one turn of production invested is a little under 800:gold:). When these dikes are finished, suddenly every water square is producing 2 hammers for the rest of the golden age meaning a massive increase in production. Even after the golden age ends, you have gained a huge increase in production in your coastal cities.

This is what my production has looked in my current game on an archipelago map where every city is coastal. The first spike is the golden age where I bought the dikes, the second spike is another golden age where I built factories and bought a few more dikes in newly built coastal cities.

I like the idea of holding a great person in reserve for an emergency golden age. One of the problems with not being spiritual is that your civics don't switch until after the anarchy period. So if you are running emancipation and free speech and you suddenly get attacked, wouldn't it be great to start a golden age, instantly switch to nationhood, slavery and theocracy and instantly raise up an army.

--Are you running a cottage economy and wish you had those fun Great People that everyone else keeps bragging about? You'll probably generate a Great Person by accident eventually. Burn him on a Golden Age and switch to Caste System, Representation, Philosophical for most of the Golden Age. Work every farm you can and snack on all of the Bananas and Flood Plains you can find and run 100% specialists in 5-6 cities aside from that. Go ahead and let your cities starve.


I agree on everything else, but this is not too accurate. Sure, you are going to get a lof of GP points (in all cities that have specialists) through Pacifism, which means that at least one GP is going to come quite earlier. But in order to do visibly better than that, one has to do much more than what you mentioned.

That's because every time a GP is generated, the GP generation limit increases. So chances are that only your main GP city will generate a GP visibly faster, if you had been running a strict cottage economy before. Which is not bad, of course!

On the other hand, yes, GP generation gets a huge boost in golden ages, if you are running a SE with multiple GP farms.

That's because every time a GP is generated, the GP generation limit increases. So chances are that only your main GP city will generate a GP visibly faster, if you had been running a strict cottage economy before. Which is not bad, of course!

On the other hand, yes, GP generation gets a huge boost in golden ages, if you are running a SE with multiple GP farms.


Running the numbers on this, if you get your first Great Person after Philosophy and you are running at least 2 grassland farms per city and maybe a few cities with food specials, you should be able to run at least 4 specialists per city with 2-3 cities running 5 specialists (I'm assuming that you are willing to starve your cities at this point, but not to the point of losing population).

4 specialists at 9 GP points per turn is 36 GPP/turn per city. The 2nd GP needs 200 points, so that's 5.5 turns. Call it 5 turns since you can run 100% specialists for that one last turn even if you do lose one point of population. I'd say a Great Person is worth 1 pop.

The next GP costs 300 points. That's 8.3 turns, or 8 turns if you're willing to burn a little extra food on the last turn.

The next GP costs 400. That's 11 turns. I'm pretty sure you can find 3 cities that can work 4 specialists for 5, 8 and 11 turns.

Now, if you are careful with your cities, you can decide which city pops a specialist at what time. Pull back a little with the cities that you want to delay and rush ahead a bit with the cities you want to accelerate. If you delayed the GP points just a bit with your cities that can run the most specialists, then you can probably hit 190+ PG points as the first city hits 200, 290+ points as the second city hits 300, etc. All the while, you should still be accumulating food in those two cities since you may have a couple of farms along with the food resources in those (probably production) cities.

Those cities now go into absolute overdrive. Crank up the specialists so that you are working ONLY food special resources and you can probably get 6 or maybe even 7 specialists if you are lucky. You're starving the city pretty hard here, but you'll get that population back quickly enough once the Golden Age is over. Each of these two cities should have very close to 400 points already and the next two specialists cost 500 and 600 points. With 6 specialists, that's 2 turns for 100 and 2 more turns for the 200.

That's 5 specialists from 5 cities in 15 turns and that assumes absolutely 0 extra help from wonders or from National Epic.

If you start your GP race with the Taj Mahal, then you can get the 100 point Great Person for practically free.


Running another scenario...

Let's assume 4 cities devoted to this task and each can run 4 specialists without starving much. We'll run 5 or 6 specialists for some time in a few cities, but I'm okay with a little population loss if it's for a good cause. After all, if we could :whipped: great people we would, right?

City 1 has Taj Mahal and National Epic along with some number of Great Person points that the National Epic has been producing. That city will probably produce a Great Artist for the 100 point GP :sad: but we can always burn that Great Artist for a second Golden Age later. Taj + National Epic produce 3 GP points together for a total of 12 GP points per turn for that city. That's 3 x (1 + 1[NE] + 1[Phil] + 1[Golden Age]). Each specialist assigned will also produce 12 GP points. Let's assign 5 specialists for 72 GP points per turn.

Second city will run 5 specialists for 45 GP points per turn.

Third city will run 5 specialists for 45 GP points per turn.

Fourth city will run 6 specialists per turn for the first 2 turns, 5 specialists per turn after that.

GP1: City 1 pops Great Artist almost immediately on turn 1 because of accumulated GP points from National Epic. Maybe we'll even get extra lucky and it won't be a Great Artist.

GP 2: City 4 produces a GP on turn 4. City 4 can go back to normal production and stop the GP run or it can continue with 5 specialists if you are going to stick with Philosophical and maybe even start another Golden Age.

GP 3: City 1 produces another GP on turn 6. You can push this to turn 5 by running an extra specialist or two for a couple of turns.

GP 4: City 2 has been producing 45 GP per turn and needs 400 points. That's turn 9.

GP 5: Turn up the dial on City 3 so that you can get your 5th Great Person on turn 10 and switch your civics back before the end of the Golden Age.

GP 6: City 1 pops another one out again around turn 14-17 depending on whether you switch civics back and whether you still have the golden age going. If you had another city with 5 specialists per turn, that GP could come from "City 5" on turn 14 as long as you make sure City 1 doesn't make theirs first.

I'd probably let each city except for City 1 go back to its normal duties after it creates its own GP. Again, that's turn 4 for City 4, turn 9 for city 2 and turns 10 or 11 for Citie 3. City 1 can now be dedicated GP farm, but can go back to its original duties if you'd like once the golden age is almost over and you go back to Organized Religion or Free Religion.


From the spoiler, I'd say that 5 Great People in 10 turns with 1 city dedicated to the cause and just 3 other cities dedicated for an average of less than 8 turns each is a pretty good return. It's probably not what you want to do with each and every single one of your cities, but if you are willing to give up a couple of cities for just a few turns, you can crank out a pretty good number of Great People in a very short time during a Golden Age and don't you think you can give up 10 turns of Organized Religion and put aside 4 cities from your "pure" Cottage economy to generate 5 Great People?

1 Scientist can go into your best science city for an Academy. A Great Merchant or two can go into your captured Shrine city to make some serious money over time and give a couple of free food that will help support the outstanding production that these cities usually have. Maybe another Scientist can rush part of Education to speed you toward Liberalism and a free tech of your choice. Alternatively, you can speed yourself along to Democracy and then burn another 1 GP and then 2 GP for two consecutive Golden Ages with a ton of towns each producing 2 hammers under Universal Sufferage.

Let's see the AI cope with you producing THAT much money and science at the same time as you are producing THAT many hammers from cities that used to be "mere" commerce cities with no real production to speak of.

C'mon, don't you want to see those cities that used to get by on 5 hammers per turn morph into 75 hammer monsters with a Forge, Organized Religion and Universal Sufferage in a Golden Age? Maybe you can save the Golden Ages for when you hit Industrialism and have just bought yourself a few factories and coal plants. :)

I'm not saying that this is the ideal strategy for everyone, but with the free civic changes you get under a Golden Age, it might be worth dedicating a dozen turns out of the entire game to Philosophical while you set a handful of your cities to pump out Great People. If you remember to lower the rate at which your GP farm produces points, you can make sure that each of your newly dedicated cities produces a Great Person and then your GP farm can crank up the dial to pop out another few before the end of the age and a drop from 12 GP points per turn to the previous 6.

Just because you're running a Cottage Economy, that doesn't mean you can't pretend to be a Specialist Economy for a few turns. :)

Very well-written!

I made a mistake and a half in my previous post:
1- I didn't have the early game in mind, I was thinking of the middle game (for averaging purposes between early and late game), when the GPP are many and this tactic will not work as well.

1.5- I play SE, so I get GP fast, which makes GP rushing even slower in the middle game. But I should have been thinking CE, as you said.

So after your explanation, this is making sense to me.

Now, I will just need to convert everything into SE/Marathon and see what this can do for me :)