In a typical game, I will only burn a Great Person on a Golden Age when I get a Great Artist and I'm not gunning for a cultural win. Other than that, I rarely trigger a Golden Age.

Lately I've noticed my penchant, however, for changing civics frequently when I'm not Spiritual, which often results in a 3-turn anarchy period.

It's just hard to justify saving a non-Great Artist GP, especially when you need two or more of them to trigger the Golden Age. There's no denying the production power of a Golden Age, though, especially in the mid- to late-game.

So what's the answer here? Get a Great Artist and save him until you really, really need him? Play Philosophical and go bananas with a GP farm? Build the Mausoleum to max out the Golden Age benefits? Would it be possible to design an entire strategy around being in a Golden Age as much as possible?

when you need a production/commerce boost and a change of civics

coincidently both are often satisfied when you're preparing to war and when you're consolidating the gains in war territory

So what's the answer here? Get a Great Artist and save him until you really, really need him? Play Philosophical and go bananas with a GP farm? Build the Mausoleum to max out the Golden Age benefits? Would it be possible to design an entire strategy around being in a Golden Age as much as possible?
Whenever I play a non-SPI leader, I will often to go up to the 3rd level of GP triggered GAs. I have been known to hold the GA from Music plus a couple more right up until I build the Taj, triggering 45 turns of Golden Age (with MoM on Epic, Taj GA + 1 GP GA + 2 GP GA = 45 turns). I beeline late-game techs like Physics, Communism, etc just for the GPeople to run a Golden Age, especially if I build the MoM. Heh, I got it bad, in fact, if I find Marble on my exploring, I dont think Oracle or Sistine Chapel or even GLibrary, anymore, I think "MoM + Taj time!" and start planning for that 45-turn GA (or just 3 separate 15-turn ones, depending on the State of the Empire".

Getting the Military civics up, and then back to the SE/CE civics is the goal, with PS, Nationalism, Slavery, SP and Theocracy, I can produce an amazing army, then pop right back to US, FS, Caste, and FR on that final turn.

Hmmmm so many debates here.

I like the idea of a continual golden age as it gives you +100% great people rate from your base rate when in a golden age. Would only try it on a philosphical leader due to number of GP required to keep it going.

Although if i have a great engineer I might prefer to fast track a wonder such as the one that lengthens golden ages by 50% or the pathernen. Ensures your strategy and obtaining the wonders.

Great merchants for +1 food in city for commerce cash cow.
Great Artists for Cultural win.
Also science route using representation and GP.

The impact of a GA on a huge empire is huge due to production bones and other benefits.

End of day pick a strategy and try to keep to it.

oh, and also for space races of course

I'd say the two biggest factors are timeframe and empire size.

Early and small favor bulbing and settling, where as later and large favor golden ages.

It becomes a bit hard to calculate with the ramping cost of GAs, not to mention each GP has different uses. I had a whole post delving into beaker comparisons between longterm settling and/or bulbing Vs. bursts with GAs and there's just too many factors to consider. First of all, opportunity costs. An early settle has it's obvious advantages while also, there's a difference between getting education now, or education in 10 turns with better efficiency and/or other, empire-spanning advantages.

Plus, the production bonus and GP bonuses are harder to factor in. Though I think they lend favor to GAs in that they're a good offset to whatever you may be losing to not bulbing/settling. I have a biased emphasis toward beaker output and/or settled effects as I rarely use the other abilities of GPs.

Anyway, it really depends and I think it's hard to come to a definitive "this is what you should do". Especially since fair amount of Civ depends on circumstance/opportunity costs.

I don't have a hard and fast rule.

However, as the game goes on, if you have a big empire then there becomes NO OPTION that gives a greater return on your great people than burning them on a GA - the total beakers/gold/hammers derived from the GA outstrips anything settling or bulbing could do then. The MoM wonder makes this a bit sooner IMO. Having MoM on epic, I completed the taj, burned a GP, then the GA got me 2 more GP's, and I burned them too. 45 consecutive turns of golden age. When I'd completed taj I'd just gotten out of a war and was getting about 250 BPT in 1300 (the war dragged a bit). After 45 turns of GA, all my cities had the infrastructure I wanted, and even when it ended I was getting 1100+ BPT - the power of a GA to let you rapidly set up your economy is pretty strong...the power of multiple GA's doing it can be game breaking!

I often prefer to settle artists; the +culture/turn is nothing to sneeze at.

As far as golden ages: only if I feel I have enough developed cities to really take advantage of it. Usually bulbing or settling takes priority for me, though.

More wonders equals more GPs, which equals more GAs, which equals more GPs, which equals more GAs, which equals more wonders.

I *hate* losing turns to anarchy, so I try to coincide major civics changes with golden ages. Also I will often run a select set of civics during the golden age, and switch to the new ones at the end (for example, I will often run pacifism during a golden age to pump out great people).

Tiny empires get settled great people because they provide a significant boost to 1 city. If 1 city is 33% of your empire, that's a big boost to the empire.

Big empires get Golden Ages because settled Great People don't do much for the empire as a whole if one city is just 5% of the total empire. Excection: Great Priests and Great Merchants.

If a good bit of my cash is coming from a city with a Shrine and a few gold enhancing buildings, then a settled Great Priest or Great Merchant can let me boost up the science percentage even higher and get quite a bit more research out of my empire. This is especially important if I have problems with unhappy people or have the espionage slider on.

Why? If I can increase my science % from 60% to 70%, then I'm going from perhaps 600 beakers per turn to 700 beakers per turn. That's about a 17% increase in science per turn. If I go from 20% science to 30% science, though, that's a whopping 50% increase for my entire empire. If I have 20% culture and 20% espionage with 40% going to money, that means only 20% to science. If I can get that 40% money down to 30% money, then I have another 10% left to spend on Science. That's going to be an enormous difference in how long it takes me to hit my next tech.

Because the majority of my cash often comes from one city while the science generally comes from my entire empire (minus the production cities), I usually get a good return from settled priests and merchants - the extra food or production also helps the cash city as well since that shrine city is often also a production city.

I usually run 2 GAs from specialists costing 1 and 2 GPs, plus Taj Mahal if possible. The third GA costing 3 GPs begins to seem expensive when you can use some of them as lightbulbs, trade missions or espionage missions. That leaves the GArtists and GProphet with nothing worthwhile to do in the late game. So I guess if I had both of those two sitting around then I'd add a third GP for another GA, it sort of only costs 1 (useful) GP. :D

The Mausolleum of Mausolles is the only wonder in the game I really care about getting. I wait until the dark ages to do my first golden age, since by then I'll have something like 10+ large cities. An extra 15 production and commerce in all cities for 12 turns is a huge boost. Artists are almost always one of the GP I use to start the GA.

A GA is best post-medieval. Around that time bulbing and settling bring to lose their value compared to a Golden Age.

If I am going to save up GPs to use for a Golden Age or two, I usually try to plan it for a major Civics overhaul where I swap out 3-4 civics at once, maybe medieval or industrial era.

Failing that, I'll wait until I'm in early ship building to get production bonuses and research bonuses on the remaining techs.

before industrialism, the game is going to go on (probably) for long enough that bulbing/settling/building academy/shrine etc. is worth more than an eight turn GA. after that, bulbing only saves a couple of turns and settling and building buildings is not going to help much, so a GA is better value.

also, you will have a larger empire by the end of the game and GAs are more powerful with empire size

Often, when i start massive bank/university building and later when factories come online, then maybe during the space race or army build/upgrade.

when I'm working enough tiles to jutify one and and alot of those tiles produce both commerce and production. If your working less than a hundred tiles I find it's rarely worth it. Another factor is how many building/civic modifiers for commerce and productio you got going (forges, libraries, organized religion etc.) to take advantage of the additional tile bonuses. Another good reason would be to win the space race which has been stated.

Late in the game, if I'm in a space race.

I usually go for the tech that gives you laboratories (superconductors ?) then race up the rest of the tree. At some point, after your labs are buiolt and you are working flat out to buld several modules while researching the next bit, activating a GA bumps up production and research across the board.

It's a space-race-turbo ....

My two most common times to pop GAs are at the end of the liberalism race and just prior to getting fusion.

On the higher difficulties, I often find that I have to burn an early GA or lose out on getting liberalism. If possible, having the GA last one turn past acquiring liberalism helps in that I can flip to FS (assuming cottage spam), mercantilism, and maybe representation.

For close space races, nothing is better than a late golden age. If I didn't nab the Taj, it is not uncommon to have 3 GAs during the space race to pound up the tech tree and crank out components.

Far more rarely I use GAs to keep the war machine running when I'm about to go on strike. Normally this is when I'm opting for my second or third civ kill racing up to currency and my science is specialist driven.

I'll generally burn a GS for education to get Liberalism, have my first or second GA with the Taj after taking Nationalism w/ Liberalism, and then try and manage my GPs after that for as many golden ages as possible, with an ear to getting techs like Economics, Communism, Physics, etc. to get those free GPs. Since GAs increase GP rates the strategy kind of feeds itself.

If Philosophical this works well and I can generally get about 5 GAs- and with the Mausoleum thats 60 turns of GA production, not too shabby. (But, you really need to manage your cities and need 2 or 3 cities that can churn out GPs, and you need to be monitoring them so the GPs stagger. E.g. if one city has the next guy coming in 9 turns and that city has a significantly higher rate than the city with the guy coming in 11 turns, slow down the faster city so the slower city goes first, etc. Also this strategy works better when you really try and maximize GP production with Caste system, Pacifism, and the Parthenon if possible. The only drawback is GAs favor empires that work as many tiles as possible so if you are using food on specialists you are then losing the benefits of what those citizens would be producing if working tiles.)