3 golden ages for the price of one great person?

I was thinking about this recently and some of you may have thought about it already, but golden ages after you have a nicely developed empire are very powerful. However, triggering them by building your own great people is increasingly expensive (first 2 gp, then 3, then 4, then 5 and gp get more expensive over time!!!).

So I was thinking

There are 4 free gp on the tech tree: GA (music), GM (economics), GS (physics), and GE (fusion). And you get a "free" golden age from the taj mahal.

If you manage to get all 4 gp and the taj mahal (easy if you take nationalism off liberalism) then you can have 3 golden ages for the price of 1 great person (100 gp points theoretically, although you probably won't want to save your first one that long).

The first one would be taj, after your empire is starting to thrive, the second one could be using the GA and GM and could come after you rush buy all your universities, observatories, etc. to make the push for computers via physics. And the final one could be with the GS, GE and one of your own and come when you are building all your spaceship parts.

Of course it is conceivable that you could generate 4 and then even 5 of your own to have 1 or 2 additional golden ages in the industrial/modern eras.

I rarely get the GA and almost never get the GM although I usually get the GS and nearly always get the GE. But I figure why not get the GA and the GM and have a free golden age?

This frees up your great person production to be pure scientists to keep on lightbulbing for as long as possible (through scientific method).

What do you think?

You surely want to secure the new BTS wonder Maussoleum of Halicarnasse on your way. That could be a good strat to leverage this rather strange wonder.

By the way, your strat implies a decent tech rate to secure the free GPs.
Do you think this is doeable in every game ? (what difficulty level do you have in mind ?)

It's hardly for the "cost of one GP." You have to look at (1) the cost of doing what you need to do to get all those free GPs/the free golden age, and (2) the opportunity cost of using the GPs for golden ages.

Building the Taj Mahal is a hassle unless you have a great engineer to burn on it.

As for the "free" GPs for getting to techs first - to get those you have to devote research in a direction other than you would probably go (I really don't need music/cathedrals that soon, and have little use for economics, physics and fusion other than getting the GP).

But beyond that, once you have them, saving them for a golden age involves a sacrifice of what you would otherwise do with them (culture bomb, another academy, trade mission, etc.). Using a great engineer on a golden age seems particularly unwise, when there's three gorges/space elevator to be built.

I usually try to farm great engineers. Every once in a while, though I'll get that great artist I don't need, or that great prophet after all the shrines have been built. These I'll often save for a late golden age (especially during spaceship building time).

Charou said:

You surely want to secure the new BTS wonder Maussoleum of Halicarnasse on your way. That could be a good strat to leverage this rather strange wonder.

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I think with the new random events features Golden Ages may become more frequent adding to the Maussoleum's power.

svv said:

It's hardly for the "cost of one GP." You have to look at (1) the cost of doing what you need to do to get all those free GPs/the free golden age, and (2) the opportunity cost of using the GPs for golden ages.

Building the Taj Mahal is a hassle unless you have a great engineer to burn on it.

As for the "free" GPs for getting to techs first - to get those you have to devote research in a direction other than you would probably go (I really don't need music/cathedrals that soon, and have little use for economics, physics and fusion other than getting the GP).

But beyond that, once you have them, saving them for a golden age involves a sacrifice of what you would otherwise do with them (culture bomb, another academy, trade mission, etc.). Using a great engineer on a golden age seems particularly unwise, when there's three gorges/space elevator to be built.

I usually try to farm great engineers. Every once in a while, though I'll get that great artist I don't need, or that great prophet after all the shrines have been built. These I'll often save for a late golden age (especially during spaceship building time).

Click to expand...

I agree with you and do the exact same thing, but the game is complex and this is just an idea. There are 4 great people kicking around on the tech tree. What to do wit them? This is just one option that I'm throwing out there.

And the title is more tongue-in-cheek than anything else, I thought that was obvious

sneaky said:

I think with the new random events features Golden Ages may become more frequent adding to the Maussoleum's power.

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Probably.
I started a thread on the BTS forum, asking about the usefulness of the Maussoleum.

If I remeber correctly, there is another free great general (fascism) which can also be used to trigger golden age. And in BTS, there could be another free great spy by first discovering communism?

thresh74 said:

If I remeber correctly, there is another free great general (fascism) which can also be used to trigger golden age. And in BTS, there could be another free great spy by first discovering communism?

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Can Great Generals be used to trigger Golden Ages in BtS? Because they can't in Warlords..

frob2900 said:

Can Great Generals be used to trigger Golden Ages in BtS? Because they can't in Warlords..

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Yes, you are right. Sorry for mistake. It is a little bit strange that why GG can not trigger golden age.

Another question: Is that right that after you get the free great person, the point required to get next great person increases? If so, it will make more difficult to get another GP.

Well, beelining to Music(GA) and Economics(GM) in order to be the first to discover them, rarely fits into my strategies, so I would have to sacrifice otherwise valuable research into other techs I might need more at a given time, to get those 2 free GPs = one Golden Age.

Is it doable? Yes, in most cases.

Is it worth it? Depends on the situation. Most times, I would rather beeline towards other techs.

I usually have some 'leftover' GPs and GAs in the late game to use on Golden Ages - you know, those irritating useless GP's that emerge when you really, really need a GS or GE. Everybody knows what it's like to pick up a GP, when the odds are like 90%-10% in favour of a GS.

Building the Taj Mahal is a hassle unless you have a great engineer to burn on it.

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Burning a GE on Taj is hardly, EVER worth it. I would much rather absorb that GE into my capital than waste it in such a manner. Though I suppose, if you had 800 cities, then maybe it would be ok.. however..

I don't find much hassle in building the Taj. At least on monarch, this one is easy to get. Liberalism uses free tech to grab nationalism and BOOM. There you go, big jump ahead of the AI, no need to rush-build. A few turns, and it's built, though if you've been lightbulbing your Great People's away, your capital won't be the hammer powerhouse it could be so things will go slower. But then again, in theory lightbuilbing could put you ahead in tech, so you'd have more time before the AI catches up to you and beats you to completion.

Compromises... Myself, I NEVER lightbuilb, this is why I have such an overkill production POWERHOUSE as my capital and leave tech slider at 0 for 90% of my game-time. But I can understand why people do it, it's just not my style.

I easily grab Taj and never burn a GE on it. But I usually have marble in my empire by that point and I'm in no hurry to go to war at that point, so no problem. I don't often build it if I am going for domination though.