Hapiness x New City / Population

[Bliss]

Hello, fellas.

What is the criteria that you use for deciding between faster golden ages or founding a new city, or even planning ahead on the size of population? I want to smash my head in the wall everytime that I start thinking about how to capitalize these happy smiles on my screen.

 

[tetley]

Golden ages don't factor into it at all; it's about the national wonders. Don't found a city when you're ready to start building NC, you know.

 

[joncnunn]

Agreed with the above poster.
Also there are times in which if founding a new city would delay a GA, it's actually a good thing since it will be more powerful later.

 

[Bliss]

Golden ages don't factor into it at all; it's about the national wonders. Don't found a city when you're ready to start building NC, you know.

Seriously? How can 25% culture bonus and +gold and production be negligible? It may be the difference between building a world wonder or not. Not to mention the civilizations that have GA-related UAs.

 

[Fluffball]

I usually see golden ages as a pure bonus and only plan [around] them when it is actually going to make a real difference.e.g. if i am about to gain a golden ages from another source i will aim to hold that off until i achieve a 'natural' golden age from happiness so they can run concurrently. For that example if i take the artificial one it will significantly delay the natural one because i won't be working towards it while in the artificial golden age and that artificial golden age will raise the cost of the next natural golden age.
In most cases the immediate small bonus of a golden age is generally outweighed by the long term bonus of founding a city earlier for example and being able to build it up sooner.

As joncnun also mentioned delaying golden ages in the early game which is when you will usually be expanding is generally a good thing because for example 25% of 10 culture is not as good as 25% of 15 culture.

If in a specific instance a golden age may give you a real and significant advantage.e.g. about to build a contested important world wonder and about to enter a golden age and it would be the difference between getting it or not them obviously yes you will want the golden age but how many times has a natural happiness obtained golden age really made a significant difference to your games in the past? Even with a golden age related civilization?

How many times have you been at the end of a game and been close to a natural golden age which if you had achieved it would have made the difference between winning and losing?

If a golden age is really going to make a difference then yes you should aim for it otherwise the best way to capitalize on all the happiness you have is to expand where prudent then otherwise grow, grow, grow as expanding appropriately and growing as much as possible will have a much greater impact on your whole game than a short lived golden age with generally minor bonuses.

 

[TyBoy]

It's not that golden ages aren't decent, but the cost of a happiness inspired one is big too.

How much you want to value a point of happiness for one turn is a bit subjective, 2g was clearly the value the devs were using to start out with, but they've pulled back on some of the sources that used that value (i.e. ceremonial burial). It's still the value for luxury sales though, so I'll go with it.
Also, figure you're going to get a couple golden ages anyway in the course of a game even if you try and use your happiness as aggressively as possible. The happiness point that moves you into negative happiness is extremely costly and it's just not practical to sit at exactly 0 happiness all game.
That means the marginal golden age costs 1250 happiness, or 2500g. That's a lot.

 

[Ryika]

Seriously? How can 25% culture bonus and +gold and production be negligible? It may be the difference between building a world wonder or not. Not to mention the civilizations that have GA-related UAs.

You'll get the golden ages eventually, and each time you get a golden age it takes (much) longer to get the next golden age, the bigger the empire is, the more you profit from a golden age, so it's often times useful to delay the first golden ages, so they're not wasted early on but come when your economy is stable and thus provide a real bonus. You'll probably lose 1, maybe 2 golden ages in total (didn't do the math, that's an assumption), those that would have come very early on, and instead you've grown your empire, which lets you profit more from later golden ages.

At least that's my reasoning. Can't really say I'm anywhere near being an upper-tier player, but at least those whose let's plays I watch do it pretty much the same.