Golden Age micro

[ben-jammin]

I feel like I'm not getting as much as I could out of golden ages. The obvious thing is to time it for civic changes, which I think everyone knows. But I'm unsure about the rest of what I'm doing.

I don't whip during a GA. I feel like that's a no-brainer because every tile worked has become more valuable. But as an extension of that, how does that balance with the increased GPP? I presume you want to increase the number of specialists as high as possible in the city (or two) that will produce the next GP. Again this seems obvious but I'm not totally sure because you'll be working tiles that get no bonus to run those specialists.

Is it a good idea to starve your cities just short of shrinking in order to work commerce/hammer tiles? If it is then would it also make sense to time your golden age to start a turn or two before growth in cities that have appropriate tile layouts to work? Or does it just make more sense to grow and use that extra population?

What is best to build during a golden age? I always figured that unless you were using your GA as a buildup to a war, the obvious thing would be to target the most expensive buildings you want in each city. Does it make sense to build wealth or research during a golden age in cities with multipliers? If you're building a wonder somewhere you expect to produce a GP, does it make more sense to use the golden age to build the wonder faster, or to trigger it just before or after it'll be completed to double the GPP it adds?

 

[Farm Boy]

From what I have seen you do not necessarily alter build orders just to make use of extra hammer/commerce.

While I am too lazy to do this, there have been some exceptionally effective examples of Great Person production during GAs. One tactic seems to be to switch into Pacifism at the beginning of the golden age, run every specialist possible(yes, starve the bejeesus out of them) in a city or two for the entirety of the GA, then switch back out of Pacifism on the last turn.

 

[ecuwins]

While I am too lazy to do this, there have been some exceptionally effective examples of Great Person production during GAs. One tactic seems to be to switch into Pacifism at the beginning of the golden age, run every specialist possible(yes, starve the bejeesus out of them) in a city or two for the entirety of the GA, then switch back out of Pacifism on the last turn.

This, coupled with Caste can generate some serious GPP. Early on, it's usually enough to get more GPs for the next GA.

All that said, I usually try to fire one off when I'm building the six Universities for Oxford.

 

[Farm Boy]

Good call, thank you. I forgot to add that you would jam Caste System in there along with Pacifism to run more specialists. Remember, a city can only shrink by one population per turn, so if you are starving down a pop - might as well make it good and thorough!

 

[bobbyboy29]

It's usually a good idea to grow cities up just before GA's as well so that you can make the most of the extra hammers slash commerce so you should probably stop or at least slow down on the whipping for 5-10 turns before the GA.

As for GPP, just pick the cities from which you plan to squeeze out GP's and run as many caste specs as possible, you may want to fill the food bin up a bit before the GA so you can starve it down during.

Going into GA's you should always also have a plan on which civics you plan on adopting at the start, and which at the end, this can vary with the timing but usually I find this means economic/GPP civics (caste system, philo etc.) at the start of the GA, then into war civics at the end. You also want to co-ordinate picking up techs like economics which unlock civics you're sure to switch to before or during the GA.

 

[theskibum]

Good call, thank you. I forgot to add that you would jam Caste System in there along with Pacifism to run more specialists. Remember, a city can only shrink by one population per turn, so if you are starving down a pop - might as well make it good and thorough!

Is starving down the pop really a good thing though? Each pop point you lose requires time to re-build. The usual advice for GA timing is around the time of Education/Libralism/Nationalism techs since you have typically gone through a nice period of vertical growth just prior to this. I suppose with high food you can grow back fairly quickly, but that means the cities you starved are less productive for maybe 10-30 turns just after the GA (grow back time dependant) than they would have been if you hadn't starved them down. This not only means less and tiles worked after the GA, but also less pop to use as specialists for that city.

The loss of GPP points apres GA is probably not much of an issue if you were running Caste and Pacifism during it (good GPP adder/multiplier), but the loss of and after the GA may just negate the increase you had on those items during it. I suppose I can see the logic in doing this in your GPP city, but why would you ever do it elsewhere?

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I don't whip during a GA. I feel like that's a no-brainer because every tile worked has become more valuable. But as an extension of that, how does that balance with the increased GPP?

I'd turn that around - it's not that every worked tile has become more valuable, but rather that every happy citizen has become more valuable. That's why we don't (generally) whip during a golden age -- the opportunity cost to do so is higher than usual.

(Which offers the hint that you might reasonably whip at the end of a golden age, before your last civics swap).

You probably do want to burn through food surplus, though -- after all, the GA doesn't boost food. Use what you have stored in the food bar to hire an extra augmented specialist or work an extra mine.

Generally, +1 hammer is going to be worth more than +1 commerce, so you'll probably lean that direction a bit in tile assignments.

What is best to build during a golden age? I always figured that unless you were using your GA as a buildup to a war, the obvious thing would be to target the most expensive buildings you want in each city.

I don't think "most expensive" is the right ordering here -- the golden age doesn't really make the more expensive buildings more useful relative to other buildings. Maybe a forge/hammer multiplier/gpp multiplier so that it multiplies some of the GA bonus. But if you were normally going to build a Colosseum then a Cathedral, I don't see value in reversing the order just because the Cathedral is "more expensive". Base hammers are base hammers.

That said, I do think that "buildings" are generally going to be the right answer, because you have that nice window to slip into and out of Organized Religion.

Does it make sense to build wealth or research during a golden age in cities with multipliers?

Not really - again, it's just base hammers. (Reminder: research/wealth/culture multipliers don't multiply the research/wealth/culture that you build).

If you're building a wonder somewhere you expect to produce a GP, does it make more sense to use the golden age to build the wonder faster, or to trigger it just before or after it'll be completed to double the GPP it adds?

If you are asking about delaying the golden age until after the National Epic is finished... maybe. If you are wanting to boost the +2 engineer points of the Hagia Sophia -- I'm sure without mathing it out that you shouldn't wait for that.

 

[Farm Boy]

Starving down pop might be a good thing, yes. As VoU put it with his uncommon clarity of thought, food is the resource that isn't amped up by the GA. I have seen games posted were a golden age popped out 2-3 Great Persons and laid pretty solid groundwork for 1 to 2 more. Largely it comes down to what resources you can use now. If you have a couple cities that are mostly valuable for their food rather than other reasons, and they can both feasibly generate a GP, it can make sense to burn through that food during a period when it will get the greatest returns.

I view this in roughly the same camp as drafting the snot out of high food and minor cities at either the cannon or rifles breakpoints for aggression. Sure it sets that city back significantly, particularly if I am drafting out of my GP farm because I put the National Epic and the Globe Theater in the same spot. What is more useful right now though? Muskets to back my cannons or an additional Great Person or two when corporations roll around? If I have already invested heavily enough to get early cannons I either already know the answer or I have made a pretty serious strategic mistake.

 

[ben-jammin]

Can't beleive i never bothered to switch into pacifism for the golden age, it seems so obvious. That would if I'm not mistaken make the Shwadegon a bit more powerful than I thought.

VoU, I say the most expensive building you want in that city because the expensive buildings have a higher return, with the tradeoff that they take forever to build in cities without a ton of production. A golden age should be able to get them to within at least 2-3pop whipping range which then gives you that higher return more quickly. For example, you might be wanting to build both a bank and a market in a city as you go into a golden age. Why would you build the market first when you could get the bank faster than normal and then get the +50% while building the market, intsead of having the 25% while slowbuilding the bank. My first golden age usually goes towards building forges...they're hammer intensive but that 25% hammer bonus is huge , that's what I mean by most expensive building that you want.

If I'm getting this right, for GP purposes it makes sense to have your GP farms stocked almost to the top with food for the first turn of the GA to maximize GPPs through starvation?

 

[Farm Boy]

Managing through starvation will probably depend partially on game speed. Since one you are shrinking, you shrink once per turn "hardcore" starvation will cost more on Marathon than Standard.

I don't know that I would hold off on triggering a GA just to cap food in the NE city, the GPP production is just one of the good things you get from a GA. Plus it would seem kinda silly to me to trigger a GA using a great person primarily just to force more great people. That seems pretty counter productive given the rising costs of both GP production and GA triggers. Being able to produce replacement and maybe even an extra or two GPs during the GA is just icing on the cake.

I mentioned earlier I was too lazy to do this in my games even though I recognize the potential value, so I have not tested to see if it would make sense to work a mega-food tile or two(assuming that you have this in the NE city, probably) to blunt the turns until shrink begins, it would probably depend on the situation. Once you are actually starving off population you might as well go whole-hog, since the food deficit has the same practical effect be it -1 or -20.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

VoU, I say the most expensive building you want in that city because the expensive buildings have a higher return, with the tradeoff that they take forever to build in cities without a ton of production. A golden age should be able to get them to within at least 2-3pop whipping range which then gives you that higher return more quickly. For example, you might be wanting to build both a bank and a market in a city as you go into a golden age. Why would you build the market first when you could get the bank faster than normal and then get the +50% while building the market, intsead of having the 25% while slowbuilding the bank.

I'm not questioning market vs bank, or bigger vs smaller, so much as changing the order in a golden age.

Naive model - using numbers chosen for easy math, rather than accuracy. Let's suppose we've got a city that produces 10 hammers per turn. So the market is 15 turns, and the bank is 20 turns. After 35 turns, you have both, so the difference between the ordering is just the profit you get in the middle - either 20 turns of market or 15 turns of bank.

Now, imagine that the golden age gives us an additional 10 hammers per turn (combined in base hammers and production bonusess). That basically shaves 8 turns off of the total time - everything is even after 27 turns. So we can go market->bank, and get 19 turns of market, or bank->market, which gets us 15 turns of bank.

I think you're threading the needle pretty finely if you think 15 turns of bank beats 19 turns of market, but not 20 turns of market.

Now if you consider something like a 3 pop whip at the end of each construction, you are looking at 7 turns + recover time of bank vs 12 turns + whip recover time of market.

Assuming, again naively, that it only makes sense to whip on the last turn of the golden age, and further assuming that we can only schedule one whip.... well, we're still getting about 160 hammers plus what - 115 from the whip? If we juggle carefully, we either finish the market with 125 hammers invested in the bank (recover + 7 turns) or finish the bank with 75 hammers in the market (recover + 7 turns).

Hmm - so what happened? essentially, that we didn't finish the market as quickly as we could because we were fussy about the timing of that whip. We whip the market just before the end of the golden age, rather than at turn 3 when it was first whipable, losing 5 or so turns in time.


Which reminds me - one might want to micro build orders so that many whips are possible on the last turn of a golden age. Sure, you stack unhappy, and you cut the golden agen down to 7/8 it's normal base yield, but you also get an extra 7 or 8 hammers out of each pop you whip before you swap out of your builder civics.

 

[vranasm]

First GA I usually try to use to pump out 2-3 scientists out of 2-3 cities.

It was demonstrated by Kossin in one of his DR games (right now I don't remember the number... probably 37?).

You need caste (obviously), pac, spread religion, free great person to start the GA and 2-3 cities with at least size 10 population. These cities will be starved until they give you GP (typically one of the cities is your capital, another GP farm and then you just have to find another one which is already grown).

This way you get ultimate position for winning Lib Race.

That's for smaller empires (6-8 cities).

Another good timing of GA is if you successfully rushed couple of neighbors, sitting at 10+ cities and pulling your hair about negative gpt with negative future. Pulling GA at this point can help you with getting needed infra and covering the costs of huge empire for short time.

Timing as always is critical.

edit:
oh this first GA you ofc use to get to Education (that is the target) with switching into slavery and OR at the end to get OU in shortest time possible

 

[ben-jammin]

I'm not questioning market vs bank, or bigger vs smaller, so much as changing the order in a golden age.

Naive model - using numbers chosen for easy math, rather than accuracy. Let's suppose we've got a city that produces 10 hammers per turn. So the market is 15 turns, and the bank is 20 turns. After 35 turns, you have both, so the difference between the ordering is just the profit you get in the middle - either 20 turns of market or 15 turns of bank.

Now, imagine that the golden age gives us an additional 10 hammers per turn (combined in base hammers and production bonusess). That basically shaves 8 turns off of the total time - everything is even after 27 turns. So we can go market->bank, and get 19 turns of market, or bank->market, which gets us 15 turns of bank.

I think you're threading the needle pretty finely if you think 15 turns of bank beats 19 turns of market, but not 20 turns of market.

It beats it either way, considering the bank gives you twice the modifier, so I don't really understand what your argument is. The better example was forges.

Now if you consider something like a 3 pop whip at the end of each construction, you are looking at 7 turns + recover time of bank vs 12 turns + whip recover time of market.

Assuming, again naively, that it only makes sense to whip on the last turn of the golden age, and further assuming that we can only schedule one whip.... well, we're still getting about 160 hammers plus what - 115 from the whip? If we juggle carefully, we either finish the market with 125 hammers invested in the bank (recover + 7 turns) or finish the bank with 75 hammers in the market (recover + 7 turns).

Hmm - so what happened? essentially, that we didn't finish the market as quickly as we could because we were fussy about the timing of that whip. We whip the market just before the end of the golden age, rather than at turn 3 when it was first whipable, losing 5 or so turns in time.

In cities with low production like I was talking about, building the bank for the full 10 turns likely gets you nicely within 2 pop whip range. These tend to also be the cities with good commerce, so whipping 3 population and then recovering is losing out on more than production bonus.

Which reminds me - one might want to micro build orders so that many whips are possible on the last turn of a golden age. Sure, you stack unhappy, and you cut the golden agen down to 7/8 it's normal base yield, but you also get an extra 7 or 8 hammers out of each pop you whip before you swap out of your builder civics.

That might be practical for your first golden age, but in later golden ages 7 or 8 hammers extra from a whip would be less than the tile bonus in most cities not even including commerce.

 

[Quaren]

It beats it either way, considering the bank gives you twice the modifier, so I don't really understand what your argument is. The better example was forges.

Think his point was that a Golden Age shouldn't affect your choice of build order since the difference is so small that what is best without the golden age is best during the golden age. (in this case the bank unless you need the happiness)
I mean if you need a library and a university in the same city you wouldn't build the more expensive one first just because you have a Golden Age. Even if you get the Uni faster you also get the Library faster.

 

[vicawoo]

Although it's a lot of hassle to switch most of your cities into starving into specialists, the harder task is to grow out all your cities to their ideal specialist size by the time the golden age starts.

 

[Cusanus]

One detail about Golden Age micro I just found out recently:

to avoid anarchy due to civic/religion changes, you don't have to start the GA before switching - it works either way.

This is very ueful sometimes, when you have a GP just lingering around because you were planning to start the GA in a few turns - and an AI comes asking you to accept their religion.
Just do it, start the GA to quench the anarchy, do all the civic changes, switch religions back after 5 turns - enjoy the almost spiritual feeling of happiness.

 

[ben-jammin]

One detail about Golden Age micro I just found out recently:

to avoid anarchy due to civic/religion changes, you don't have to start the GA before switching - it works either way.

This is very ueful sometimes, when you have a GP just lingering around because you were planning to start the GA in a few turns - and an AI comes asking you to accept their religion.
Just do it, start the GA to quench the anarchy, do all the civic changes, switch religions back after 5 turns - enjoy the almost spiritual feeling of happiness.

Definitely did not know that, excellent.

 

[Zechnophobe]

One detail about Golden Age micro I just found out recently:

to avoid anarchy due to civic/religion changes, you don't have to start the GA before switching - it works either way.

This is very ueful sometimes, when you have a GP just lingering around because you were planning to start the GA in a few turns - and an AI comes asking you to accept their religion.
Just do it, start the GA to quench the anarchy, do all the civic changes, switch religions back after 5 turns - enjoy the almost spiritual feeling of happiness.

That... would not have occurred to me to try. I will go out of my way to cause anarchy and try this .