Golden age strategy?

[Ringo Kid]

Would it be a good strat to stockpile great persons while beelining the tech for taj mahal, and then building Taj Mahal and keeping the golden age going as long as posssible by cashing in the great people?

I have never tried that. Maybe good when going for a space victory?

 

[ecuwins]

If not spiritual, it's nice to time them for big civic switches. One of the more popular strategies is to use the Music artist, then switch into caste, pacifism, and possibly hereditary rule. Starve out at many GP as possible while teching Civil Service. Then, on the last turn of the golden age, switch into slavery, organized religion(or nothing if you are going to drop the religion for whatever reasons), and bureaucracy.

 

[OneLeggedRhino]

Would it be a good strat to stockpile great persons while beelining the tech for taj mahal, and then building Taj Mahal and keeping the golden age going as long as posssible?

Generally no. You will want to starve your cities to run specialists, and after one GA worth of that, you'll need to turn specialists off and turn food back on. So you'll need a pause between GAs.

But in general, GAs pay off more with developed cities (GAs don't help food, so a new city working mostly food won't see much impact). So saving them up until late game is a good idea, just not doing them all at once. That's one of the benefits of Spiritual.

 

[Yuri Lilovme]

There are 2 aspects to a GA :
- +100% GPP generation ;
- +1 hammer/commerce per tile producing hammers/commerce.


The added production/commerce is a big fat deal for a large empire but compares poorly to a bulb/trade mission for a compact one.

The GPP bonus helps chaining golden ages or can be used if you need several bulbs/trade missions in a row. The only prereq is to have 2-3 cities that will be able to produce their GP.

In that light, a small empire would prolly benefit more from a single GA + bulbs/TM than from a GA chain.
OTOH, a large empire would crave for GA chains. Especially if you're going for a space victory, since you're likely to have very large cities and work an absurd number of tiles.

The wonder is almost compulsory if you want to chain GAs, though. The wonder, by the way, isn't the Taj Mahal : it is the Mausoleum of Mausoles If you can't build it, take it.


Consider this :

Spoiler :

(Screenshot taken during a GA)

With 190 tiles worked, one can assume a GA produces around 100 base commerce/turn and as much production.
With the MoM, that lasts for 12 turns on normal speed.
Which means that over 12 turns, the bonus from the GA amounts to 1200 base commerce + 1200 hammers. Add in commerce/production multipliers and chaining GAs becomes incredibly attractive

EDIT : x-post with the above :

Generally no. You will want to starve your cities to run specialists, and after one GA worth of that, you'll need to turn specialists off and turn food back on. So you'll need a pause between GAs.

True under certain circumstances but not always.
If you have a wonderspam + national epic city, it can produce GPs of varied types at a quite fast rate, reducing the need to starve other cities.

 

[Ringo Kid]

I was thinking of stockpiling 15 gp's ( is that do-able?) which would give a 72 turn golden age chain. Do you think 72 turns of increased production would be better, or would the techs bulbed by the gp's be a better use for them, or even just 15 settled gp's.


Seems like maybe by the time you teched to the Taj you would/could have a large enough empire to make the golden age really pay off.

 

[Ringo Kid]

...
In that light, a small empire would prolly benefit more from a single GA + bulbs/TM than from a GA chain.
OTOH, a large empire would crave for GA chains. Especially if you're going for a space victory, since you're likely to have very large cities and work an absurd number of tiles.

The wonder is almost compulsory if you want to chain GAs, though. The wonder, by the way, isn't the Taj Mahal : it is the Mausoleum of Mausoles If you can't build it, take it.
....

Yes, def the Mausoleum... large empire.

 

[kossin]

I was thinking of stockpiling 15 gp's ( is that do-able?) which would give a 72 turn golden age chain. Do you think 72 turns of increased production would be better, or would the techs bulbed by the gp's be a better use for them, or even just 15 settled gp's.


Seems like maybe by the time you teched to the Taj you would/could have a large enough empire to make the golden age really pay off.

Why wait so long? Start GA's earlier and add in Taj Mahal somewhere down the line.

 

[Ringo Kid]

Why wait so long? Start GA's earlier and add in Taj Mahal somewhere down the line.

Good point.

 

[ben-jammin]

Good point.

Particularly because triggering a golden age while building the taj will get it built faster.

 

[Keilah]

each golden age takes +1 GPerson right? and bulbing is superstrong early, weaker later, right? So use bulbing early to help you build that giant empire in the first place, then bust out 3 GAges instead of 4, 4 instead of 5, whatevs.

let's just assume 10 GPeople in time to be useful, remember you could also trade 1bulb for 1 academy/trade mission or (bleh) settled GPerson
-10 bulbs
-9 bulbs 1 GA
-7 bulbs 2 GAs
-4 bulbs 3 GAs
-0 bulbs 4 GAs

Probably 7/2 or 4/3 is best, it's tough to find 9 useful bulbs and clearly 4/3 is >> 0/4
EDIT: or 9/1, going something like: academy, trade mission x3, bulb x5

I don't think I'd ever go past 3 GPerson-powered GAs

 

[2metraninja]

I'm a GA addict, but lately I am wondering - how powerful settling those GPs can be?

Sometimes I remember settling the first Great Prophet instead of launching a GA (I rarely - or outright never go for religions). Settling the GP gives me more gold than a GA would at the moment

But seriously - I have heard about a settled Gps economy. How viable it is?

 

[OneLeggedRhino]

But seriously - I have heard about a settled Gps economy. How viable it is?

Here's what a 10-pop cottage city gives you: Figure you have 8 good cottages at 3C each, plus 2 trade routes, for 30 commerce. With a 25% multiplier, that's 38C per turn. -10 for maintenance / civics, and we have a profit of 28/turn.

Here's what a settled GS gives you: Midgame, figure library and academy, for 10.5 bpt (16 with rep), plus a hammer. Once you have Education and Rep, that jumps to 27 bpt.

Add in the time to get that 10-pop cottage farm up to speed, and the settled GP is worth roughly one city.

 

[Ungeziefer]

I'm a GA addict, but lately I am wondering - how powerful settling those GPs can be?

Sometimes I remember settling the first Great Prophet instead of launching a GA (I rarely - or outright never go for religions). Settling the GP gives me more gold than a GA would at the moment

But seriously - I have heard about a settled Gps economy. How viable it is?

Very in an OCC

 

[AutomatedTeller]

The thing about waiting till later to kick off a GA is that it's hammer/commerce bonuses are less powerful. A grassland caste workshop in a GA has a 50% bump in hammers before Guilds/Chemistry. After guilds/chemistry, it has a 25% bump in hammers. Before rep parts, a windmill has a 100% bump in hammers, after, it has a 50% bump.

An early town has a 25% bump in commerce... after PP, it has a 16% bump.

I wouldn't particularly hold off on Golden Ages just to chain them after getting Taj Mahal. Generally, I try to get good use out of them in other ways.

 

[JulesDogg]

If I have the right Great Persons and going for a Space victory I really like to chain 2 or 3 golden ages when all cities are developed and strong and most are very busy building SS parts whilst researching the final techs.

In one game a while back I was able to run 4 GAs back to back with MoM on epic speed, that's a run of 60 turns in GA. The production pay-off was massive and victory came much sooner as a result.

The great thing about GPs is their versatility. Been experimenting with Mining Corp and Sushi Corp lately, this means intentionally going an Engineer and a Merchant and saving them for Railroad and Medicine to come in.

 

[JulesDogg]

I like the 'percentage boost' point AutoTeller makes but on the other hand the 'raw yield' from a GA when an empire is fully developed and has many cities working all their tiles is often huge.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

yes, it's big, no doubt.

Having a GA is a lot better than not having a GA, no doubt

I just don't know that waiting to have a GA later is better than having one right now. bear in mind that if yoiu have a GA early, you might be able to put yourself in a better position earlier, and maybe get that second GA earlier than you would have.

 

[Gwynnja]

The thing about waiting till later to kick off a GA is that it's hammer/commerce bonuses are less powerful. A grassland caste workshop in a GA has a 50% bump in hammers before Guilds/Chemistry. After guilds/chemistry, it has a 25% bump in hammers. Before rep parts, a windmill has a 100% bump in hammers, after, it has a 50% bump.

An early town has a 25% bump in commerce... after PP, it has a 16% bump.

I wouldn't particularly hold off on Golden Ages just to chain them after getting Taj Mahal. Generally, I try to get good use out of them in other ways.

I don't agree. The thing about kicking off your golden age early on is that you'll have far fewer tiles worked. You get the same extra hammer and commerce regardless of what percentage of the tile it accounts for whether you burn your first Great Person in the BCs or the free GE from fusion. If I were to try to chain golden ages, I'd want my first one to be while I was building the Taj.

 

[JulesDogg]

If I were to try to chain golden ages, I'd want my first one to be while I was building the Taj.

Why is that? Seems kind of polarised, inflexible.

 

[Gwynnja]

Why is that? Seems kind of polarised, inflexible.

For the production bump while I build the wonder.