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Perhaps the most underutilised, and possibly undervalued, of the uses of Great People is the starting of a Golden Age. As a result, the Golden Age use of GPs has attracted little investigation so, in the interests of expanding our collective understanding of the game, I took a look at a few numbers from a game to see how we might compare it with other uses.
Before I go into detail, let’s perhaps consider where a Golden Age might be a valuable use of GPs. To do this we have to compare it with the three other uses of our GPs, namely:
1) Settling in a city
2) Rushing a tech (or speeding up research in the same)
3) Special ability (rush build, great work, academy, shrine, trade mission)
It is easy to see when we might select the first option since the benefit generated from settling GPs is a fixed (and small) increase in food, production, gold, beakers, and/or culture for the duration of the game. A GP who settles early in the game with therefore produce more than one who settles later. The benefit of settling reduces as the game progresses in contrast to all the other uses.
The other important thing to realise is that settling in a city affects the base input values of a city rather than directly affecting the output.
The second option, rushing a tech, is the simplest and easiest to consider since this gives us a “base value” (measured in beakers) of the GP that we have. The amount of beakers generated depends on the population of the civilisation and on the association of the type of GP with the techs available. In some cases, it seems that certain types of GPs may actually “run out” of techs to rush.
So when might this option give a better value than the other three? The answer to this question is best made by reversing it. If we use the “base value” as our starting point then what we need to find out is when to select another alternative over the “lightbulb” option. We have already made a basic attempt to answer this for the “settling” option in the previous example so it remains to see when we might want to use the special ability of contribute our GP as one half of a Golden Age initiation.
At this point, it might also be suggested that the GP could be used to rush a “wonder tech”. Although normally, I might use this term simply to apply to techs that give a one-off benefit to the first civ to reach that far. But it could also refer to any tech that provides an opportunity with its early discovery that would not be available later. Examples of this would include: rushing a tech as part of a sling tactic (eg rushing CoL to allow Oracle to get CS), or simply rushing a tech that gives a major military advantage which could be converted into profitable conquests.
The third option is the most varied since it combines some which give a sudden rush (culture or gold) and others that require time to pay off (shrine and academy). The rush build is both of these. For wonders where the build is almost assured, a rush build is simply a free hammer bonus. For those where the build is unlikely to be finished the benefit is the “value” of the wonder benefits over the duration of its life. Either way, we can place a value on the special ability and compare it to our “lightbulb” to determine for ourselves the better use. Because of the nature of the special abilities, those of Prophets and GS are likely to be better value early in the game while GA and GM are of more value in the middle-to-late game where the real comparison will be between a “lightbulb” and using the special ability. For the GE rush build, the hammer bonus approach tends to give a relatively poor value so, if we consider the real value of the GE rush as the value of the build itself, then we have to consider each individual build on its own merits.
So finally we return to the original subject, that of the Golden Age. Like the first option of settling, the Golden Age affects base city inputs of production and commerce. But like the second option of “lightbulbing” a Golden Age is really a “shot in the arm” benefit because the period of the direct benefit is relatively short. So far a start we can at least surmise that the Golden Age is a late-game option.
Unlike all of the other options, the Golden Age requires two GPs so the burning of these for one Golden Age needs to be compared to the alternative benefits that both of these might provide.
But how do we even measure the real effect of the Golden Age. Since it attaches to the basic tile benefits, it might at first be difficult to see what effect this has on the set output. Burning two GPs just to see what happens can be an expensive experiment if we find out that we get a lot less than we had hoped. But equally, we don’t really want to go through every city and calculate a “before” and “after” output of science, gold and hammers on which to base our decision.
Fortunately, the Taj Mahal is on hand to help us so we don’t need to do anything more than compare the civilisation wide output with and without the Golden Age. This is what I have done and noticed the following effect on output in the turn after the Golden Age ended.
Science reduced by 210 bpt
Production reduced by 48 hpt.
The production number surprised me a little since I had around 20 cities and it would be very odd to find that less than 3 tiles per city we producing a hammer – notwithstanding that these hammers will also be affected by building and civic multipliers. Let’s assume that I got things wrong and the actual figure should be 80 hpt. It is quite possible that certain tile improvements or city growth has led to an increase in the base hpt which managed to partly offset the Golden Age bonus.
For comparison with other figures, I will have to explain that the situation was on Epic so the Golden Age lasts 12 turns.
Total benefit = 210b * 12 + 80h * 12
= 2520b + 960h.
Let’s now assume that we can value hammers to beakers at a rate of 2h=3b. The precise number you ought to use would vary over time and reflect the different multipliers you have for each city. If your average hammer multiplier is +50% and your average science multiplier is +100% then the ratio is 3h=4b.
With a 2:3 ratio we get
Total benefit = 2520b + 960h*3b/2h = 3960b
In other words, our individual GPs would need to be worth more than 2000b each (by using a different ability) for that option to be preferred over the Golden Age.
Of course, I DO have some other information on the immediate value of GPs since I had recently sent a GM to Delhi for trade and netted a healthy 2800g. What’s more, one adjusting the slider rate in the “Finances” sheet, I can deduce that my gold/beakers conversion rate is approximately 1g=1.4b.
Applying this to the trade mission income I can place a minimum value of 4000b the trade income “shot in the arm”. In other words, if I had a Great Merchant and lesser value GP, I would be better off killing the other GP and sending the Great Merchant on a trade mission than burning both of them for a Golden Age.
This is perhaps a rather particular example and I prefer to think that it illustrates the high value of the GM’s special ability rather than the poor value of the Golden Age options. Merchants aside, a lot of GPs at this stage of the game may have lost the key value that they add to the game and so revert to their base value of “lightbulbing”.
I do hold out a certain hope that there will be situations where the equations change. For larger empires with large developed cities (and plenty of mixed production and commerce tiles from windmills, watermills, specials etc) the Golden Age can be a truly powerful option. But for even a medium sized empire, my advice would be to stick with the more traditional uses of those GPs and, in the late game, this will mean “lightbulbing” for most of them.
Before I go into detail, let’s perhaps consider where a Golden Age might be a valuable use of GPs. To do this we have to compare it with the three other uses of our GPs, namely:
1) Settling in a city
2) Rushing a tech (or speeding up research in the same)
3) Special ability (rush build, great work, academy, shrine, trade mission)
It is easy to see when we might select the first option since the benefit generated from settling GPs is a fixed (and small) increase in food, production, gold, beakers, and/or culture for the duration of the game. A GP who settles early in the game with therefore produce more than one who settles later. The benefit of settling reduces as the game progresses in contrast to all the other uses.
The other important thing to realise is that settling in a city affects the base input values of a city rather than directly affecting the output.
The second option, rushing a tech, is the simplest and easiest to consider since this gives us a “base value” (measured in beakers) of the GP that we have. The amount of beakers generated depends on the population of the civilisation and on the association of the type of GP with the techs available. In some cases, it seems that certain types of GPs may actually “run out” of techs to rush.
So when might this option give a better value than the other three? The answer to this question is best made by reversing it. If we use the “base value” as our starting point then what we need to find out is when to select another alternative over the “lightbulb” option. We have already made a basic attempt to answer this for the “settling” option in the previous example so it remains to see when we might want to use the special ability of contribute our GP as one half of a Golden Age initiation.
At this point, it might also be suggested that the GP could be used to rush a “wonder tech”. Although normally, I might use this term simply to apply to techs that give a one-off benefit to the first civ to reach that far. But it could also refer to any tech that provides an opportunity with its early discovery that would not be available later. Examples of this would include: rushing a tech as part of a sling tactic (eg rushing CoL to allow Oracle to get CS), or simply rushing a tech that gives a major military advantage which could be converted into profitable conquests.
The third option is the most varied since it combines some which give a sudden rush (culture or gold) and others that require time to pay off (shrine and academy). The rush build is both of these. For wonders where the build is almost assured, a rush build is simply a free hammer bonus. For those where the build is unlikely to be finished the benefit is the “value” of the wonder benefits over the duration of its life. Either way, we can place a value on the special ability and compare it to our “lightbulb” to determine for ourselves the better use. Because of the nature of the special abilities, those of Prophets and GS are likely to be better value early in the game while GA and GM are of more value in the middle-to-late game where the real comparison will be between a “lightbulb” and using the special ability. For the GE rush build, the hammer bonus approach tends to give a relatively poor value so, if we consider the real value of the GE rush as the value of the build itself, then we have to consider each individual build on its own merits.
So finally we return to the original subject, that of the Golden Age. Like the first option of settling, the Golden Age affects base city inputs of production and commerce. But like the second option of “lightbulbing” a Golden Age is really a “shot in the arm” benefit because the period of the direct benefit is relatively short. So far a start we can at least surmise that the Golden Age is a late-game option.
Unlike all of the other options, the Golden Age requires two GPs so the burning of these for one Golden Age needs to be compared to the alternative benefits that both of these might provide.
But how do we even measure the real effect of the Golden Age. Since it attaches to the basic tile benefits, it might at first be difficult to see what effect this has on the set output. Burning two GPs just to see what happens can be an expensive experiment if we find out that we get a lot less than we had hoped. But equally, we don’t really want to go through every city and calculate a “before” and “after” output of science, gold and hammers on which to base our decision.
Fortunately, the Taj Mahal is on hand to help us so we don’t need to do anything more than compare the civilisation wide output with and without the Golden Age. This is what I have done and noticed the following effect on output in the turn after the Golden Age ended.
Science reduced by 210 bpt
Production reduced by 48 hpt.
The production number surprised me a little since I had around 20 cities and it would be very odd to find that less than 3 tiles per city we producing a hammer – notwithstanding that these hammers will also be affected by building and civic multipliers. Let’s assume that I got things wrong and the actual figure should be 80 hpt. It is quite possible that certain tile improvements or city growth has led to an increase in the base hpt which managed to partly offset the Golden Age bonus.
For comparison with other figures, I will have to explain that the situation was on Epic so the Golden Age lasts 12 turns.
Total benefit = 210b * 12 + 80h * 12
= 2520b + 960h.
Let’s now assume that we can value hammers to beakers at a rate of 2h=3b. The precise number you ought to use would vary over time and reflect the different multipliers you have for each city. If your average hammer multiplier is +50% and your average science multiplier is +100% then the ratio is 3h=4b.
With a 2:3 ratio we get
Total benefit = 2520b + 960h*3b/2h = 3960b
In other words, our individual GPs would need to be worth more than 2000b each (by using a different ability) for that option to be preferred over the Golden Age.
Of course, I DO have some other information on the immediate value of GPs since I had recently sent a GM to Delhi for trade and netted a healthy 2800g. What’s more, one adjusting the slider rate in the “Finances” sheet, I can deduce that my gold/beakers conversion rate is approximately 1g=1.4b.
Applying this to the trade mission income I can place a minimum value of 4000b the trade income “shot in the arm”. In other words, if I had a Great Merchant and lesser value GP, I would be better off killing the other GP and sending the Great Merchant on a trade mission than burning both of them for a Golden Age.
This is perhaps a rather particular example and I prefer to think that it illustrates the high value of the GM’s special ability rather than the poor value of the Golden Age options. Merchants aside, a lot of GPs at this stage of the game may have lost the key value that they add to the game and so revert to their base value of “lightbulbing”.
I do hold out a certain hope that there will be situations where the equations change. For larger empires with large developed cities (and plenty of mixed production and commerce tiles from windmills, watermills, specials etc) the Golden Age can be a truly powerful option. But for even a medium sized empire, my advice would be to stick with the more traditional uses of those GPs and, in the late game, this will mean “lightbulbing” for most of them.
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