Golden Ages

[jdchambe]

I rarely go for golden ages, but there are occassionally circumstances where a short term need to speed up production on some of your key cities is worth the sacrifice of the GPs. Sometimes it will be to rapidly build up a military defense if an aggressive neighbor got a better start than you. Others it might be to guarantee completion of a woner that you really need/want (though when I do the latter, I'll try to have a couple wonders going in parallel so I can maximize that benefit. Other times I might find it's worth it if my own military assault is waning in it's effectiveness and I just need that momentary production boost to fuel the assault a few decades longer to complete the conquest of a neighboring civ.

Those cases are all very context specific and really very uncommon. I will try to have contingency plans for them if I can though.

After burning my first few GPs on techs or culture, or special religious buildings, I will frequently keep one or two in reserve if they aren't immediately needed and save them for when I know better what they should best be spent on. I also save them so that if I do find myself where I really need that across-the-empire production boost, I'll be able to jump into the golden age.

In other words, I do plan for being able to use a golden age if I need it, but I almost never do so, and end up buringing them on something else eventually.

[joncnunn]

I usually, but not always have something better to do with great people than golden ages.

Depends upon which tech(s) the Great People can provide at the moment and what it's normal unique structure is.

In addition, the expected time before the next great person that's a different type plays a role.

[nbarclay]

My usual strategy is to use great people for other things early in the game, but late in the game, I almost always triger one GA and not infrequently two using great people. Late in the game, there isn't enough time left for settling a great person in a city or building a special building to do as much good. That makes triggering a GA a lot more attractive.