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Numerous changes and additions have made Golden Ages more important in BtS than Vanilla or Warlords. In no particular order, these are:
1. One fewer GP required to trigger GAs (one for the first, two for the second, etc.).
2. +100% GPP generation during GAs.
3. No Anarchy for Civic changes during GAs.
4. An extra GP type (the Great Spy) that can trigger GAs.
5. The Mausoleum of Mausollos: +50% GA length.
6. Events that grant free GAs.
The following is a strategy designed to abuse the Mausoleum's effect, using the synergy present between the effects listed above. We're looking at 60-96 turns of Golden Age over the course of the game, which is significant considering that your typical game is decided in about 350 turns.
General Outline and Tech Path
Generating so many GPs requires heavy use of Specialists. The fastest way to generate a lot of Specialists of different types is by being Philosophical and by running Caste System. All these Specialists will require Food/Farms to feed, so we're going to rely on the Pyramids and Representation to keep our research high and make up for the lack of Cottages.
Your capital should seek to build a Worker, then a Settler as soon as possible afterward. If you've got a lot of Food resources and you have the appropriate techs, it's okay to let the cap grow a bit, otherwise just pump out the Settler at size 2 or 3. If you're Imperialistic and started on a Plains Hills I would serisouly consider going Settler-first, especially if you can work another 2-3 Hammer tile.
Either your capital or your first expansion will be building the Pyramids. If you got lucky and have access to Stone, build the Pyramids in the city that has the most Forest around it (this is usually your capital). Otherwise choose the city that has the greatest non-Forest Hammer potential - usually via Hills, but also Copper/Horses on Plains. Churn out a few Workers from both cities first (say, 3-4 total) then focus on improving the land around the Pyramids city. The other city can then build a few Warriors for defense and a Settler when it reaches its Health/Happy caps.
Since you're Philosophical you unfortunately can't be Industrious at the same time, so the Pyramids will take a while to complete. This sets back your expansion. If you find yourself close to an AI consider declaring war in order to slow down their Settlers; it's amazing what a handful of Warriors can accomplish in this regard. Make sure to sign a peace treaty before the AI comes after you though.
After the Pyramids, expand like crazy. There's no need to switch to representation right away; this will just slow you down (unless you're Gandhi). With your first few cities you're looking for Food potential. Specifically, you want to set up your Scientist/Merchant/Artist pumps up as soon as possible, and these don't require much other than Food.
Your next goal is to reach Code of Laws for Caste System. You could try for Oracle slingshot here, but given all the time and resources put into the Pyramids and expansion (and defense), you can't realistically expect to get it. Instead, focus on the Writing - Mathematics - Currency - Code of Laws path, using Scientists and Representation to get there. Conveniently this will generate your first GP (a Great Scientist) which is what you'll use to trigger your first GA once you finish the Mausoleum. So the next tech on the agenda is Calendar.
The Pyramids should produce a Great Engineer just after your first Great Scientist. It's up to you whether to rush the Mausoleum with this Engineer, or save it and build the Mauoleum from scratch. The AI does not build it particularly quickly, so with a decent Hammer output in your Artist city you should be able to get it. Then again, we're in a part of the game when military becomes rather important, so it's tempting to just rush the Mausoleum and be done with it. The way your GP pumps will be set up (see below) you don't want to spend the Great Engineer on a GA so early, so if he doesn't build the Mausoleum he's likely to sit around for quite a while. For this reason I favor rushing the Mausoleum.
With Mausoleum in hand it's time to trigger your first couple of GAs. Use the first GA to switch Civics, most importantly for Caste System. Beeling for Philosophy (pretty easy with Code of Laws in hand) and switch to Pacifism in your next GA for the +100% GPP rate. Ideally you either have a Religion already or just found Taoism. In the latter case go into Organized Religion for a few turns in order to spread Taoism without having to build Monasteries (this is where the new "no anarchy during GAs" rule really shines).
Unless you see an opportunity to strike at a weaker neighbor, I recommend focusing on infrastructure in your first few GAs. You'll definitely need to go a-conquering eventually, so use your next GA or two to build up an army. Put it into action immediately in order to avoid Pacifism upkeep.
Spam Cottages in all lands you conquer: while a Specialist economy is great for research early on, it can't compete with a Town economy in the late game. Furthermore, Representation doesn't help you pay Maintenance costs, so building Cottages ensures that your conquests pay for themselves. Rememeber that you only need 6-7 GP pump cities (one for each Specialist). At a certain point (say, the Renaissance era) they should be the only ones maintaining Specialists.
After Philosophy, research Machinery unless you can trade for it. Watermills and Windmills will help you maximize your GAs by putting Hammers on every tile (Workshops are inefficient so early on). Then it's on to Civil Service and Nationalism for the Taj Mahal. Again, it's your choice to rush it with second Great Engineer. If you're really leading in tech, you should gun for Economics and Physics and their free GP. More of than not, rather, you'll find your research lacking at this stage, so I would recommend researching the military branches instead. In either case all those GAs should leave in you a very good position for the late-game, and all the victory conditions (except for Cultural) should be viable options.
Making Gold
Here's a rough guide for triggering your GAs:
First GA: Great Scientist
Second GA: Great Scientist, Great Merchant
Third GA: Great Scientist, Great Merchant, Great Artist
Fourth GA: Taj Mahal
Fifth GA: Great Scientist, Great Merchant, Great Artist, Great Engineer
Sixth GA: Great Scientist, Great Merchant, Great Artist, Great Engineer, Great Prophet
Seventh GA: All types
Great Scientists, Merchants and Artists shouldn't be a problem because of Caste System. In the case of Great Artists there are also a number of Wonders that produce GPP-Artist, so you might not even need to run that many Artists Specialists.
The next "easist" GP type to produce is Great Engineer: even if you spend your first couple of them rushing Wonders, in the late-game GPP-Engineer are relatively easy to come by because that's the type you want in most of your cities (for the Hammers). Also, if you get that far in the tech tree, it's relatively easy to beat the AI to Fusion for the free Engineer.
Great Prophets comes next. Your Great Prophets should come from your Moai Statues city, which should have a excess Food from seafood resources to support as many Religions as you can spread there. Add in a Cathedral and eventually you'll get the two Prophets you need.
The most difficult one to produce (in my opinion) is the Great Spy. The simplest thing to do is just to beeline for Communism and pick it up there. Alternatively, you can try to generate one the hard way very late, possibly with the help of the National Epic.
Anatomy of a Golden Age
As you know, a Golden Age gives you one extra Hammer and Commerce in every tile that is already producing at least one. Of the two, the Hammer bonus is definitely more significant. Since this strategy revolves around maximizing GAs, we should look into maxmizing this Hammer bonus.
The first way of doing is to switch yor tile usage around, favoring Hammer tiles over Commerce tiles. Usually this means slowing or halting growth, and that's ok. In particular, you shouldn't be working coastal tiles during a GA. For example, if a city is at +2 Food surplus and is working 2 Coast tiles in order to grow, switch these over to Plains tiles during a GA. Of course, if city is just 1-4 turns away from growing, let it do so.
A second of way maximizing Hammer output during GAs is ensuring that a majority of your tiles produce at least one Hammer to begin with. Ideally your empire is filled with Plains tiles, as these fit the bill without any work on your part; a River Plains tile with a Farm on it is as good as it gets. If, instead, you have a lot of Grassland or Flood Plains at your disposal, put Watermills and Workshops on them instead of Cottages and Farms. You can either do this permanently, or build these improvements anew whenever you trigger a GA (you'll need a lot of Workers on hand to do this). This works for Specialist economies because, unlike Cottages, you don't lose anything from switching from one improvement (Farms) to another (Watermills).
If you're planning to stay in Pacifism for your GA instead of converting to Organized Religion (see special considerations, below), then your GP pumps should keep their Farms.
Special Considerations:
1. GAs from Events
That I know of, there are two Events that give you a free GA. Clearly if you've got the Mausoluem you should try and set up the right conditions for them to trigger.
One is the "Runner" event. It triggers when an enemy civ declares war on you and it's the first war declaration of the game. This means that you seek to get the AI declare war on you. One way to do this is to keep your military on the weak side, and then use the free GA to repel the AI's assualt. Make sure to have build the Mausoluem before this happens!
Another is the "Colosseum" event. It asks you to build a certain number of Colosseums before a certain era. If you do, one of the options is to start a free GA. There's a catch, though, but I can't remember what it is at the moment.
2. Organized Religion versus Pacifism
The issue here is that, during a GA you're producing additional Hammers, which are most efficiently used when fed through Organized Relgion for the +25% bonus. However, by not running Pacifism you're missing out on the +100% GPP generation, so you future GAs are pushed back.
My instinct tells me that Organized Religion is the right choice here, but I'm not happy about it.
There's also the matter of Representation verus Police State. Here it's pretty obvious that if you're using the GA for military buildup, Police State is the choice for you.
3. When to Trigger
Put simply: don't wait to trigger your GAs; if you've got the necessary GPs sitting around, go for it. It's tempting to try and set up the "perfect" conditions for a GA, but generally earlier is better than "perfect" later.
The exceptions to this are: don't trigger before you're (more or less) finished expanding, and don't trigger if you don't have War Weariness under control.
4. Leader Choice
Lincoln (Phi/Cha): The free Happiness means you need even less infrastructure in your core GP pumps. Also, if you start out with a lot of Forest you could try for Stonehenge before Pyramids, setting up a source of Great Prophets in the process. Lincoln + Stone = you're going to have a good game.
Elizabeth (Phi/Fin): Financial is a lot less useful when you're running a Specialist economy. Then again, once you start needing Commerce later on it definitely helps. Not my top choice for this strat though.
Frederick (Phi/Org): This is one of the few cases where Org is superior to Fin. With few Cottages the Maintenace reduction is very welcome.
Alexander (Phi/Agg): The Aggressive trait plus the new awesome new Phalanx means you'll be in little danger while setting up. The Odeon is not that relevant since you're running Caste System anyway.
Pericles (Phi/Cre): Probably my top choice for this strat. Cheap Libraries means you'll have the best research early on with Representation, getting to those key techs (Caste System, Philosophy) sooner. And the free border expansions should make it for the slow expansion from having to build the Pyramids. Phalanx is just icing on the cake.
Gandhi (Phi/Spi): Fast Workers will help you build the Pyramids faster than any of the other Phi leaders. Plus you have the option of grabbing an early Religion. The Spiritual trait itself is not that great here though, becase you can time your Civic changes with your GAs.
Sitting Bull (Phi/Pro): You'll be able to defend yourself well enough, but this strat doesn't really let you make the best use of Sitting Bull's UU or UB.
Suleiman (Phi/Imp): Imperialistic is doubly useful in getting that second city up quickly and REXing like crazy once Pyramids is done. The Hamman is superb here: it's right on your tech path (Mathematics) and is an all-in-one Happiness/Health solution for your Hammer-poor GP pumps.
Peter (Phi/Exp): The free Health is definitely welcome as you won't be keeping any Forest in your empire.
Conclusion
While I can't claim that this is a killer strategy (for one, it's quite dependent on available land, especially Food), when it works it works, and it's really fun to be in GAs so much. I hope you enjoy making it work for you.
1. One fewer GP required to trigger GAs (one for the first, two for the second, etc.).
2. +100% GPP generation during GAs.
3. No Anarchy for Civic changes during GAs.
4. An extra GP type (the Great Spy) that can trigger GAs.
5. The Mausoleum of Mausollos: +50% GA length.
6. Events that grant free GAs.
The following is a strategy designed to abuse the Mausoleum's effect, using the synergy present between the effects listed above. We're looking at 60-96 turns of Golden Age over the course of the game, which is significant considering that your typical game is decided in about 350 turns.
General Outline and Tech Path
Generating so many GPs requires heavy use of Specialists. The fastest way to generate a lot of Specialists of different types is by being Philosophical and by running Caste System. All these Specialists will require Food/Farms to feed, so we're going to rely on the Pyramids and Representation to keep our research high and make up for the lack of Cottages.
Your capital should seek to build a Worker, then a Settler as soon as possible afterward. If you've got a lot of Food resources and you have the appropriate techs, it's okay to let the cap grow a bit, otherwise just pump out the Settler at size 2 or 3. If you're Imperialistic and started on a Plains Hills I would serisouly consider going Settler-first, especially if you can work another 2-3 Hammer tile.
Either your capital or your first expansion will be building the Pyramids. If you got lucky and have access to Stone, build the Pyramids in the city that has the most Forest around it (this is usually your capital). Otherwise choose the city that has the greatest non-Forest Hammer potential - usually via Hills, but also Copper/Horses on Plains. Churn out a few Workers from both cities first (say, 3-4 total) then focus on improving the land around the Pyramids city. The other city can then build a few Warriors for defense and a Settler when it reaches its Health/Happy caps.
Since you're Philosophical you unfortunately can't be Industrious at the same time, so the Pyramids will take a while to complete. This sets back your expansion. If you find yourself close to an AI consider declaring war in order to slow down their Settlers; it's amazing what a handful of Warriors can accomplish in this regard. Make sure to sign a peace treaty before the AI comes after you though.
After the Pyramids, expand like crazy. There's no need to switch to representation right away; this will just slow you down (unless you're Gandhi). With your first few cities you're looking for Food potential. Specifically, you want to set up your Scientist/Merchant/Artist pumps up as soon as possible, and these don't require much other than Food.
Your next goal is to reach Code of Laws for Caste System. You could try for Oracle slingshot here, but given all the time and resources put into the Pyramids and expansion (and defense), you can't realistically expect to get it. Instead, focus on the Writing - Mathematics - Currency - Code of Laws path, using Scientists and Representation to get there. Conveniently this will generate your first GP (a Great Scientist) which is what you'll use to trigger your first GA once you finish the Mausoleum. So the next tech on the agenda is Calendar.
The Pyramids should produce a Great Engineer just after your first Great Scientist. It's up to you whether to rush the Mausoleum with this Engineer, or save it and build the Mauoleum from scratch. The AI does not build it particularly quickly, so with a decent Hammer output in your Artist city you should be able to get it. Then again, we're in a part of the game when military becomes rather important, so it's tempting to just rush the Mausoleum and be done with it. The way your GP pumps will be set up (see below) you don't want to spend the Great Engineer on a GA so early, so if he doesn't build the Mausoleum he's likely to sit around for quite a while. For this reason I favor rushing the Mausoleum.
With Mausoleum in hand it's time to trigger your first couple of GAs. Use the first GA to switch Civics, most importantly for Caste System. Beeling for Philosophy (pretty easy with Code of Laws in hand) and switch to Pacifism in your next GA for the +100% GPP rate. Ideally you either have a Religion already or just found Taoism. In the latter case go into Organized Religion for a few turns in order to spread Taoism without having to build Monasteries (this is where the new "no anarchy during GAs" rule really shines).
Unless you see an opportunity to strike at a weaker neighbor, I recommend focusing on infrastructure in your first few GAs. You'll definitely need to go a-conquering eventually, so use your next GA or two to build up an army. Put it into action immediately in order to avoid Pacifism upkeep.
Spam Cottages in all lands you conquer: while a Specialist economy is great for research early on, it can't compete with a Town economy in the late game. Furthermore, Representation doesn't help you pay Maintenance costs, so building Cottages ensures that your conquests pay for themselves. Rememeber that you only need 6-7 GP pump cities (one for each Specialist). At a certain point (say, the Renaissance era) they should be the only ones maintaining Specialists.
After Philosophy, research Machinery unless you can trade for it. Watermills and Windmills will help you maximize your GAs by putting Hammers on every tile (Workshops are inefficient so early on). Then it's on to Civil Service and Nationalism for the Taj Mahal. Again, it's your choice to rush it with second Great Engineer. If you're really leading in tech, you should gun for Economics and Physics and their free GP. More of than not, rather, you'll find your research lacking at this stage, so I would recommend researching the military branches instead. In either case all those GAs should leave in you a very good position for the late-game, and all the victory conditions (except for Cultural) should be viable options.
Making Gold
Here's a rough guide for triggering your GAs:
First GA: Great Scientist
Second GA: Great Scientist, Great Merchant
Third GA: Great Scientist, Great Merchant, Great Artist
Fourth GA: Taj Mahal
Fifth GA: Great Scientist, Great Merchant, Great Artist, Great Engineer
Sixth GA: Great Scientist, Great Merchant, Great Artist, Great Engineer, Great Prophet
Seventh GA: All types
Great Scientists, Merchants and Artists shouldn't be a problem because of Caste System. In the case of Great Artists there are also a number of Wonders that produce GPP-Artist, so you might not even need to run that many Artists Specialists.
The next "easist" GP type to produce is Great Engineer: even if you spend your first couple of them rushing Wonders, in the late-game GPP-Engineer are relatively easy to come by because that's the type you want in most of your cities (for the Hammers). Also, if you get that far in the tech tree, it's relatively easy to beat the AI to Fusion for the free Engineer.
Great Prophets comes next. Your Great Prophets should come from your Moai Statues city, which should have a excess Food from seafood resources to support as many Religions as you can spread there. Add in a Cathedral and eventually you'll get the two Prophets you need.
The most difficult one to produce (in my opinion) is the Great Spy. The simplest thing to do is just to beeline for Communism and pick it up there. Alternatively, you can try to generate one the hard way very late, possibly with the help of the National Epic.
Anatomy of a Golden Age
As you know, a Golden Age gives you one extra Hammer and Commerce in every tile that is already producing at least one. Of the two, the Hammer bonus is definitely more significant. Since this strategy revolves around maximizing GAs, we should look into maxmizing this Hammer bonus.
The first way of doing is to switch yor tile usage around, favoring Hammer tiles over Commerce tiles. Usually this means slowing or halting growth, and that's ok. In particular, you shouldn't be working coastal tiles during a GA. For example, if a city is at +2 Food surplus and is working 2 Coast tiles in order to grow, switch these over to Plains tiles during a GA. Of course, if city is just 1-4 turns away from growing, let it do so.
A second of way maximizing Hammer output during GAs is ensuring that a majority of your tiles produce at least one Hammer to begin with. Ideally your empire is filled with Plains tiles, as these fit the bill without any work on your part; a River Plains tile with a Farm on it is as good as it gets. If, instead, you have a lot of Grassland or Flood Plains at your disposal, put Watermills and Workshops on them instead of Cottages and Farms. You can either do this permanently, or build these improvements anew whenever you trigger a GA (you'll need a lot of Workers on hand to do this). This works for Specialist economies because, unlike Cottages, you don't lose anything from switching from one improvement (Farms) to another (Watermills).
If you're planning to stay in Pacifism for your GA instead of converting to Organized Religion (see special considerations, below), then your GP pumps should keep their Farms.
Special Considerations:
1. GAs from Events
That I know of, there are two Events that give you a free GA. Clearly if you've got the Mausoluem you should try and set up the right conditions for them to trigger.
One is the "Runner" event. It triggers when an enemy civ declares war on you and it's the first war declaration of the game. This means that you seek to get the AI declare war on you. One way to do this is to keep your military on the weak side, and then use the free GA to repel the AI's assualt. Make sure to have build the Mausoluem before this happens!
Another is the "Colosseum" event. It asks you to build a certain number of Colosseums before a certain era. If you do, one of the options is to start a free GA. There's a catch, though, but I can't remember what it is at the moment.
2. Organized Religion versus Pacifism
The issue here is that, during a GA you're producing additional Hammers, which are most efficiently used when fed through Organized Relgion for the +25% bonus. However, by not running Pacifism you're missing out on the +100% GPP generation, so you future GAs are pushed back.
My instinct tells me that Organized Religion is the right choice here, but I'm not happy about it.
There's also the matter of Representation verus Police State. Here it's pretty obvious that if you're using the GA for military buildup, Police State is the choice for you.
3. When to Trigger
Put simply: don't wait to trigger your GAs; if you've got the necessary GPs sitting around, go for it. It's tempting to try and set up the "perfect" conditions for a GA, but generally earlier is better than "perfect" later.
The exceptions to this are: don't trigger before you're (more or less) finished expanding, and don't trigger if you don't have War Weariness under control.
4. Leader Choice
Lincoln (Phi/Cha): The free Happiness means you need even less infrastructure in your core GP pumps. Also, if you start out with a lot of Forest you could try for Stonehenge before Pyramids, setting up a source of Great Prophets in the process. Lincoln + Stone = you're going to have a good game.
Elizabeth (Phi/Fin): Financial is a lot less useful when you're running a Specialist economy. Then again, once you start needing Commerce later on it definitely helps. Not my top choice for this strat though.
Frederick (Phi/Org): This is one of the few cases where Org is superior to Fin. With few Cottages the Maintenace reduction is very welcome.
Alexander (Phi/Agg): The Aggressive trait plus the new awesome new Phalanx means you'll be in little danger while setting up. The Odeon is not that relevant since you're running Caste System anyway.
Pericles (Phi/Cre): Probably my top choice for this strat. Cheap Libraries means you'll have the best research early on with Representation, getting to those key techs (Caste System, Philosophy) sooner. And the free border expansions should make it for the slow expansion from having to build the Pyramids. Phalanx is just icing on the cake.
Gandhi (Phi/Spi): Fast Workers will help you build the Pyramids faster than any of the other Phi leaders. Plus you have the option of grabbing an early Religion. The Spiritual trait itself is not that great here though, becase you can time your Civic changes with your GAs.
Sitting Bull (Phi/Pro): You'll be able to defend yourself well enough, but this strat doesn't really let you make the best use of Sitting Bull's UU or UB.
Suleiman (Phi/Imp): Imperialistic is doubly useful in getting that second city up quickly and REXing like crazy once Pyramids is done. The Hamman is superb here: it's right on your tech path (Mathematics) and is an all-in-one Happiness/Health solution for your Hammer-poor GP pumps.
Peter (Phi/Exp): The free Health is definitely welcome as you won't be keeping any Forest in your empire.
Conclusion
While I can't claim that this is a killer strategy (for one, it's quite dependent on available land, especially Food), when it works it works, and it's really fun to be in GAs so much. I hope you enjoy making it work for you.
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