What do you do w/extra cash in golden age?

[johncmcleod]

Hello

Whenever I get a golden age I never know what to do. What do you guys do?

[Franses]

I never do something specific related to the golden age itself with it. I use it for everything that I need at that particular time and if there is nothing that I need, I will save it.

[nbarclay]

In most games, first priority is to get my research rate to four turns per tech or as close to it as possible. When I have extra gold after maxing out my research rate, whether I'm in a GA or just have a very strong economy, my next priorities tend to be courthouses and, later, police stations and factories in my outlying cities. (Core cities can build all the improvements they need themselves eventually without much trouble, but more distant cities need an extra jumpstart.)

Not that there aren't exceptions. In mini-tourney 2, for example, I built tons of horsemen early in my GA (after having had my iron supply cut off) and later used several turns' income to upgrade them to cavalry. Those pesky Russians who had cut off my iron supply didn't exactly like the resutls .

Nathan

[miccofl]

When the bankroll gets large, it’s time for culture flipping. If I have a large supply of cash, I’m built up as far as I can go and by that time I have spies. With enough cash and culture you can take over a civ with only an assault on its’ capitol. (To finish the job!)

[dawidge]

All of the above, depending on circumstances. If I'm in a tech hole, depending on the disparity I'll either buy my way out of it, or dump it into research. If I need to kickstart the builder phase, I'll buy a few improvements. Other times, I'll just save it up for the eventual unit upgrades.

[nbarclay]

The thing I like about rush-building courthouses is that I'm investing the gold instead of just saving it. A well-placed courthouse brings an immediate financial advantage, and the extra shields it brings help in building marketplaces and banks for more gold and libraries and universities to leverage gold into research more efficiently. (Not to mention the happiness benefit of marketplaces, which can help a city support more citizens to provide more gold, or the cultural benefits of libraries and universities.) Come to think of it, I'm not exactly shy about rushing marketplaces either when I want a city in WLT?D without wasting citizens as entertainers.

I've never done an investment/return analysis to verify whether what I'm doing is truly optimal, and I suspect that a lot of my investment (especially in late-game factories and police stations) is more useful in terms of perfecting my empire than in terms of actually winning faster. But the idea of having gold just sit there when it could be doing something useful gnaws at me.

Nathan

[dawidge]

I'm exactly the same way. It is probably more productive to turn those cities to producing wealth rather than trying to grow. The problem is when the game runs much longer than you'd expected. I once tried letting the new captures sit there and crank out $$ and the game took a lot longer to seal. Just for SnG, I reloaded the save (specifically marked for the start of the experiment) and tried rushing courthouses and factories. By the end-game, these cities were building MA to help press the attack. It was hardly a scientific study, but it was helpful. If nothing else, the courthouses and factories make them better wealth machines.