Era score question

[El Presidente]

I have 32 of 26 points needed for a golden age. Will I get anything extra for having extra points?

[tempest.of.emptiness]

No. Once you have enough points to qualify for a golden age, you may want to save any era point triggers you have control over (and can afford to delay), to use in the next era.

[Dray Prescot]

Nope (You get PENALIZED (or Hurt) for having the EXTRA Era points when you get in the next Era), the more Era points you have at the end of the Era, the HIGHER the amounts of Era points you will need in the next Era to get to Normal Age and Golden Age. I have verified this by replaying the same game from saved games, with different end of amounts of Era points when the changeover happens.

So as tempest says, try to save the extra Era points to the next Era IF you can, i.e. by delaying when you build things, upgrade units, get new Techs or Civics, find Natural Wonders with explorers, acquire Great Persons by buying them with Gold or Faith, expend Great Person abilities, etc. that generate Era points.

It is not always possible to delay the EXTRA Era points, but any you take NOW (before the new Era) will NOT be available NEXT Era AND they RAISE the amounts needed in that new Era. So NOT delaying/saving the Extra Era points costs you TWICE for any points NOT delayed until the next Era (or from a different point of view any Era points you delay/save to the next Era benefit you Twice in reaching the Normal/Golden Age requirements in the next Era).

Delaying/Saving Era Points could also apply if you are over the Normal Age point requirements but do not not enough time and points to reach the Golden Age requirement before the new Era starts. Again you would want to save those extra points. It could even apply if you are stuck in a to be Dark Age for the next Era.

Sometimes IF I do not know for certain if I will reach the requirements for Golden/Normal Age, I will delay some Era points (IF I can) until just before the Era change when I will know if I should take them now (and how many now) and get the Golden Age or delay them if I can NOT get the Golden Age.

I have also noticed that the length of Eras depends mostly on the other Civs in the game, if a lot of Civs are in Golden Ages or Normal Ages, that Era will tend to be 40 turns or at least shorter than 60 turns. Then the next Era when a lot of Civs are in Dark Ages and very few are in a Golden Age, that Era will tend to last 60 turns giving them more time to get Era points.

This can lead to alternating short Eras (40 turns) followed by long Eras (60 turns) followed by short Eras (40 turns), etc. I have had Eras that lasted 50 turns.

The ONLY time I have EVER had a DARK AGE was when the very first Era in the game only lasted 40 turns and I was concentrating on building up my existing cities instead of expanding and exploring. 40 Turn Eras often make it hard(er) for me to reach the Golden Age requirements, but easier to delay excessive (more than I needed) Era points to the next Era.

By the way, the Dark Age had some unusual Policies that were only available to it (which I did not use). While the following Heroic Age, I could chose 3 out of the normal 4 Dedications instead of only being to chose one of them. (They were the same Dedications to choose from). That Heroic Age with the 3 Dedications operative was nice.

Unfortunately, I do NOT think that YOUR Civ having a LOT of Era points has ANY affect on how many Era points that the OTHER Civs need to reach Normal/Golden Age in the current or future Ages. Only their own Era points seem to matter for them (This is hard to be certain of, but I think that it is the case). The only possible affect is that often the First Civ to get something gets more Era points than later Civs do when they get that same something.

[w.f.schepel]

You can easily afford to get too many points. Almost every single game I play, I get back to back golden ages from start till finish. You get points for just about anything you do, and if you get your archeologists ready at the right point in time, you won't even need to bother with wonders and/or great persons you don't otherwise care about. So forget about all the guy with the insane wall of text tells you: it just doesn't matter.

[Dray Prescot]

But when you have a short 40 turn Era, it can be difficult to get a Golden Age, particularly if you did not save the Era points in the previous Era. I have had some games that alternated between 40 turns and 60 turns per Era until the end of the game. (see I can write a short answer too).

[merccobb]

The only penalty is that any points you earn in the previous era will not be available in your current era. The formula to determine how much era score you need to hit a normal age is Current Score + 12 - 5*(# of previous dark ages) + 5*(# of previous golden ages) + # of cities. A golden age is then always + 12 after you secure your normal age. So as you can see, any points earned above and beyond a golden age simply push the total you will need for a normal age out further, since your current score at the end of the era is always the starting point for this formula. It doesn't effect the differential, in other words it has no effect on the number of points you will have to earn during the era itself, you will need to reach a higher total but will be starting from a higher base. It can make it slightly harder, though, since those points could have been saved to be earned in your current era, as Dray pointed out.

[Dray Prescot]

So Civs with a LOT of Cities, will need more Era points to reach Normal Age in each new Era, which also affects the points needed to get to Golden Age. One small penalty for having a very large (many Cities) Empire.


THANK you, @merccobb for the formula on how many Era points are needed in a New Era to get a Normal Age. It is interesting and useful.

So building a number of small Cities that will never grow large enough to do anything useful, does have an impact on how many Era points are needed for each new Era. About the only thing that they do is keep another Civ from building at the same locations. Though often enough in later Eras, you may need those small Cities to make accessible various strategic resources such as coal, oil, etc. or luxury good siites, or even a source for some positive Loyalty Pressure for a long Range expedtion to build or capture Cities with lots of negative Loyalty Pressure on them.

I think that there should be something in the formula to adjust how many Era points are needed to get a Golden age over a Normal Age depending on what happened earlier in the game and/or the number of Cities; later in the game 12 Era points is not a big difference, compared to the much larger number of points needed to get to a Normal Age.

As I remarked above, the Turn Length of an Era (or Age) makes a BIG difference in achieving a Normal/Golden Age. My ONLY Dark Age came after a 40 turn starting Era. Also How many Civs are in a Golden Age/Heroic Age versus a Dark Age seems to affect the length of the current Era. I am not sure if the number of Civs in a Normal Age affects this also. Do you happen to know how this is figured? Do events/things for any/all of the Civs in the game in the current Age affect the length of that Age? I think that I may have seen a 1 turn variation in the ending date of the Same Era when replaying several times from saved games. I would not be surprised if completely eliminating one or more Civs from the game could affect the length of the current Era or future Eras somehow, i.e. by changing the number of currently alive Civs are in a Golden Age or a Dark Age

I have seen as much as a 10 turn difference for the 4th Era change date for the same game when I restarted the game from saved games or restarted at the beginning.