On Towards the Stars: Era score and Golden Ages
[This post is part of a larger strategy guide for Civilization 6]
In my opinion, there are two reasons to care about getting era score and Golden Ages.
The first reason is because of its impacts on loyalty pressure. A Golden Age will result in a 50% increase in loyalty pressure against enemy civs. A dark age results in a 50% decrease. That is a massive swing that has huge impacts on your ability to wage a successful offensive war. If you're in a dark age, it's basically impossible to keep hold of enemy territory, and you will have to commit to either razing or continually recapturing rebellious cities. That in turn means more military investment for smaller rewards.
The second reason is because the first three eras let you grab the Monumentality (spend faith on civilian units) or Exodus of the Evangelists (+4 Great Prophet Points per turn, +2 spread religion charges for missionaries) Golden Age rewards. If you have any amount of faith generation, the former option can give you "free" settlers and builders, which are incredibly helpful in the early game to start your ramping engine. And in the ancient era, the latter can be the delta that lets you get a religion and lets you quickly spread it to other civs that are potentially on the other side of the map.
(And of course, it goes without saying that there are several civs that have special abilities based on era score, most prominently Suleiman the Magnificent.)
With all that in mind, it's really useful to know how to get era score quickly, so that when you're on the boundary of a golden age you can push your civ over the top for the next era. Here are the things that I will generally do when I realize I'm 10 turns away from the next era, and on the border of a golden age.
Figure out how much gold I have and how much I can get. A lot of techniques for building era score depend on creating specific units, and if I'm in a time crunch it's a lot faster to buy than to build. If there's AI in the game, look for trades that may be beneficial.
Try building or buying a unique district/unit/builder improvement. These are a consistently useful way to get a lot of era score. You almost always want to build these, and Golden Eras synergize well with unique units because of the obvious benefit towards war and timing pushes. If you're about to miss a golden age, sprinting to research and building one of the above may tip you over the line. Note that sometimes it's better to do the opposite: if you're already in a golden age, delaying building your uniques can give you a head start towards a second golden age in the next era.
Try building a boat if I haven't done so yet. In a lot of Pangaea games, you may not ever have to build navy units. That means you might be missing out on some cheap era score. I've bought my fair share of galleys a turn away from the next era to successfully land a last minute golden age. (The same applies to planes, but that's often too late game to really matter)
Try building a unit that requires a new strategic resource. Swordsmen (iron), horsemen (horses), muskets (niter) etc. Again, don't be afraid to trade — human players are much more likely to trade strategics than an AI.
Try finding and defeating a nearby barbarian camp. This one only applies in the early game (up to the medieval era), but that's also when golden eras have the most impact.
Try researching a civic or tech from the next era.
Try getting a great person. It's rare that I'll have the ability to buy one of these with faith or gold when it'll make a difference on the era score, but it's always worth checking.
Settle near a volcano/flood plain, on snow/tundra/desert, on a new continent, or near an opponent (risky!). Again, it's rare that I'll have a settler wandering around at the right time, but this one is easy to plan for well in advance.
Beyond this list, there's a few other ways to quickly get era score depending on the situation:
In the ancient era, meeting other civs and finding goodie huts both builds score. Get those scouts out and explore! (You also get a bonus if you manage to meet everyone)
Becoming the first suzerain of a city state gives a solid chunk of era score. This is also mostly relevant in the ancient era — if you're the first person to meet a city state and can easily accomplish its quest, you're almost guaranteed to get the suzerain if you try.
There's a bunch of ways to consistently get era score while at war, including:
Defeating enemy units with a nearby great general (also a great reason to get great generals if you're playing a war heavy game, as otherwise it's quite tricky to get the era score you need);
Flipping a city state to your side, even for a single turn;
Defeating a corp or army with a regular unit.
Obviously, the above list is incomplete — it's worth quickly skimming the full list of era score generating actions. In general, the main takeaway should be that you can quickly rack up era score if you try.
