What happens to excess happiness during a golden age?

When my happiness balance is +X it means I get X extra points to my golden age counter every turn. During a golden age the counter disappears. What happens to the happiness points then? Is the balance still being kept and updated? Or is my happiness value frozen during the golden age?

• If the value is still being updated, what happens when it reaches the next threshold while the existing golden age still takes place? Does it trigger another golden age (i.e. lengthening the current one)?
• If the value is frozen during the golden age, does that means happiness score is meaningless during a golden age (with the exception of a negative balance which has other repercussions)?

Solution 1:

The happiness accumulated during a Golden Age is completely wasted. It does not count towards the next Golden Age, it just vanishes (probably spent on steroids, the additional production has to come from somewhere).

As far as I can tell, excess happiness during a Golden Age is mostly worthless, if you get a 30+ turn Golden Age you could probably sell all your luxury resources to the AI for profit.

Solution 2:

In Addition to great Fabian's answer I want to add a way how you can control the excess happiness without waisting it. By adopting Freedon SP branch you get a happy face per two specialists. So when your empire is in normal state make a lot of specialists, you'll get excess happiness and finally a golden age. During a golden age send your citizens to work on fields. You will not only save on those otherwise waisted excess happiness points, but would also better exploit +1prod/+1gold on fields generated by the golden age.