Correlation of invention + patent office to winning games

[churd]

I'm curious to see if my personal experiences match up with other players. At this point, I've finished 4 games, with a 1st place finish and 2nd place finish. I'm on track to place in the top 3 in 1 of my active games. Every time I've done well, my nation has achieved a victory for invention, then got patent office. Every time I've lost, that has not happened, or rather happened in another nation.

Obviously, this is a really low sample size. So I'm polling the message boards. Have you ever gotten invention + patent office and lost? Have you ever not got it, then won? If so, I'd like to hear from you.

[robin74]

My major game I won with Universal Healthcare. By the time we got to invention, the game victory was long decided. And I would actually finish much faster if I went for closed borders instead - introducing closed borders so that all the free riders who only slow you down can't join is in my opinion by far the superior choice.

[Xiratava]

So far all the games I've won were in small, 4-5 player civs with closed borders. We'd start off with a huge army, quickly "win" wonders and techs from other civs, and proceed with carefully planned science and cultural wins, along with the occasional economic one. In 2 games, my civ researched invention first, in the others another civ got it first, but in the end all my civ members were top 10, so I consider them all "wins".

I wouldn't say there is a correlation, especially as OP pointed out, n=2 has essentially no significance in this case.

[churd]

@robin74 I've had a game where my civ was using Universal Healthcare. It was something we switched to after a round of meritocracy because it was the best available. Generally, I think any civic that is +[resource], -gold is superior any civic which is +[resource], -[not gold]. Everyone knows that you make gold in the market instead of in harvests or trickle. So Universal Healthcare, Emancipation, and Public Broadcasting are acceptable civics to me, in terms of abstract value.

The issue comes from evaluating the game state at the time the civic comes into play. I suppose I've been blessed to play games that were relatively competitive. But in a situation where the game wasn't competitive to begin with, how much did Universal Healthcare affect the game? Meaning, was your nation's resources out-gaining other nations' resources because you had an extra population or two, or because you bought GPs.

I guess I should have specified in my earlier posts that I have been playing relatively competitive games. As soon as my nation got patent office, I felt a little like we were pulling away from the others. In the games I've lost, when the other nation got patent office, I felt like we were falling behind. Again, this is just personal perception.

@xiratava I'm not a guild player, but I'm guessing that as the guilds start playing games, we'll see if closed borders ends up being a difference-maker. That will increase N relatively quickly.

[Xiratava]

The thing is that in the late game, the only efficient, sustainable victory mode becomes science, so having +25% science is a huge boost. I think this is the reason you feel like the civs that adopt it start pulling away, because those science victories are usually what takes a game to its end.

PS: I'm not a guild player, I just find the active players and ask them if they want to make a smaller civ with closed borders.

[churd]

What you said about the only sustainable victory method was also the premise of the discussion. The way the tech tree is set up, it bottlenecks at Invention, then releases. Once you have Invention, you could potentially win any of the next three victories. Other nations have to research Invention first, before they can win any of the next three victories.

My thought is that when you get Patent Office, you are getting a bonus to science at the exact time when science is most important to winning a series of era victories. You can win a single era victory in any number of ways, but to string together a series of them, you need a set of circumstances to happen. I've seen nations run off three or four cultural victories at the beginning, and three or four military victories in the middle, in the right circumstances. Those circumstances just don't line up with the civics all the time.

I wish, for example, that Emancipation was positioned on an early technology, when people are actually fighting. As it is, it almost never gets used. Whoever got Industrialization first wins the fights for that time period, without the need of any other assistance, because Artillery is so cost-efficient. Emancipation is a good civic with bad timing, and doesn't end up mattering that much.

So I understand what you're saying about the limits of certain victory types. I feel like Patent Office is the best civic given the current limitations of victories.

[Xiratava]

Yep, exactly what I'm thinking; I guess I didn't phrase out my thoughts detailed enough in my earlier posts.