An Idea

As we know, JAL ejected over a thousand nations a few months ago. Today, however, we have nearly caught up to the other Pacifics in population.

This indicates that smaller pacifics have a higher growth rate. Therefore, logically, if we are smaller we will get more of the founded nations.

If we make the region small enough, we will presumably get an overwhelming share of new nations. Therefore, it may be rational to eject all non-WA nations that join the region and do not register with us.

As a point of note, I do not suggest requiring RA membership, just some level of acknowledgement of us. I would make an OpenID-authenticated form for nations to simply register their residence in TNP with. Practically speaking, we would want to eject nations within a few updates, but take long enough so they would have a chance. I would combine this with a TG campaign -- we TG the nation, give it until its next log in or N updates whichever is first to register, then its added to a list for the Delegate to eject.

Now tell me how horrible and evil I am for even thinking of such a thing.

agreed 100%

... ethnic cleansing for the win!

Evil? You bet. Sustainable? Not since the introduction of influence.

Edit: I forgot to add that this would also create a steady stream of resentment by nations that consider their blanket ejection for refusing to register at another site unjust. Even without the influence cost, it would create a cause and eventually recruits for a rebellion.

We're talking about brand spanking new nations here.

They have epsilon influence.

lol... epsilon influence.

Anyway, I would guesstimate that Ermarian should be able to eject 10k-20k epsilon influence nations. I was able to do nearly 2k as a Minnow and I ejected older nations (non WA) up to 1 billion population once I ran out of newer ones.

I do admit it sounds temptingly pragmatic . But if the hypothesis of balancing nation births is correct, why does the Pacific hover at a far lower level than the other feeders without rising rapidly? The growth rate of all feeders looks very equal, as this plot shows:



(The periodic drops are CTEs, of course.)

Is it possible that the fast recovery of TNP has alternative explanations, such as ejected nations returning in the absence of a ban? Or even some manual adjustment by the game moderators, which they would refuse to do if we tried to exploit it?

Because it's not sufficiently different and size, and has a higher ejection rate?

I would doubt that the game mods would do so intentionally.

I'm sure that it's a function of how Max Barry originally wrote the code, back when the Pacific was huge and the other feeders were new.

Well, it is possible to conduct an experiment that will give evidence for or against the theory. The theory predicts that a new nation's probability of ending up in a given feeder is dependent on the feeder's size (more simply: A nation is more likely to end up in a small feeder than in a big feeder). The null hypothesis is that it is independent.

The raw data to evaluate this will be a list of newly created nations and their birth feeders. CTEs, migration and banjections can be ignored, since the game mechanics have no influence on those. The only way the game can balance the population is by making the birthplace biased.

If proportion of births in each feeder is plotted against that feeders size, we get five points. If the birth rate is independent on size, the five points should randomly fall around a more or less flat line at 20%, since the birth proportion doesn't depend on size. If it is not independent, then the five points should form a downward-sloping line that shows how the random generator favors smaller over larger feeders. Visually, something like either of these two plots, respectively (filled with arbitrary sample data here):



With a big enough sample size (say, observing all births for a week or two), it should be possible to pick up even a small effect with confidence.

I actually have megabytes of founding data from late 2006, around when Ivan shrunk the Pacific down to very little, through to late 2007, by which point things were reasonably close I think. I may not have as detailed a dataset for region size though. It can perhaps be reconstructed from the captured movements?

This is a serious project. I think I'll export the data to a separate database where we can play around with it. I'll contact you privately Ermarian with authentication details.

Lol

I'm wrong about lots of things but am convinced this is appalling

The rejected Realms will be swamped.

I think the recovery of TNP is just a case of birth rate v death rate.

After the purge there were fewer nations so death rate went down.

But birth rate stayed the same. So the population has recovered to the point where birth rate equals death rate.

Let me reiterate that I wouldn't be party to this in any case. I like not being evil.

But I can't bear baseless speculation without data. If I were a bit more experienced, I would try to create a statistical model and set up a rigorously planned experiment, but I don't know enough to do that.

All I have right now is a picture that will hopefully become a bit more meaningful with time:

I sorta like the idea, from an evil-shake-things-up POV. I'm not sure about possible repercussions, but the idea has an insidious appeal.