Regional Influence (NSv1.9 changes)

[The Most Glorious Hack]

I think another player should start one of those online petitions.

You mean like the one to stop AOL's plan that was signed by such luminaries as Saddam Hussein, Mickey Mouse, Satan, Quick-Draw McGraw, and Balzac the Mighty? The cliche is correct: online petitions aren't worth the paper they aren't written on. Nobody pays attention to them.

hey fris, your a mod, you wanta tell us how they calculate the rankings?

Nope.

[[violet]]

Here are answers to a few questions I've seen raised in various places:

Q. Shouldn't Influence take into account a nation's population?
A. If it did, the game would be dominated by its oldest nations. These nations would make extremely powerful invaders, and have a permanent advantage over newer players. We don't think this would be fair.

Q. Shouldn't Influence take into account military or economic strength?
A. One of the quirks of NationStates is that it does not reward you for subscribing to a particular ideology. You can certainly argue that highly militaristic nations would, in real life, be harder to handle than others. But if we built this into the game, all players would have a strong incentive to make their nations militaristic, at the expense of those who didn't. We still want to allow players to make all kinds of nations, not just capitalist ones with strong militaries.

Also, of course, we are talking about the sytem that determines how hard it is to "eject" a nation from its region. It's a bit weird to argue about what is "realistic."

Q. Shouldn't Influence take into account how many times I log in, or post on the RMB, or send telegrams, or some other measure of my activity?
A. The game can't measure whether you're posting interesting, thoughtful contributions to your RMB or just garbage. It would be dangerous to reward things like posts and logins, because some players would start doing those things just to get the reward.

Players may also wish to note that military strength, population, etc, have never determined how easily a nation can be ejected from its region in the past. So we are not introducing any change in that respect.

Q. Why should UN nations earn more Influence than non-UN nations?
A. Two reasons. First, a nation that has joined the UN and won some endorsements has demonstrated a certain level of involvement in the game and their region. Second, players are limited to a single UN nation, but can control many non-UN nations. So if non-UN nations earned Influence rapidly, then one player could control a formidable invasion army all by himself.

Q. Why have you abolished the concept of "natives"? Natives deserve to be treated differently to invaders.
A. We haven't abolished the concept so much as moved it from a moderator judgement to a part of the actual game. Previously, moderators were frequently called on to make subjective judgements about whether nations qualified as "natives" or not. Yet there isn't any logical point at which a nation suddenly becomes "native"; rather, it gets steadily more native the longer it's there, and the more support it has from other residents. This is what the Influence system recognizes. Natives are still protected, only now without needing to call on the moderators for help.

Q. The Delegate in Region X is ejecting dozens of nations--doesn't this prove that the system isn't working?
A. No. What we're seeing so far is a few Delegates who have been in power for some time spending some (or most) of their Influence in order to perform ejections. These Delegates can hardly be considered "invaders," after controlling their regions for so long. And they have weakened themselves by performing purges, meaning that they are less able to repress rebellions in the future.

We are not trying to stamp out political ejections, or prevent Delegates from being dictators. Such things will continue to be part of the game, and as always, players have two ways of dealing with it:
(a) Work to get the Delegate unelected and replaced with somebody else
(b) Move to a better region

Q. My region has a Founder and doesn't like these changes.
A. If your region has a Founder, it's largely unaffected by them. A Founder can still undo anything a Delegate does, even deny the Delegate access to Region Control.

Q. Why is my tiny, non-UN nation in Region X a "Superpower", but my big UN nation in Region Y a "Minnow"?
A. Because Region X contains fewer influential nations than Region Y. Your non-UN nation is thus a more important part of Region X than your big nation is of Region Y.

Q. My nation has been a resident of this region for two years. Why don't I have bucketloads of Influence?
A. Because the system is new, and nations only started building Influence a month or two ago. Sorry about that, but we can't tell how long nations were in their regions before then, or how many endorsements they had.

Q. I had a nation deleted for breaking an "Invasion Griefing" rule, but now those rules have been abolished. Can I have my nation back?
A. No. We don't retroactively punish players for breaking rules that didn't previously exist, and we don't pardon players who broke rules that have now been removed. Players must abide by whatever rules were in place at the time.

[Layarteb]

Thanks for clearing some of that up [violet].

Guess no hat .

[Borkistan]

Axis of Absurdity: 63 nations, founder/delegate endorsed by 19, UN states 35 (High)

May have found some threshholds in this - since the Axis of Absurdity moved to Very High either by adding a nation or having an extra four nations endorse the delegate. Either that, or there was some tweaking and I'm poking around in the dark - wouldn't be the first time.

[Ballotonia]

Q. Why have you abolished the concept of "natives"? Natives deserve to be treated differently to invaders.
A. We haven't abolished the concept so much as moved it from a moderator judgement to a part of the actual game. Previously, moderators were frequently called on to make subjective judgements about whether nations qualified as "natives" or not. Yet there isn't any logical point at which a nation suddenly becomes "native"; rather, it gets steadily more native the longer it's there, and the more support it has from other residents. This is what the Influence system recognizes.

The rule used to be that an invader delegate had to respect the rights of natives. This is now no longer the case as invaders simply build up Influence using 'time of presence' combined with the endorsements of their fellow invaders, and presto... they are now deemed 'native' as well. If you care to insit that the definition of 'native' still exists, then please recognize that the Influence system has severely redefined the meaning of the word 'native' in NS terms. The system is fully automated and hence uses no judgment whatsoever. Recall the whole 'when do invaders become native?' discussion? Do you recall what the former official answer was to that question?

Natives are still protected, only now without needing to call on the moderators for help.

No, now without the ABILITY to call on moderators for help. Big difference.

Ballotonia

[The Most Glorious Hack]

Recall the whole 'when do invaders become native?' discussion? Do you recall what the former official answer was to that question?

"Never". One little problem:

InvaderA, who isn't a part of any big invader group, moves into RegionA and sits there for several months. He joins the UN, endo swaps and calls a couple buddies from school (InvadersB-D) to put him over the top. He kick-bans the old Delegate, a couple others and passwords the region.

He griefed the region! To the mods!

But wait... we can't see when he joined, we can only see when he joined relative to other natives. Who do we believe? He claims that he's a native and that he didn't like how things were running. He's not a member of any organization, he's just a guy who took over a region.

Is he an invader, or is he a ticked off native?

Well, that depends on if he intended to grief the region when he moved in. And how are we supposed to divine his original intent?

The griefing rules worked great with clear-cut griefing (emptying a region) and with known invader groups (especially when they had themed flags). The rest was little more than shaking up a Magic 8-Ball. The game didn't record every regional movement (and there's no way we could -- we run out of disk space as it is), so there's no way to tell beyond any doubt how long a nation has been in a region.

And, again, we're still stuck with trying to figure out if someone was patiently waiting to appear like a native, or if they were simply a native who got pissed off. To say nothing of trying to figure out if the guy who moved in 2 days ago is a "true" native, or an invader/defender in disguise.

If my little invader above had 10 native endos, and used 3 non-native endos to push himself over the Delegate (who had, say, 12 native endos), he's still a "native" Delegate by the old rules: most of his support is native. The old rules were largely unworkable, and made it almost impossible to tell if a questionable invasion really was. And that's not even dealing with everybody's favorite Q&A:

Q: I'm an invader. How many natives can I kick out before it's griefing?
A: Well... it might be 10%, it might be 40%. Let's just go with "I'll know it when I see it."

Now, ejections are limited by Influence. You want to kick that ancient former Delegate who's been here forever? Good luck. Oh, and by the way, you only have enough Influence to kick him; you don't have enough to ban him. Oh, and if you do kick him, you won't have enough Influence left to put a hidden password up.

Things are chaotic now, because nobody has more than a month's worth of influence. As time goes on, and influence acrues, it'll become more difficult for invaders to run rough shod over regions. And since UN nations grow in influence faster than non-UN nations, simply planting a stealth, non-UN puppet won't be that effective. Indeed, it won't be effective at all. The native UN members will see their lead increase over invaders. When the invader shows his true colors, he'll be limited in what he can do.

With this information in mind, I'm sure defenders can figure out how to adjust their tactics.

[Irish Nations of Meame]

backwater (1-27)
low (10-104)
moderate (8-185)
high (63-295)
very high (288-2237)
extremely high (1218-5712)

Looks OK. The region 'The Syndicate' fits in that. 24 Nations, Moderate.

[Evil little girls]

Dunno if it's been posted yet but one of my nations is a hermit
I kinda like that

[DataGenesis]

Has anyone noticed that the feeder regions have a really high rating, while everyone else has "low". Cant this ranking be based on the single region, instead of comparing against other regions?

My region; the International Democratic Union is not a feeder region, and our regional power is "very high".

[Darksolia]

I've seen regions with the following regional powers and number of nations (minimum-maximum):

backwater (1-27)
low (10-104)
moderate (40-185)
high (63-295)
very high (288-2237)
extremely high (1218-5712)

A region with 104 nations could be low, moderate, or high.

not true!

My region had a "low" rating with 7 nations

[Safalra]

Given that nation influence is dependent on how many endorsements you've had for how long (relative to other nations in your region), I suspect regional influence may have something to do with the number of endorsements given with that region. Whether this is summed over time or instantaneous is unclear, but if it's the former it's a good idea to check the theory now before the system has been in place too long.

[Norse Country]

Ok, I started a new puppet yesterday to test this stuff.
Dwerb the Migrant. It was a minnow so I am guessing that Minnow is the lowest. Then I moved him to the Indus River Valley to see what happens. I did this yesterday. The lone resident of Indus, Kot-Diji, is still a hermit. However dwerb is now Handshaker so I guess from Minnow you become a Handshaker.

[Norse Country]

My region has my main nation along with 6 puppets(7 nations total, for those who can't count ), and the regional power is low. All of the nations have been there for years, and ALL of them have "Eminence Grise" for their regional influence, even the founder(Kasaru) and the lone UN member(Bushica). Interesting what an endorsement-less environment seems to do to nation's influence levels...

the pacific ocean, indus river valley both have only two nations but are ranked as low.

[Ballotonia]

"Never". One little problem: [...]

Exactly. Note the context of my comment, I'm responding to [violet] stating: "We haven't abolished the concept so much as moved it from a moderator judgement to a part of the actual game."
I'm merely arguing that isn't really true. If there is any definition left called 'native', it only vaguely resembles what it used to mean.

The griefing rules worked great with clear-cut griefing (emptying a region) and with known invader groups (especially when they had themed flags). The rest was little more than shaking up a Magic 8-Ball.

I recall arguing against Neut's (remember ol' Neut?) "intent" rulings fiercely, presicely because of the reasoning you put forth now. If only a mod would've been willing to admit to this when the old rules were back in place, but back then it was strongly denied. Mods were deemed to be omnipotent . Now it seems opening up about the shortcomings of the old rulings is a good way to increase acceptance of the new way of doing things... Frankly, I'm not convinced about the wisdom of procedure B when the basic argument in favor is 'we defended and used procedure A before and let me confess now how much that really sucked'.

Now, ejections are limited by Influence. You want to kick that ancient former Delegate who's been here forever? Good luck. Oh, and by the way, you only have enough Influence to kick him; you don't have enough to ban him. Oh, and if you do kick him, you won't have enough Influence left to put a hidden password up.

Why bother to kick that delegate, if ones own forces already outnumber the (formerly called 'native') side? All one needs is that secret password in place -> game over.
Surely you have noticed invaders tend to attack those regions they know they can beat handily? If they were interested in the battle itself, warzones wouldn't have been such a faillure.

Things are chaotic now, because nobody has more than a month's worth of influence. As time goes on, and influence acrues, it'll become more difficult for invaders to run rough shod over regions. And since UN nations grow in influence faster than non-UN nations, simply planting a stealth, non-UN puppet won't be that effective. Indeed, it won't be effective at all. The native UN members will see their lead increase over invaders. When the invader shows his true colors, he'll be limited in what he can do.

An invader lead can plant a *UN* nation in advance. That's what they've already been doing for a long time, so they can gather endorsements from 'sleepy' natives, or try to pretend to be a native with good intentions only to call in their friends and hoist their real home region's flag a few months later. In the 'new' situation this means that same infiltrator will have gathered Influence as well, and will then be legally allowed to go apeshit on the region.

With this information in mind, I'm sure defenders can figure out how to adjust their tactics.

Defender's ability to do anything is severely curtailed. Once the invaders have taken over with a sufficiently-high-Influence infiltrator nation, what else is there to do but sit back and watch the carnage ensue?

Anyway, we'll see what happens. Maybe the invaders won't even bother to jump through this hoop to guarantee their victories, and the entire invasion/defense game (what's left of it, that is) will go belly-up. Time will tell.

Ballotonia

[Praetonia]

Is 'Regional Power' just a fun stat, or will it have some greater meaning later on?