Decomposition

I agree that the environmental impact probably does not make too my RL sense but I think that this change balances out something that a lot of people got really angry about: the changes made to NS calculations based on number of nukes held which have alogarithmic effect on NS as number of nukes rise. Some were angry that this entrenched nuclear capabilities too much since those who have nukes got a very large bump in NS making it more difficult for those with none to ever get to the top 5%. Perhaps the new environmental cost of nukes will provide a bit more of a disincentive for holding 20 nukes.

888k

If the various factors are linearly or quadratically related to battle odds then it should be possible to calculate the relative weights - assuming you have enough data points which any decent sized alliance should be able to put together. Ah.... the wonders of regression.

You are correct that the complaints posted on the forums represent a biased sample but even taking that into account we have too many examples of extreme event frequencies (high or low). Simple binomial theory (and law of large numbers) gives you an idea of what kind of distribution to expect if the likelihood were evenly distributed and there are simply too many extreme observations (Even taking into account the 200,000 nations that have been around).

Correct, but the observed width (SD) of this bell curve appears to me much larger than what would be expected if probabilities were distributed uniformly and randomly. There appear to be systematic differences in nations that make some nations more likely to experience events and make some nations also get a number of events in relatively close succession (e.g., 3 in 3 days). I am 271 days old and only recently received my first event.

I think that a lot of the frustration of small-medium size nations not being able to buy nukes will be addressed once the ritual summer holiday war season starts which may reduce the strength of some of the top nations. The web of alliances may make this seem unlikely but 3 months of summer holidays is a lot of time for bored players to dream up some CBs I think the changes are good for the game - when the rules change you need to adapt your strategy

There have been quite a few threads on this and much statistical analysis. The consensus seems to be: 1) The overall rate is very definitely NOT 10% - closer to 2% 2) Some nations appear to get more events than others and this difference between event rates is greater than the natural variation you would expect to see if the likelihood of getting events was equal for all nations. 3) There appears to be a "clumping" effect - if you get one event it increases the likelihood of getting another event in the next few days.

It is when I first click the "aid" button i.e., before I indicate how much I want to aid.

Consider The Revolution. We are a blue alliance that recently passed 1 million in nation strength so we are big enough to be able to protect you and help you grow but not so large that you'd get lost in the masses that characterize the truly large alliances.

I love the Revolution so much that I occasionally quit - just so that I can rejoin.

I have a foreign ministry but only have four aid slots available to me. Never had this problem before i.e., have had five slots filled before. Not sure what to do. EDIT: Problem went away when I deleted some of my older aid actions that were still showing. Still a bug (I guess) but at least the problem is now fixed.

Well if you've been doing it since week one then you probably received a lot of aid to get you to the point where you could do that so quickly.

From my experience (with my previous nation) there are more good than bad events. It may also be that these are not distributed randomly i.e., that there are some nation factors that make it more or less likely that you get a good event (assuming you get them at all). No evidence regarding this hypothesis though.

Lol - I (we) did not "jump to conclusions" but based it on some basic statistical analysis (binomial theory). The original thread is here: http://forums.cybernations.net/index.php?showtopic=13446

10% is definitely wrong! We have had extensive statistical discussions on this a while back and our conclusion was that the chance of getting an event is closer to 1% for every tax collection although there is also evidence that they tend to "clump together" - that is, they tend to occur one after the other. Some nations also get more than others - and the difference is much bigger than what you would expect by chance. I went the first 200 odd days of my nation without an event - impossible to occur if the chance is 10%.

It also has to offset the hit you take on income for delaying your nation growth (can be quite substantial as a proportion of total income for small to medium size nations).

I don't think that anyone is saying that you should pay bills without labor camps. The question comes down to whether collecting taxes while holding labor camps reduces your income so much that it is worth going through a full improvement swap (with all the associated costs of re-buying labor camps later and deferring nation growth). The answer seems to be that it is definitely worth it for very large nations, possibly not worth it for nations who have just gotten all happiness boosting imrprovements, and worth it for those nations with lots of happiness boosting improvements still to purchase.

SUrely, you have to think of it in terms of opportunity cost - what are you giving up by just hanging on to your labor camps? The happiness penalty for five labor camps is -5 and stronger nations already have all the happiness boosting improvements anyway so they cannot swap the labor camps for, say, churches. So your benefit is really only the 5 extra happiness points while your cost is the delay in purchasing infra and getting returns on that. I think that it comes out as very low benefit once you have all happiness boosting improvements.

Yes, I mean labor camp swapping. I think what many people forget to account for is that buying infra every day and paying bills every day would increase your population a few days earlier (about 450 citizens every day for me) which would get you more income from those extra citizens over the course of the period where you would normally only be paying bills. Once I take that into account (and the risk factor mentioned above) it seems like at my current medium size that labor camp swapping is probably not worth it. That might change later on.

Hi All, I find myself at 3999.99 infra with a good trade set-up and have had some time to crunch the numbers to see what the difference between the improvement swapping cycle and no improvement swapping really is. From my calculations the gain is pretty small - only about 60k a day which would barely buy me one infra. Has anyone done similar calculations and come up with different or similar figures?

I have not had an event in my nation's entire life (211 days) and was complaining to a RL friend about this. She thinks that it is hilarious but also told me that she has had plenty of events in the last three months but has noticed something odd - she has had 8 or so events but they have all been the same one (the nice oil event with the +3 happiness bonus) and whenever one has expired she immediately gets another one. With the number of possible events being quite large the odds of getting the same one 8 times in a row are pretty small. Has anyone else had similar experiences?

Chance cannot explain for these variations. Sample sizes are way too high.

203 days old - never had an event. Other, even older, nations have also never had an event.

I don't think that nations are restored but your friend almost certainly sacrificed nation growth by not collection and buying infra for twenty whole days. Birthday bonuses are not big enough to make up for the sacrificed growth.

I agree that the 10% issue is moot since it is clearly not 10% but it would be nice to get some idea from the mods on when events occur since they are very clearly not random. Even very low levels of probability would not account for the clustering of events and the unequal distribution of events that are observed.