More on the nation creation process
Apr 13, 2020 3:59:06 GMT -5
The Soylent Green Party, Sargon Reman, and 2 more like this
Post by Vivolkha on Apr 13, 2020 3:59:06 GMT -5
For those unaware, two days ago I wrote a Dispatch detailing how to start a nation with any WA classification through the standard create-a-nation questionnaire, as well as some basic details of how NS stats are affected by this questionnaire. The guide is available here, and was overwhelmingly popular, much to my surprise (it even caught Markanite's attention).
However, there are some details that I have intentionally withheld from this guide. This is because they are highly technical, I do not understand them completely, and my explanations are largely theoretical. These extra details are what I am going to comment here.
One important fact that the guide omits is the existance of a stat cap that applies to the three freedom stats (Civil Rights, Economic Freedom, Political Freedom). The upper cap for these three stats is 97/100. This is a hard, intentional cap. Take this example: pick Anarchic as the starting freedoms (97/97/97). If we then picked Strongly Agree on Q7 ("Without democracy, a country has nothing") our Political Freedom should go further up - except it does not. It will never go higher than 97, no matter what we do, not even through Random starting freedoms.
But furthermore, much like there is an upper cap, there is a lower cap as well. Most interestingly, this lower cap is not uniform. The lower cap for Civil Rights, Economic Freedom and Political Freedom is 2.33, -99.00 and 1.00 respectively. Something that may be well known is the existance of a threshold in Economic Freedom, past this threshold, your initial economy becomes state-planned (negative Economic Freedom). In this sense, I do not know for sure which is the lower Economic Freedom cap for a strictly capitalist economy, but I have not been able to go lower than 4/100.
This is where I move away from cold, hard facts to theory. Using my dispatch guide above, examine the initial NS stats that each of the 9 starting freedoms give. Do you realize something odd? Economic Freedom seems to have slightly different mechanics or a slightly different calculation than the other two. Take, for example, the Libertarian starting freedoms - Economic Freedom differs by 0.67 from the other two freedom stats. In fact, all base Economic Freedom values are integer numbers, whereas for Civil Rights and Political Freedom, they are frequently not.
But, something interesting, is that there is no such difference at both extremes (Anarchic, Tyrannical and even Authoritarian) whereas this difference is as large as 7.33 for the Centrist starting freedoms.
Now, I will address the create-a-nation questions. I have stated in my guide that they alter your base freedoms in a variable way. My best guess was that they are a percentage modifier. This was based on observation of the effects of Q7, arguably one of the most important questions when creating a nation because of its effects. Specifically, answering "Strongly Disagree" seems to cut your Political Freedom by 2/3 (from 3 to 1, from 75 to 25 and so on).
Except that, when actually testing this theory, it does not exactly add up. Pick Tyrannical, Strongly Disagree on Q7, leave everything else blank - our base Political Freedom (3/100) is cut down to 1.00 (and we hit the lower cap). Fine! But now pick Centrist, Strongly Disagree on Q7, leave everything else blank. The expected Political Freedom value is 57.33/3=19.11, but the actual value is 17.00. Quite close, but not exactly there - there is an error of 2.11. Most interestingly, the resulting Political Freedom is lower than expected.
Why is this so interesting? Because the opposite is true for the Anarchic starting freedoms. The expected Political Freedom value is 97/3=32.33, but the actual value is 33.33. There is a difference of 1 point, and the resulting Political Freedom is higher than expected.
Much like the Tyrannical starting freedoms, picking "Authoritarian" and then Strongly Disagree on Q7 does follow the rule. So, in the lower Political Freedom ranges, this rule of thumb works perfectly fine. But on higher ranges, there is a small but significant deviation, either higher or lower than the otherwise expected value. For example, for the Libertarian starting freedoms (with SD on Q7), the expected Political Freedom value would be 80.67/3=26.89 - the real value is 27.00. The deviation seems to be positive at the highest ranges of Political Freedom before quickly reversing trend and becoming negative.
So far, the only thing I can truly say is:
"For question 7 of the create-a-nation questionnaire, picking Strongly Disagree reduces the base Political Freedom of the nation-to-be by approximately 2/3"
Finally, what happens if we pick "Strongly Agree" in Q7? On the higher Political Freedom ranges, nothing at all - we would hit the 97/100 stat cap. But what if we select Tyrannical starting freedoms (base Political Freedom: 3/100) and SA on Q7? The resulting Political Freedom value is...
...66/100. This is very, very far from what is expected from a percentage modifier. Wait, stop, keep reading please! The value is roughly 2/3 from the maximum possible. Again, we have this 2/3 popping up. Maybe I am looking for patterns where there are not, but in any case there is something else here that we do not quite understand yet.
If you made it until the end of this wall of text full of math, congratulations! I hope this is useful somehow.
However, there are some details that I have intentionally withheld from this guide. This is because they are highly technical, I do not understand them completely, and my explanations are largely theoretical. These extra details are what I am going to comment here.
One important fact that the guide omits is the existance of a stat cap that applies to the three freedom stats (Civil Rights, Economic Freedom, Political Freedom). The upper cap for these three stats is 97/100. This is a hard, intentional cap. Take this example: pick Anarchic as the starting freedoms (97/97/97). If we then picked Strongly Agree on Q7 ("Without democracy, a country has nothing") our Political Freedom should go further up - except it does not. It will never go higher than 97, no matter what we do, not even through Random starting freedoms.
But furthermore, much like there is an upper cap, there is a lower cap as well. Most interestingly, this lower cap is not uniform. The lower cap for Civil Rights, Economic Freedom and Political Freedom is 2.33, -99.00 and 1.00 respectively. Something that may be well known is the existance of a threshold in Economic Freedom, past this threshold, your initial economy becomes state-planned (negative Economic Freedom). In this sense, I do not know for sure which is the lower Economic Freedom cap for a strictly capitalist economy, but I have not been able to go lower than 4/100.
This is where I move away from cold, hard facts to theory. Using my dispatch guide above, examine the initial NS stats that each of the 9 starting freedoms give. Do you realize something odd? Economic Freedom seems to have slightly different mechanics or a slightly different calculation than the other two. Take, for example, the Libertarian starting freedoms - Economic Freedom differs by 0.67 from the other two freedom stats. In fact, all base Economic Freedom values are integer numbers, whereas for Civil Rights and Political Freedom, they are frequently not.
But, something interesting, is that there is no such difference at both extremes (Anarchic, Tyrannical and even Authoritarian) whereas this difference is as large as 7.33 for the Centrist starting freedoms.
Now, I will address the create-a-nation questions. I have stated in my guide that they alter your base freedoms in a variable way. My best guess was that they are a percentage modifier. This was based on observation of the effects of Q7, arguably one of the most important questions when creating a nation because of its effects. Specifically, answering "Strongly Disagree" seems to cut your Political Freedom by 2/3 (from 3 to 1, from 75 to 25 and so on).
Except that, when actually testing this theory, it does not exactly add up. Pick Tyrannical, Strongly Disagree on Q7, leave everything else blank - our base Political Freedom (3/100) is cut down to 1.00 (and we hit the lower cap). Fine! But now pick Centrist, Strongly Disagree on Q7, leave everything else blank. The expected Political Freedom value is 57.33/3=19.11, but the actual value is 17.00. Quite close, but not exactly there - there is an error of 2.11. Most interestingly, the resulting Political Freedom is lower than expected.
Why is this so interesting? Because the opposite is true for the Anarchic starting freedoms. The expected Political Freedom value is 97/3=32.33, but the actual value is 33.33. There is a difference of 1 point, and the resulting Political Freedom is higher than expected.
Much like the Tyrannical starting freedoms, picking "Authoritarian" and then Strongly Disagree on Q7 does follow the rule. So, in the lower Political Freedom ranges, this rule of thumb works perfectly fine. But on higher ranges, there is a small but significant deviation, either higher or lower than the otherwise expected value. For example, for the Libertarian starting freedoms (with SD on Q7), the expected Political Freedom value would be 80.67/3=26.89 - the real value is 27.00. The deviation seems to be positive at the highest ranges of Political Freedom before quickly reversing trend and becoming negative.
So far, the only thing I can truly say is:
"For question 7 of the create-a-nation questionnaire, picking Strongly Disagree reduces the base Political Freedom of the nation-to-be by approximately 2/3"
Finally, what happens if we pick "Strongly Agree" in Q7? On the higher Political Freedom ranges, nothing at all - we would hit the 97/100 stat cap. But what if we select Tyrannical starting freedoms (base Political Freedom: 3/100) and SA on Q7? The resulting Political Freedom value is...
...66/100. This is very, very far from what is expected from a percentage modifier. Wait, stop, keep reading please! The value is roughly 2/3 from the maximum possible. Again, we have this 2/3 popping up. Maybe I am looking for patterns where there are not, but in any case there is something else here that we do not quite understand yet.
If you made it until the end of this wall of text full of math, congratulations! I hope this is useful somehow.
