NationStates Jolt Archive

Hello,

Does the population growth rate remain constant, or is the growth some sort of stepwise linear function (i.e. tiered)?

What is the growth rate per day? And does it stop when a nation is on vacation or expired?

Wow...and you've been here how long?

Anyway, yeah, the growth rate (as a percentage of the previous day's population) declines over time. I don't know the formula, but gathering data over a period of several months or a year or so and performing a regression analysis would be an interesting project...

Wow...and you've been here how long?

Anyway, yeah, the growth rate (as a percentage of the previous day's population) declines over time. I don't know the formula, but gathering data over a period of several months or a year or so and performing a regression analysis would be an interesting project...

I've been here since Jan. 2004, as you can see on the forum. :p

I just never really cared about the exact mechanism the game uses to calculate population, especially in light of the fact it can't decrease. However, I want to use it as a possible surrogate for measuring length of time a player/nation has been active for another interesting project I'm playing with. ;) I'm performing an analysis on World Assembly votes by comparing overall trends with more detailed information coming from the World Assembly forum. The basic question is the forum a biased sample population to pull data from? I think it might be.

I'm not going to go into the specifics, but let's just say your population increases by 6 million per major update on average.

Whatever it is, I like having almost double the planets population :O

I'm not going to go into the specifics, but let's just say your population increases by 6 million per major update on average.

Thanks! :)

With that in mind, it sounds like a nation that expires and returns (mine has done this twice) might have a forum date (for example Jan. 2004) that predates their population.

But this is good enough for what I had planned. I already posted some analysis of World Assembly voting trends to World Assembly Forum polls for a resolution. I just was curious if there was a bias in the players that corresponded to the length of time they've played NationStates.

If you look at the XML page of a nation, for instance:
http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/nationdata.cgi/nation=mikitivity

you will see there's a "<FOUNDED>" tag near the bottom which can help you in your analysis. It should be more accurate than using population, as that is lower when a nation has spent a period of time as Ceased To Exist.

Note old nations, like
http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/nationdata.cgi/nation=ballotonia

have just a "0" listed there as their existence predates the existance of that XML tag.

Ballotonia

5 days @ +1 million per day,
5 days @ + 2 million per day,
5 days @ +3 million per day,
and then +(5 to 8, determined randomly each day) million per day after that...