NationStates Jolt Archive

[edited out]

The key words there were "pretty much." Unless you got the exact same issues and chose the exact same anwsers to every one, I wouldn't be surprised that your stats aren't the same. And I also doubt that your starting stats were identical either unless you did it on purpose. Anwsers to single issues, combined with other information, can indeed change your stats. Therefore, economy differing from Good to Very Good could have been decided by differing anwsers to as little as 1 issue. So unless your decsions were identical (which you have no way of knowing for sure what they were since the anwsers to only a few of your recent issues are logged) you shouldn't be surprised.

If people don't know yet what affect the options have on the stats, could they at LEAST tell me how to stop legislation from happening on the issue? I don't want legislation on the issue without knowing what it'll do to the stats...
Dismiss the issue. Nothing happens, your population still grows as normal, but otherwise your stats aren't affected at all.

By the way, sorry if it sounds like I'm second-guessing, but DOES anything other than the issues have any effect on the stats?
If you're a member of the UN, then UN resolutions passed while you are a member will affect your stats.

Because a friend of mine whose NationStates nation has a better economy (Very Strong as opposed to my merely "Good") than mine made pretty much the same decisions as I did on about the same issues when it came to each of our nations. I don't really see what else could have drove the economy up in his other than the survey you're supposed to fill out when starting a nation.
It's unlikely you had the same issues at the same time. When your nation is starting out, the stats can vary wildly. If you had an issue a week after your friend and chose the same option, the effects will be slightly different. Over time this'll balance out.

I don't even know if THAT would affect it...
The survey at the start determines the starting characteristics of your nation, so yes, it would cause a difference in your economies.

Did ANY side tell the whole story?No. They never do. The people in the options are always highly biased towards their view and are trying to present their idea in the best possible (and most stereotypical) way. It's satirical, so everything is exaggerated.

My economy is "good" but this is my second try at a country and a friend of mine got an economy "very strong" first try. So I know mine is relatively poor.The difference between Good and Very Strong is rather minimal (Good, Strong, Very Strong).

This is long. I'm not kidding. Also, not all of this is necessarily correct.

Well, thing is as far as I remember we got the same issues. Judging by the issues I saw my friend's country get, and what mine got later, Hayteria got each same issue as his country did, and got each one only a few days after his.
It's unlikely you got the same issues in the same order, as they're randomly generated. It's possible, of course, but unlikely.

Also, I'm not sure if he chose the exact same answers as I did on ALL the issues affecting his country, but I remember whenever he'd check his nationstates at my house (Which was actually more than half the time that he checked it) he'd happen to choose options that I'd choose, and incidently, a few days later, the same issue would come up in Hayteria.
This would explain it, but I'll assume you did choose the same options for each issue.

Now often times I'd get issues for my country I didn't see him get in his, but judging by the fact that whenever he'd come over his country would have an issue that Hayteria gets just a few days later, those issues must have been ones he got and I just didn't see (As in he answered them at his out)
So basically, what it seems like is Hayteria's list of issues is the same as my friends' countries' list, just delayed by a few days.
Not necessarily must - see above.

Even if from "good" to "very strong"?
Simply, yes.

Thanks for the advice, but unfortunately legislation already passed based on option 3. Oh well, I'd probably have rathered to act on the issue and risk not knowing how it'd affect the stats than miss another opportunity to improve them anyway...
Don't worry about it. Play the game for long enough and eventually you'll get where you want, because of the range of issues and you'll develop a better understanding of what the issues do.

Well that might be it, my friend's country is a UN member. Would that improve the economy or worsen it?
Depends on what resolutions are passed. From my experience when I was in the UN, they generally improved political freedoms and civil rights.

You're serious? With the same issue and same option, getting it a week later will mean it has a different effect on the stats?
It doesn't have a different effect, but obviously if your economy has been weakened by your response to one issue, then improved by your response to another, your economy will be worse off than your friend's if he only had the second issue, which improved his economy. What I meant was that the responses to issues can have different effects depending on other issues passed previously.

Well yeah, I knew we started out RADICALLY different. I had no idea the start would affect it though. I remember in the survery we chose almost opposite options (Eg. Under "marijuana should be legal" I chose "Strongly disagree" and my friend chose "Strongly agree")
Opposite options = opposite governments. Take a look at this thread for a better explanation: http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=297403

Sorry to waste space with an irrelevant question, but why would everything be exaggerated in a game? Doesn't that make the game more confusing? Well it did for me.
It's for fun. Exaggerating effects makes it more interesting.

Two changes of category would not be considered "minimal". I went to the most desperate measures I could (Eg. Legalizing prostitution, etc...) on several issues in a row, each option I could to benefit the economy and my economy remained at "good" and hasn't proceeded to "strong" yet. Apparently, it must take at least a dozen economy-affection issues, each of them having you have chosen an economy-benefitting option on each of them to bring the economy up even one category. Or am I missing something?
I believe that the closer you are to the middle ground for each stat, the larger the ground it covers. For example, to have a 'Frightening' economy (the highest) you have to be in the top 1% (say), but 'Good' would cover the middle 10%.

One last question: In the "flouride question" issue (Which my friend got about a week ago but, in THIS particular case, I forget what option he chose) do any of the options except for option 3 affect the economy? As in, would option 1 be better than option 2 because healthier people would be more productive? Right now I have the issue dismissed, but if there's a benefit to the economy I'm going for it.
Don't think any of the options affect the economy. I'm not sure though.

I can't be arsed with all the quotes...just take it paragraph by paragraph...

I meant mine.

Yep, probably a coincidence.

*shrugs*

*shrugs* (sorry, I know that's not much help)

Join the UN if you want to increase political freedoms and civil rights. Resolutions that benefit the economy are rarely passed.

No...I meant if from the first issue you chose different options and as a result your economy increases by 5% while your friend's increases by 10%, then if you choose the same option for another issue, your economies will both increase the same percentage, but obviously that amount will be more for your friend. 100 + 5% + 5% is less than 100 + 10% + 5%. That can be the difference between (for example) strong and very strong.

Yes. If for example your political freedoms start lower, it'll take longer to get them to World Benchmark. I don't think it changes the effects issues have if that's what you mean.

(Religion issue) - option 3 may benefit the economy. If you have no religious advisor, your religious funding decreases as a percentage of your budget. Something else will get the surplus, which, if you've repeatedly chosen pro-economy options, could be commerce. That would increase the economy. That's pure speculation though.

(File sharing issue) - I imagine option 1 would increase the economy, as it'd probably make people buy CDs. But who knows the way the issue editor's minds work...

As for your extra things:
1. The person who wrote the issue probably didn't think of it at the time. It won't be changed now, because that's not done.
2. NS has a random name generator in it's issues. There's a list of all the first names and last names in a thread somewhere. George W. Bush is bound to come up at some point, as there's only a finite number of combinations.

Two changes of category would not be considered "minimal".There are 13 or 14 different categories in each group. A two rank shift is minimal, and people can often skip three or four ranks depending on how the issues shake out. Trust me on this.

I went to the most desperate measures I could (Eg. Legalizing prostitution, etc...) on several issues in a row, each option I could to benefit the economy and my economy remained at "good" and hasn't proceeded to "strong" yet.Legalizing prostitution doesn't have much of an effect on your economy.

Apparently, it must take at least a dozen economy-affection issues, each of them having you have chosen an economy-benefitting option on each of them to bring the economy up even one category. Or am I missing something?You are. The interaction between issues and nations are far more complex than people tend to think. It's not a simple matter of an issue giving you, say, +10 points in economy and it taking 80 "economy points". The issues affect on sliding scales and the three rankings displayed to the player are controled by dozens of different categories that they can't see.

Edit: Sorry to waste space with an irrelevant question, but why would everything be exaggerated in a game? Doesn't that make the game more confusing? Well it did for me.Because Max Barry is a humorist who finds some aspects of politics patently absurd. He says as much in the FAQ:
Is it a serious political thing, or just for fun?

Well, you can play it either way. NationStates does have humorous bent, but that's just because international politics is so inherently funny.

Why is my nation so weird?

Everything is exaggerated a little. Well, okay, a lot. Your decisions affect your nation very strongly, so your country might seem like a more extreme version of what you were aiming for. Unless you have radical politics. In which case you probably think nothing's wrong.

My decision had unintended consequences!

Yep, that'll happen. For one thing, see "Why is my nation so weird?" above. For another, pretty much every decision you make will involve a trade-off of some kind. It's kind of an exercise in choosing the best of a bunch of bad options. You might find this frustrating, especially if you're the kind of person who thinks the solutions to all the world's problems are obvious.

From what I've seen, it usually takes a looonggg time to get the economy up to "All-Consuming" or "Frightening." Patience and perserverance are key! Also I have had occasional recessions for no apparent reason.

As for those particular issues, from what I've seen:

The Religion one:
Choosing the Catholic will give you a big religious budget. When I want a "devout" nation, I pick the priest.

Choosing the New Ager gives a very small religious budget. I usually pick him/her.

I haven't picked the Athiest yet. But, I would *guess* that'd cause a zero religious budget (never know, though...).

Neither of the two seem to have an immediate economic effect, but my Catholic nations seem to be taking longer to get better economies.

File Sharing:

Allowing a hacking war doesn't seem to hurt anything.

Copy-protecting the CDs messed up my economy somewhat.

I wouldn't get rid of copyrights, so I haven't picked that one yet.

Would that one decision make it take much longer to get the economy strong?
Unlikely.

You mean they can't edit their issues? Something's wrong with that...
They can, but they only edit issues to correct spelling and grammar mistakes.

So basically, names come up randomly, and the fact that George W. Bush came up as a rapper was a coincidence?

So it was equally likely that George W. Bush would've came up as the name of the recording industry representative, which would've made more sense?
Bingo.

Yes, politics is absurd. But you can make it absurd enough to be realistic without having to go so far as having the slightest change make much too extreme effects...
The slightest change doesn't have extreme effects. They're just exaggerated from what you might reasonably expect.

Exactly. So I guess I should be glad the game is the way it is.
Yep. And stop complaining :p

So why wouldn't they if an option, (or in this case lack thereof) made no sense?
Because they have other, more important things to do with regard NS; also they have jobs and a life.

See my "first you'd miss to the left, and changing it as slightly as possible you'd miss to the right" analogy. It's hard to aim for a balanced country if each option has a stronger effect than would be reasonable to expect.
But who wants a balanced country?

Excuse me? I was making an analogy to explain why it isn't a good idea to do excessively. I was just asking them not to go too far with it, because then it'd not only make even less sense, but it'd be impossible to play because it'd be too hard to judge the effects.
Sorry, I was being sarcastic. Doesn't come across well on here. There's thousands of people play this game who don't find it too difficult, or else they do but don't care. I guess Max doesn't see the need to change things if people are happy with it.

Well if the game was REALISTIC, it would have to have a drastic effect one way or another. Either so many people die of STDs that there aren't enough workforce members left for labour, or because people have another "service" to sell more money is spent in the Hayteria economy right?

If it pleases you, assume that taxes collected from prostitutes exactly cancels out the revenue lost due to sick workers.