The Drewpocalypse: How Did Regions Fare? (Analysis)

[Pencil Sharpeners 2]

Dispatch Version

The Drewpocalypse may have been a bit of a headache for the NS admins, but provided an opportunity for regions across the game to entice more victims into their loving grasp. Here, I take a look at how a selection of large regions* have fared with regards to activity** in the past couple of months.

*I have looked at every region whose Delegate has surpassed 100 endorsements at some point since April, though there is the possibility I could have missed someone out. Apologies if that is the case.

**My definition of activity for the sake of this analysis is Delegate endos, because I think that reducing the vibrant and diverse communities of NS down to a single number that they may not even care about is the right thing to do.

A further note/disclaimer: I am not a GP person. I had never heard of most of these regions before I did this, and have little knowledge of their histories or how they operate. I suspect the good folk of this forum may be able to provide more insightful analysis of this data than I can.

I took three data points from the Delegates of the selected regions.

Pre-Drew: Delegate endos on April 19th, the day before Drew’s first NS video.
During-Drew: The highest Delegate endos from the month of May. Different regions reached their peaks at different times so I decided the fairest option was to take each region’s peak from May. Some regions may have reached even higher in June, but that will not have been directly related to Drew, hence the May cutoff.
Post-Drew: Delegate endos on June 19th, two months after the Drewpocalypse. Most nations who logged in a few times and then got bored will have CTE’d within 2 months, so those remaining have demonstrated some level of sustained activity since joining. Of course, most regions are continuing to decline, but this will likely continue for a couple of months at least, and I had to draw the line somewhere. Maybe I will make a follow-up at the end of summer if people are interested.

Here is the first table of data, showing the pre-Drew endos, along with the peak Drewpocalypse endos for each region. The table is sorted by the number of endorsements gained, decreasing.



The clear winner from the initial surge is 10KI, comprehensively crushing every other UCR, and even comfortable beating out every Feeder to take top spot. I don’t know what 10KI did in that time to cause such a huge increase in endos, but it clearly worked, as they almost doubled their Pre-Drew figure.

The Feeders were all reasonable consistent with each other. TEP had the highest gain, perhaps because their endos were still recovering after the coup attempt last year. TWP initially gained at a similar rate to TEP, but their tough RMB spam policy led to significant purges of Drewites, which slightly inhibited endo growth. TP had the lowest absolute increase, but the highest percentage increase, of any Feeder.

Conch Kingdom gained the most endos of any region who started with fewer than 100. Their increase of 137 from a starting point of 83 was an impressive 165% increase. The two biggest percentage increases, however, went to Drew’s home region Confederacy of Layem, who rose 329% from 31 to 133, and The Region That Has No Big Banks, whose astonishing 480% increase from 20 to 116 was well ahead of any other region.

Down nearer the bottom, the Sinkers, as you would perhaps expect, were relatively unaffected by the Drewpocalypse. None of Osiris, Balder, or Lazarus were able to gain more than 12% on their starting positions. TRR fared a bit better, given its different mechanic and TWP’s trigger-happy ejecting, with 55 additional endos representing a 23% improvement.

Here we’re going to look at the second table of data, which compares a region’s peak Delegate endos (from May) with their endos as of June 19th. Once again, the table is sorted by endorsements gained, decreasing.



Remarkably, two regions were unaffected by the mass of CTEs in late May/early June, and continued to gain endos. Karma’s Delegate moved from 133 to 141 endos, though it is worth noting that Karma had a Delegacy change in early May, which likely inhibited their maximum in that month. The Communist Bloc, on the other hand, had no Delegacy changes throughout the Drewpocalypse, but their total endos rose by 21 between May and mid-June. TCB perhaps didn’t attract many Drewites in the first place, as their gain from April to May was only 18%, one of the lowest of the selected regions.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of the other regions near the top were those who didn’t gain much during the initial surge, with Democratic Socialist Assembly, New Western Empire, and Forest among those who barely even noticed that the Drewpocalypse had occurred at all.

Down at the bottom we predictably have the Feeders, though it’s worth noting that 10KI, despite having the largest initial gain, lost fewer endos than all Feeders other than TP. The largest losses went to both TNP and TEP, who were in the process of Delegacy changes at the time (though both still had their outgoing Delegates in the position as of June 19th).

The largest percentage losses went to The Leftist Assembly (-37%), Wintreath (-46%), and Warzone Sandbox (-48%). Both TLA and Wintreath had to navigate difficult Delegacy changes in this time, with both having new Delegates by June 19th. Obviously, the change in Delegate essentially removes all of the inactive WA nations from the endorsement count in one fell swoop, whereas as regions who stuck with the same Delegate throughout will lose those endos more gradually, as nations CTE. I have absolutely no idea why Warzone Sandbox was the worst performing region in the period, but their initial 232% gain was pretty impressive, and led to them being comfortably the only Warzone to make this list at all.

Here is the third and final data table, which essentially just uses numbers you’ve already seem. I’m comparing the Pre-Drew (April 19th) figures with the Post-Drew (June 19th) figures, to see how regions have performed overall. Once again, the table is sorted by endorsements gained, decreasing.



I doubt anyone who’s read the first two parts of this article will be surprised by the ‘winner’. 10KI pretty much stomped everyone here, with their net gain of 318 being 90 more than any other region. This represents a 73% improvement, so it will be interesting to see how many they have retained in a few months’ time.
Of the Feeders, TSP had the highest net gain, helped in part by TNP and TEP’s Delegate elections, though TP had the highest percentage gain, with 38%. Both TP and TWP, however, also finished below Europeia in absolute terms, with Europeia holding on to most of their endos from the initial surge.

In percentage terms, three regions clearly outperform the others. TRTHNBB may have lost 30% of their Delegate endos between May and June, but still managed a 305% improvement overall, representing a quadrupling of their initial endos. Confederacy of Layem may have lost Drew, but clearly some of his fans stuck around, as their 255% improvement allowed them to remain in triple figures. In third is Union of Democratic States, whose strong initial gain of over 100, followed by exceptional retention (just 7 lost), has seen their endos exactly triple from 50 to 150 overall.

Also worth a mention is Conch Kingdom, who, despite transferring the Delegacy at the end of May, still managed an overall doubling of their initial endocount. This is probably the most successful Delegacy transfer of any of these regions during this time. Finally, Ascenthia didn’t particularly excel at any one statistic, but they still more than doubled their endocount overall, rising from 42 to 88. This completes the regions to achieve a 100%+ increase in endos from April to June.

At the bottom, 3 regions had net losses in this time. Forest and NWE, as mentioned earlier, didn’t seem to attract many Drewites in the first place, and their overall losses are likely just down to the usual NS summer lull. The Leftist Assembly, however, lost 67 endorsements, mainly due to a lack of gains in the initial surge, followed by a Delegate transition which lost them almost 80 endorsements in a week.

Finally, Lazarus was the closest to breaking even. Their Delegate moved from 285 endorsements in April, to 286 in June, a (rounded) change of 0%.

I hope you found this somewhat interesting. I’m sure many of you (if anybody actually reads this), will have far more detailed insights into the reasons behind this data than I do, and I would love to hear your stories and explanations! Also, apologies if I didn’t mention your region. Some regions just happened to be fairly average for most of these stats, and unfortunately the article would have been a little unwieldy if I’d spoken about everyone.

[Honeydewistania]

The Leftist Assembly isn’t really fair because they had a recent delegate change, I think Llorens has upwards of 200+ endorsements when they were delegate during Drew

[Dome Artan]

Thanks for putting this together! It’s always interesting to see regional comparisons like this

[Islonia]

It's a really nice sheet you have there. I always love some data comparing different regions. Thanks for putting this together!

[Dendarii Mercenaries]

The Leftist Assembly isn’t really fair because they had a recent delegate change, I think Llorens has upwards of 200+ endorsements when they were delegate during Drew

Blame it's delegates. It's their fault they messed the data up.

[Honeydewistania]

The Leftist Assembly isn’t really fair because they had a recent delegate change, I think Llorens has upwards of 200+ endorsements when they were delegate during Drew

Blame it's delegates. It's their fault they messed the data up.

Smh

[Pencil Sharpeners 2]

The Leftist Assembly isn’t really fair because they had a recent delegate change, I think Llorens has upwards of 200+ endorsements when they were delegate during Drew

Yeah, that's true. that was in my analysis!

Thanks for putting this together! It’s always interesting to see regional comparisons like this

It's a really nice sheet you have there. I always love some data comparing different regions. Thanks for putting this together!

Thanks! Glad you liked it!

[Honeydewistania]

The Leftist Assembly isn’t really fair because they had a recent delegate change, I think Llorens has upwards of 200+ endorsements when they were delegate during Drew

Yeah, that's true. that was in my analysis!

Thanks for putting this together! It’s always interesting to see regional comparisons like this

It's a really nice sheet you have there. I always love some data comparing different regions. Thanks for putting this together!

Thanks! Glad you liked it!

Oh, duh. Silly me.

[Skundi]

Really interesting and a great read! It would be really interesting to see the effect of Drew on medium sized UCRs and then we can compare those with the changes on the larger regions however I can imagine it being time consuming!

[Bhang Bhang Duc]

TWP initially gained at a similar rate to TEP, but their tough RMB spam policy led to significant purges of Drewites, which slightly inhibited endo growth.

Not really. After the second wave TWP was about 12,500 residents. The decision was made then to reduce that number to about 8,000. Pretty much all the nations purged were non-WA, so it really had little or no effect on Bran’s endorsement level.

[Bormiar]

This is really cool! I have a couple thoughts:

1. 10KI does so much better than other UCRs (I think) because they send virtually everyone a manual recruitment telegram, which does far better than API (which doesn't seem to work at all) and stamps.
2. In the initial Drewpocalypse, TNP's portion of the pie decreased slightly compared to every other feeder (I just observed the endorsement ratio change), suggesting (my logic might be screwed up here) that TNP fares worse from population bursts. The region seems to have had less voting power than it had before, despite gaining more endorsements than most other feeders. This shows that TNP actually succeeds on superior long-term and short-term retention, though many may draw the conclusion that TEP and TNP are simply being given more nations than the other regions.
3. As for TP and TWP, who eject far more than other feeders, perhaps a small group of ejectees later joined the WA. I don't see how TRR would've gotten 55 WAs otherwise, as I don't see why people would eject their WAs (unless they're trolls or spammers, who get deleted).
   

[Aurum Raider]

1. 10KI does so much better than other UCRs (I think) because they send virtually everyone a manual recruitment telegram, which does far better than API (which doesn't seem to work at all) and stamps.
2. In the initial Drewpocalypse, TNP's portion of the pie decreased slightly compared to every other feeder (I just observed the endorsement ratio change), suggesting (my logic might be screwed up here) that TNP fares worse from population bursts. The region seems to have had less voting power than it had before, despite gaining more endorsements than most other feeders. This shows that TNP actually succeeds on superior long-term and short-term retention, though many may draw the conclusion that TEP and TNP are simply being given more nations than the other regions.
3. As for TP and TWP, who eject far more than other feeders, perhaps a small group of ejectees later joined the WA. I don't see how TRR would've gotten 55 WAs otherwise, as I don't see why people would eject their WAs (unless they're trolls or spammers, who get deleted).
   

XKI benefited a lot from Drew's spotlighting them in his video, as well as the april fool's event happening around the same time. This is partially anecdotal, but Other UCRs which were leveraging API, Stamps, and Manual also saw very significant growth.

As per TNP, my own research presents that it's sort of a mixed bag. TNP saw the most immediate growth in terms of raw population on the day of, however they didn't pull too far ahead of the pack
WA growth is far more interesting to look at to me. In terms of overall growth, TNP and TEP are the winners for overall growth of WAs, with TWP doing by large and far the worst of the feeders by almost 100 WAs

Not really. After the second wave TWP was about 12,500 residents. The decision was made then to reduce that number to about 8,000. Pretty much all the nations purged were non-WA, so it really had little or no effect on Bran’s endorsement level.

While purging non-WA nations doesn't immediately effect endo level, it does effect growth. While the raw population growth spike took place on the 19th, the largest surges of WA signups were on the 20th and 22nd. It's likely many of the non-WA nations signed up for the WA a day or two after being founded, which would explain why TWP performed so much worse than the other feeders throughout the entire period of April 19th to May 25th

[Pencil Sharpeners 2]

Really interesting and a great read! It would be really interesting to see the effect of Drew on medium sized UCRs and then we can compare those with the changes on the larger regions however I can imagine it being time consuming!

Haha, yeah. It would also be difficult to pick which regions to include, since there are so many mid-sized UCRS, so that will probably be a job for someone else
Glad you liked this though!

TWP initially gained at a similar rate to TEP, but their tough RMB spam policy led to significant purges of Drewites, which slightly inhibited endo growth.

Not really. After the second wave TWP was about 12,500 residents. The decision was made then to reduce that number to about 8,000. Pretty much all the nations purged were non-WA, so it really had little or no effect on Bran’s endorsement level.

Yeah, you're right. Looking close at the graphs, you were pretty much tracking TEP up until April 22nd, before losing touch, which happened before the purges. You'll probably know better than me, but I presume there was just less of a WA/endo focus in TWP than in other Feeders?

This is really cool! I have a couple thoughts:

1. 10KI does so much better than other UCRs (I think) because they send virtually everyone a manual recruitment telegram, which does far better than API (which doesn't seem to work at all) and stamps.
2. In the initial Drewpocalypse, TNP's portion of the pie decreased slightly compared to every other feeder (I just observed the endorsement ratio change), suggesting (my logic might be screwed up here) that TNP fares worse from population bursts. The region seems to have had less voting power than it had before, despite gaining more endorsements than most other feeders. This shows that TNP actually succeeds on superior long-term and short-term retention, though many may draw the conclusion that TEP and TNP are simply being given more nations than the other regions.
3. As for TP and TWP, who eject far more than other feeders, perhaps a small group of ejectees later joined the WA. I don't see how TRR would've gotten 55 WAs otherwise, as I don't see why people would eject their WAs (unless they're trolls or spammers, who get deleted).
   

That could be true, but I thought that 10KI's steady decrease from their days of 100+ endos was due to API TGs taking away their edge. Do new nations notice the difference between a manual and automated TG, or do the manual TGs just allow 10KI to reach the more active nations better than the API does?

TNP's portion decreased, mainly because everyone gained equally. Their lead of approximately 300 endos over TSP remained (at least until the Del transition), but proportionally, 1100 Vs 800 is a bigger difference than 1400 Vs 1100. Really it just shows that TNP's lead over other Feeders is down to many years of better retention, rather than being given more nations.

Yeah, I'm actually not sure now about TRR. Their gain actually happened in two stages. April 20th - 23rd, which is presumably just due to the fact that most large regions will have gained in the initial surge. Some of those new endos will have been from people who moved to TRR voluntarily, since it's a fairly high profile region. The second big gain happened from April 30th - May 7th, and I have no explanation for this, as it doesn't seem to coincide with any purges.

[Bhang Bhang Duc]

Yeah, you're right. Looking close at the graphs, you were pretty much tracking TEP up until April 22nd, before losing touch, which happened before the purges. You'll probably know better than me, but I presume there was just less of a WA/endo focus in TWP than in other Feeders?

Actually there was a big push during the Drewpocalypse to increase the Delegate’s endo count - Bran got up to well over 900 with the aim of getting to 1,000. Unfortunately that’s when the die back occurred.

[Bormiar]

That could be true, but I thought that 10KI's steady decrease from their days of 100+ endos was due to API TGs taking away their edge. Do new nations notice the difference between a manual and automated TG, or do the manual TGs just allow 10KI to reach the more active nations better than the API does?

The API has a rate limit which makes it fair to people who do it manually makes recruitment incredibly slow and not very fruitful.

I believe Kuriko was saying that 10KI is less successful because of recruitment telegram blocking.

TNP's portion decreased, mainly because everyone gained equally. Their lead of approximately 300 endos over TSP remained (at least until the Del transition), but proportionally, 1100 Vs 800 is a bigger difference than 1400 Vs 1100. Really it just shows that TNP's lead over other Feeders is down to many years of better retention, rather than being given more nations.

Yep.

Yeah, you're right. Looking close at the graphs, you were pretty much tracking TEP up until April 22nd, before losing touch, which happened before the purges. You'll probably know better than me, but I presume there was just less of a WA/endo focus in TWP than in other Feeders?

Actually there was a big push during the Drewpocalypse to increase the Delegate’s endo count - Bran got up to well over 900 with the aim of getting to 1,000. Unfortunately that’s when the die back occurred.

In TRR, we were trying for 300, but couldn't get to our goal either .