Can population ever decrease

[Umbra Ac Silentium]

It is annoying for FT nations though. Maybe make a separate MT count and FT count?

If you have RP issues with your population, just RP your nation as having a different population.

Hmm, quite peculiar then. It was even a visible flat-line on my tracker graph (see link in siggy), as well as being the exact same from the day before. Huh...

Are you sure? I didn't see a flat-line on your graph. If there was at some time before, it might've been an error with the site producing that graph, rather than NS.

It was longer than a month ago, and no, I'm 101% sure it didn't change on NS as well. I might not have even gotten an issue 'swell.

[Sedgistan]

It was longer than a month ago, and no, I'm 101% sure it didn't change on NS as well. I might not have even gotten an issue 'swell.

In that case, your nation probably didn't update - you must've switched regions during the main daily update, from a region that hadn't updated yet, to one that had already updated.

[Glen-Rhodes]

It was longer than a month ago, and no, I'm 101% sure it didn't change on NS as well. I might not have even gotten an issue 'swell.

Either a bug prevented your nation from updating or you're misremembering.

/sniped by Sedge! >:[

[Umbra Ac Silentium]

It was longer than a month ago, and no, I'm 101% sure it didn't change on NS as well. I might not have even gotten an issue 'swell.

In that case, your nation probably didn't update - you must've switched regions during the main daily update, from a region that hadn't updated yet, to one that had already updated.

Ai, but I've only changed regions one, and that was when I formed the one I'm currently in. Oh well.

[Chrinthanium]

While being about to more fully customize our population would add a slightly extra dimension to the game, as Sedgistan already stated, it's kind of how people tell longevity here. Though, there is also the Founding date located on all of our forum posts.

Not to mention the amount of coding it would take to do that.

Still, that's also not a true indicator since there was a time all my NS nations were CTE'd because I'd lost interest in the game. Though, that's when NS used Jolt, so I'm happier to stick around now!

[Flibbleites]

It was before my time, but I've read that for NS's first 'April Fools' joke the Mods temporaily [just for that one day] re-set every nation's population back to 5 million...
Oh, just imagine how some of the players must have screamed!

Yup, that was done and there was massive uproar over it.

[Ballotonia]

I don't think using population is the best way. The API gives the exact length of membership.

It's far far easier to just look at the population...

They measure slightly different things.

The API provides an exact tally of the days since founding... for non-antiquity nations. Antiquity nations have "0" in their API 'Founded' tag.

Population gives a rough estimate of time spent alive in the game. Nations do not accrue population during a period of non-existence. The random factor also makes it a tad fuzzy. It is also influenced by nations update-surfing (either skipping an update, or in older times: catching more than one update per day). Also, for older nations there's the issue of the population bug which could cause a nation to either grow twice as fast or not at all.

@Umbra Ac Silentium: perhaps you checked a mere 23 hours (or less) later than the day before, and the update hadn't happened yet for your nation? Then there's always the possibility of a technical glitch. They've happened before.

Ballotonia

[Geku]

I have made my country in an area and map (7.369 million km²) and some day my I will "overpopulate" I just think it's weird having a country the size of australia wiht an bigger population than russia and china

[Bears Armed]

I have made my country in an area and map (7.369 million km²) and some day my I will "overpopulate" I just think it's weird having a country the size of australia wiht an bigger population than russia and china

You can always roleplay it as having a lower population than the game says: For example, I treat this nation as having a population of slightly under twenty million rather than the "official" over thirty billion.