[MEGATHREAD] Unusual Issue Effects Since New Update

[Djornaruz]

1. "Military demands increased spending"

Choosing the second option results in "Military funding has been stripped back", yet there is no decrease in taxes. The nation in question may not have had a military at all, which could explain that result. But if there was no military to defund, why did crime increase? Or anything else change?

2. Circumcision. According to someone on an earlier page, allowing religious circumcision decreases civil rights, because barbaric religion. Ok, that makes sense. But so does prohibiting it altogether, which while you may argue is an infringement on "religious rights" (puh-leeze, but let's not go there), is inconsistent with the first outcome. Furthermore, choosing the "informed consent" option *also* decreases CR.

Is there one rogue Editor back there hell-bent on tricking everyone into extreme taxation and restrictive civil codes, or what?

[Wallenburg]

277.1 increased Authoritarianism in Wallenburg by 22.2%. That makes no sense.

[[violet]]

I got issue 470 and went with option one. Apparently my Pizza Delivery sector went down 31%, and my charmlessness went up 31%.

http://imgur.com/hmeWZ4y

Your pic shows different numbers: Pizza Delivery down 0.31% and Charmlessness up 0.21%. That is, both changes are less than half of one percent.

[[violet]]

Two of my nations (this one and Gnark) just simultaneously got #44 "No Pain, No Gain", and both chose option #2, making torture illegal. In both cases, it made Charmlessness go up slightly. I suspect that's fallout from the increased Crime, but being considered a more ghastly place to visit because we don't torture people still seems to me like a very odd outcome.

The change is 0.07%, which is basically no change at all. But I do agree this issue option should probably boost compassion or something similar, which would also decrease Charmlessness.

[British West Zuzunia]

Issue 451 ("A Prosthelytizer To Burn", and incidentally my spellchecker insists that word doesn't have the "th" in it), option 2 (burn the heretic, burn his books, burn... just generally burn).

Religiousness, Ignorance, Death Rate up, Book Publishing, Secularism, Inclusiveness, HDI, Culture down, okay.

Law Enforcement is way up, okay. Safety is up, which I guess is a side effect of that, because a unit of police dedicated to dragging people out of their beds and setting them on fire if they don't like their religious views is totally going to make people safer. Wait, wasn't the Death Rate up?

Political Freedoms are down and Civil Rights unaffected, which... I'm not sure NS is consistent or sensible about where it puts the dividing line between Civil Rights and Political Freedoms in freedom of expression issues, but I guess I can buy the former, though it's kind of annoying because the unexpected drop kicked me out of Tyranny by Majority. The latter makes no sense.

Economic Output is up. Income is up across the board. Huh?

But the big one: Scientific Advancement is up and Primitiveness down. What the what?!?

[[violet]]

Option 2 of issue #490 caused a 21% dip in my nations economy and practically every other statistical change possible. I understand why this happened, nevertheless it is quite drastic for what would intuitively seem a relatively minor change. I had guessed that this option would have reduced corruption, the reason I chose it, but apparently not. The most bizarre effect I find is that taxation is only reduced very slightly. How exactly is the 'revenue' generated and government and hence the broader economy expanded if taxation is ultimately capped? Unless someone is really into socialist ideas of economics and its some abstract point about units of account, something which I very much doubt this is intended. As it stands it would seem that when expanding the economy for a socialist style economy the increase is generated from the ether with no detrimental effect and that any contraction of the government is bad and similarly disappears into nothingness.

I am bumping to ask if this is WAD?

This is a very drastic issue option, which as per the after-effect description, "guts every government department."

You raise a fair question in asking why this doesn't reduce taxation more, since ordinarily you would expect cuts to government services to mean less need for public funds and hence lower taxes. The only time this doesn't happen is when the tax base, i.e. the people and companies that can be taxed, shrinks at the same time. And as you observed, this happened fairly dramatically in Mostrov.

The reason is that Mostrov mostly runs a centrally organized economy, rather than a free market one. In a free market economy, the government has relatively little direct influence, but in a tightly controlled one, the government is very important, and business depend on it. Gutting the government (especially Business spending) in that situation will be damaging, at least in the short-term.

Simply speaking, the government isn't essential for a robust economy, but if you make it essential, and then you cut it, that will hurt.

[[violet]]

1. "Military demands increased spending"
[...]
2. Circumcision.

I couldn't find these among your recent issues. Was it with a different nation?

[[violet]]

277.1 increased Authoritarianism in Wallenburg by 22.2%. That makes no sense.

From 0.09 Stalins to 0.11 Stalins, which is still well below the World Average. You can see that you fluctuate around this range quite a bit:

https://www.nationstates.net/nation=wal ... 53?world=1

It's the same reason as came up earlier in the thread: You supported a free press, but since the press already had absolute freedom in Wallenburg, this made no difference. What did make a difference was that you slightly suppressed people's right to privacy.

[[violet]]

Issue 451 ("A Prosthelytizer To Burn", and incidentally my spellchecker insists that word doesn't have the "th" in it), option 2 (burn the heretic, burn his books, burn... just generally burn).

Religiousness, Ignorance, Death Rate up, Book Publishing, Secularism, Inclusiveness, HDI, Culture down, okay.

Law Enforcement is way up, okay. Safety is up, which I guess is a side effect of that, because a unit of police dedicated to dragging people out of their beds and setting them on fire if they don't like their religious views is totally going to make people safer. Wait, wasn't the Death Rate up?

Political Freedoms are down and Civil Rights unaffected, which... I'm not sure NS is consistent or sensible about where it puts the dividing line between Civil Rights and Political Freedoms in freedom of expression issues, but I guess I can buy the former, though it's kind of annoying because the unexpected drop kicked me out of Tyranny by Majority. The latter makes no sense.

Economic Output is up. Income is up across the board. Huh?

But the big one: Scientific Advancement is up and Primitiveness down. What the what?!?

Wow, this issue has more effects than I've ever seen in one place. I'll just take the last one.

The Scientific Advancement change is less than a fifth of one percent, so a small change. It's hard to be sure, since this is a very complex set of changes, but it looks to me like the main reason is that you stamped out quite a lot of "New Age" spirituality, which is anti-science, and replaced it with mainstream religion, which isn't.

[Skappola]

"Put The Phone Down On Cold Calling?"
Picking the pro-cold call side, which gives extra subsidies to it, decreases civil rights by a point or two. Unless I misread it, that seems a bit strange. Pretty small amount, but still relevant.

More importantly, that issue choice should probably increase crime, as the flavor text is that door-to-door salesmen are being beat up by vigilantes.

[Trotterdam]

This is a very drastic issue option, which as per the after-effect description, "guts every government department."

Mostrov chose "the government regularly publishes lengthy reports on its own excessive recordkeeping", not "auditors are gutting every governmental department".

If this is one of those confusions that result from there being two very slightly different versions of the same option that are never both shown to players at the same time, then (A) that's what you get for not publishing official issue texts even though the player-maintained spoiler list is 99% complete anyway, and (B) you really should suspect that players' numbering doesn't match yours once you look at the issue and actually see it having two very similar options.

[Araneidae]

6.3: Appointment Of Spiritual Advisor.
"The nation's official head of religious affairs is an atheist."

This made Religiousness go down by 0.75%. That seems very low, especially considering that I'm in World Rank top 1% for it (and therefore, the game somehow considers this to be a religious nation).

[Viikate]

Both options for issue 412 (The Magic (Of Advertising!) School Bus) seem to be nearly identical: Freedom From Taxation down, Ignorance and Intelligence up, Public Education and Transport up, and Primitiveness down. Plus some insignificant side effects.

Can someone confirm? Perhaps I picked the wrong option by accident last time, that'd explain it.

But if that's how it actually is at the moment, then how about adding a third option. Something like... "Why do we need school busses at all? It should be the parent's responsibility to make sure that their spawn get to the school, since they're the ones who chose to live far away from it."

[[violet]]

This is a very drastic issue option, which as per the after-effect description, "guts every government department."

Mostrov chose "the government regularly publishes lengthy reports on its own excessive recordkeeping", not "auditors are gutting every governmental department".

Oh I'm sorry, in that case it's the same situation but less drastic.

If this is one of those confusions that result from there being two very slightly different versions of the same option that are never both shown to players at the same time, then (A) that's what you get for not publishing official issue texts even though the player-maintained spoiler list is 99% complete anyway, and (B) you really should suspect that players' numbering doesn't match yours once you look at the issue and actually see it having two very similar options.

Uh, no, I just looked at the wrong option.

[[violet]]

6.3: Appointment Of Spiritual Advisor.
"The nation's official head of religious affairs is an atheist."

This made Religiousness go down by 0.75%. That seems very low, especially considering that I'm in World Rank top 1% for it (and therefore, the game somehow considers this to be a religious nation).

One for Editors. It does have fairly tame stats.

You certainly do seem to be a religious nation. By every possible different measure we have, you are strongly pro-religion.

[Mostrov]

Mostrov chose "the government regularly publishes lengthy reports on its own excessive recordkeeping", not "auditors are gutting every governmental department".

Oh I'm sorry, in that case it's the same situation but less drastic.

I was just wondering whether it was meant to be quite this drastic! I am not surprised it caused an economic decline, I just wasn't expecting a ~15% decline, I was thinking more in the 5% range given the issue text. I chose that option because I suspected it might get rid of corruption, which is a relatively difficult statistic to modify whereas the economy is easy to control.

[[violet]]

Oh I'm sorry, in that case it's the same situation but less drastic.

I was just wondering whether it was meant to be quite this drastic! I am not surprised it caused an economic decline, I just wasn't expecting a ~15% decline, I was thinking more in the 5% range given the issue text. I chose that option because I suspected it might get rid of corruption, which is a relatively difficult statistic to modify whereas the economy is easy to control.

It was a 10.2% decline in Economic Output. It looks to me like this is at the upper range of what is possible for this issue option, due to your economy's reliance on the government. Most nations would not see that kind of change.

[Mostrov]

Thank you. Just wanted to make sure everything was right. I was more struck by the economic rating decrease however, but as you indicate this to be less significant I am not troubled.

Should there be some way to see the effects that each issue has done after you leave the issue page? As once you navigate away there is no way to see all of the effects succinctly.

[Araneidae]

You certainly do seem to be a religious nation. By every possible different measure we have, you are strongly pro-religion.

Which is kind of amusing because I consider this nation to be irreligious.
I try to follow the theme of 'survival of the fittest' for it, but many anti-Inclusiveness and anti-Civil Freedom choices have the side effect of raising Religiousness...

[British West Zuzunia]

Issue 451 ("A Prosthelytizer To Burn", and incidentally my spellchecker insists that word doesn't have the "th" in it), option 2 (burn the heretic, burn his books, burn... just generally burn).

Religiousness, Ignorance, Death Rate up, Book Publishing, Secularism, Inclusiveness, HDI, Culture down, okay.

Law Enforcement is way up, okay. Safety is up, which I guess is a side effect of that, because a unit of police dedicated to dragging people out of their beds and setting them on fire if they don't like their religious views is totally going to make people safer. Wait, wasn't the Death Rate up?

Political Freedoms are down and Civil Rights unaffected, which... I'm not sure NS is consistent or sensible about where it puts the dividing line between Civil Rights and Political Freedoms in freedom of expression issues, but I guess I can buy the former, though it's kind of annoying because the unexpected drop kicked me out of Tyranny by Majority. The latter makes no sense.

Economic Output is up. Income is up across the board. Huh?

But the big one: Scientific Advancement is up and Primitiveness down. What the what?!?

Wow, this issue has more effects than I've ever seen in one place. I'll just take the last one.

The Scientific Advancement change is less than a fifth of one percent, so a small change. It's hard to be sure, since this is a very complex set of changes, but it looks to me like the main reason is that you stamped out quite a lot of "New Age" spirituality, which is anti-science, and replaced it with mainstream religion, which isn't.

Given that the religion in question is, per the issue text, creating an Inquisition to burn anyone who promotes anything they consider blasphemy along with their books, and described by the opposing options as "barbarism", "evil [that] has no place in our so-called civilized society", and "a cavalier disregard for the whole world's entire knowledge and heritage", I don't think that "mainstream" or "not anti-science" are descriptors that could reasonably be applied to it.

And the particular combination of Ignorance up, Intelligence unaffected, Primitiveness down, Scientific Advancement up seems really weird to me.

[Velik Hrvatska]

Issue 156: Waste Going To Waste, Says Industry Lobby

Option 2 lowered authoritarianism by a decently large margin, about 14%. That doesn't seem to make sense; even if the poisoning of the water is voluntary as the option implies, I don't see how that'd lower authoritarianism, especially by that much.

[My Heart]

Greetings everyone,

I have a question.


I just had the issue " Animal Liberation Front Strikes Again " and I answered something that had the result " Vegetarianism is compulsory. ".

The result was my agriculture sector fell DOWN 100%.

Sector: Agriculture
Mu-Bah-Daggs Productivity Index -100%


Is this normal? I imagine that
a) my agriculture sector should increase by 100%, since everyone needs that sector now to eat.
b) my agriculture sector falls down 100% because everyone is forcing it too much, by eating only vegetables

But not sure which is more correct. I find a) to be more correct, since its the "sector" that has to increase, to accommodate every vegetarian ...


Any help please?

[CoraSpia]

In the issue 'wiki worrys,' it increased authoritarianism when I allowed the wiki to go ahead. Surely it should decrease it?

[Luna Amore]

In the issue 'wiki worrys,' it increased authoritarianism when I allowed the wiki to go ahead. Surely it should decrease it?

In most cases, yes. In your case, no.

Also, it was a bump from 0.00 -> 0.01 so just a tiny pinch of Stalin. Just a hint to bring out the flavor in the dish.

[CoraSpia]

In the issue 'wiki worrys,' it increased authoritarianism when I allowed the wiki to go ahead. Surely it should decrease it?

In most cases, yes. In your case, no.

Also, it was a bump from 0.00 -> 0.01 so just a tiny pinch of Stalin. Just a hint to bring out the flavor in the dish.

So I'm so libertarian I break what should normally happen?