[MEGATHREAD] Unusual Issue Effects

[The Great Imperator Jeffrey]

I got an issue on an alt a while ago. I don't remember the name or the number of the issue, but it was the one where a member of a minority religion burned himself alive to protest against discrimination against his religion. I could go look for the issue name and number and edit this post once I find it.
The last option was made by a leader of a major religion who suggested expelling all followers of minority religions from the country. I chose this option and secularism increased, which seemed strange to me.

EDIT: The issue is Issue #1197: Aflame with Indignity. The option I chose is marked as option 5 in the list of issues.

[The Great Imperator Jeffrey]

I got an issue on an alt a while ago. I don't remember the name or the number of the issue, but it was the one where a member of a minority religion burned himself alive to protest against discrimination against his religion. I could go look for the issue name and number and edit this post once I find it.
The last option was made by a leader of a major religion who suggested expelling all followers of minority religions from the country. I chose this option and secularism increased, which seemed strange to me.

EDIT: The issue is Issue #1197: Aflame with Indignity. The option I chose is marked as option 5 in the list of issues.

For more context, this is what the choice I picked says:
“Let them burn, and we shall clap our hands!” exclaims @@RANDOMNAME@@, a fervent believer of @@FAITH@@. “If more Yellowists want to burn themselves, I’ll provide the matches. But it is clear that they will soon turn their rage outward. Suppressing their ‘religion’ was not enough; it has just incensed them! We must get the heathens before they get us. Now is the time to finally round up all of those who don’t believe the true faith and expel them from our great nation. It will be a new golden age for my... I mean, our religion!”

How would that increase secularism?

[Tadreodal]

Is "Taxation" just income tax? I just abolished the inheritance tax and taxation went up.

[Fauxia]

Is "Taxation" just income tax? I just abolished the inheritance tax and taxation went up.

Yes.

[SherpDaWerp]

Is "Taxation" just income tax? I just abolished the inheritance tax and taxation went up.

- Why didn't tax fall when an option described a corporation tax cut / sales tax cut?

The tax model of the game is very simplistic, and it basically abstracts all spending as income tax and doesn't take into account any idea of government borrowing, deficit spending or tax from sources other than income tax.

That gives us limited tools for simulation.

Corporation tax is rolled into business subsidisation, with lowering of corporate tax representing an effective business subsidisation, and a shifting of tax burden onto the income taxpayer.

Sales tax and VAT, meanwhile, move income tax inversely, as raising more revenue from these forms of taxation decreases the burden on income tax, and vice versa.

This isn't entirely satisfactory, of course, as it means that the descriptions of "Freedom From Taxation" on the graphs aren't accurate, but it's reflective of how the game engine is written and of the simulation's limitations. It basically isn't possible to have burden of taxation and income tax move in opposite directions, as in the simulation all measured tax = income tax.

Bolding mine - you're correct in your assumption that "Taxation" is only representative of income tax.

[Humanilitas]

Just answered the issue Stakes on a Plane and picked the first option which builds a new runway for the international airport. It dropped my tourism by 2.7% not to mention my economy. This has got to be a bug.

[Fauxia]

Just answered the issue Stakes on a Plane and picked the first option which builds a new runway for the international airport. It dropped my tourism by 2.7% not to mention my economy. This has got to be a bug.

I suspect it causes environmental damage, which currently has a disproportionate effect on tourism.

[Humanilitas]

So it increased tourism capacity but reduced tourism appeal. Gotcha. Thanks!

[Old Northwest]

Nation: Old Northwest
Date: Today, April 19 2020
Issue: 'Till Death Do Us Part, #1123

Option 1123.1 (choosing to allow the sperm retrieval) decreased civil rights. I am unsure if this is an unusual effect or I just missed something, but how did this decrease civil rights? I assumed that, since the man was dead, there would be no person to have their civil rights taken away. I could understand 1123.3, because one is taking sperm from living people whether they like that or not, but I figured that 1123.1 would increase civil rights by allowing the wife to do that. Is the game checking the rights of a corpse or is this an unusual effect?

[Fauxia]

Nation: Old Northwest
Date: Today, April 19 2020
Issue: 'Till Death Do Us Part, #1123

Option 1123.1 (choosing to allow the sperm retrieval) decreased civil rights. I am unsure if this is an unusual effect or I just missed something, but how did this decrease civil rights? I assumed that, since the man was dead, there would be no person to have their civil rights taken away. I could understand 1123.3, because one is taking sperm from living people whether they like that or not, but I figured that 1123.1 would increase civil rights by allowing the wife to do that. Is the game checking the rights of a corpse or is this an unusual effect?

That’s a very common result. I’ve always assumed the game does check the rights of the corpse - similarly, a law requiring all persons to be cremated would reduce civil rights, because they still have a right to not have their bodies desecrated.

[Twistwarp]

Check out the way environmental beauty surged in Twistwarp - without any issues affecting environmentalism.

The stats in this game are NOT being properly determined by the issues.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Nation: Old Northwest
Date: Today, April 19 2020
Issue: 'Till Death Do Us Part, #1123

Option 1123.1 (choosing to allow the sperm retrieval) decreased civil rights. I am unsure if this is an unusual effect or I just missed something, but how did this decrease civil rights? I assumed that, since the man was dead, there would be no person to have their civil rights taken away. I could understand 1123.3, because one is taking sperm from living people whether they like that or not, but I figured that 1123.1 would increase civil rights by allowing the wife to do that. Is the game checking the rights of a corpse or is this an unusual effect?

That’s a very common result. I’ve always assumed the game does check the rights of the corpse - similarly, a law requiring all persons to be cremated would reduce civil rights, because they still have a right to not have their bodies desecrated.

Right.

You can either look on it as the rights of the deceased, or you could look on it as the rights of the living to determine what happens to them after they die.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Check out the way environmental beauty surged in Twistwarp - without any issues affecting environmentalism.

The stats in this game are NOT being properly determined by the issues.

Please refer to the OP of this thread, which will advise you on how to correctly use this thread.

You might also want to look at the Y-axis of your Environmental Beauty graph and note that the score has "surged" back and forth between 517 and 537. To put this in context, I've put together a graph for you here that shows your position relative to two of my nations, with scores of 0.7 and just under 5000.

https://www.nationstates.net/nation=twi ... tity_name=

[Old Northwest]

That’s a very common result. I’ve always assumed the game does check the rights of the corpse - similarly, a law requiring all persons to be cremated would reduce civil rights, because they still have a right to not have their bodies desecrated.

Right.

You can either look on it as the rights of the deceased, or you could look on it as the rights of the living to determine what happens to them after they die.

Makes sense. Wish I would have thought of that before making my decision. By the way, isn't there an issue about owning body parts or something (something about a thespian using his uncles skull for a prop in Hamlet or something...)? Iirc, allowing the thespian to use the body parts raises civil rights usually... pardon me if I'm misremembering, but shouldn't that then apply to this case or vice versa?

[Old Northwest]

Sorry for having to post in here again, but issue 439.1, taken today with this nation, which ended my ban on emigration, had absolutely no effect on anything other than changing the policy. I wouldn't have posted here, as at first I thought that was on purpose, but according to Trotterdam it seems like this was a pretty unusual effect.

[Apabeossie]

Sorry for having to post in here again, but issue 439.1, taken today with this nation, which ended my ban on emigration, had absolutely no effect on anything other than changing the policy. I wouldn't have posted here, as at first I thought that was on purpose, but according to Trotterdam it seems like this was a pretty unusual effect.

All of the stat ranges in that option have a +0 inside it(so no stat change is possible), the only kind of explanation I have here is that your nation already had enough civil rights, and weren't very safe/pacifist, although for a better explanation you might need another person.

[The Free Joy State]

Sorry for having to post in here again, but issue 439.1, taken today with this nation, which ended my ban on emigration, had absolutely no effect on anything other than changing the policy. I wouldn't have posted here, as at first I thought that was on purpose, but according to Trotterdam it seems like this was a pretty unusual effect.

I'm afraid that we do not base the usualness/unusualness of effects on any third party site.

As it says in the OP of this thread:

Corollary: If you see NO stat effects, the simulation isn't broken. Rather, the decision was in keeping with where your current stat model suggests you are ideologically and structurally, so no stat changes were needed.

The longer you play and the more you reaffirm the direction of your nation, the smaller your stat changes will become. Sometimes, you may not see any.

[The Paradise of Jeff Bezos]

I was doing issue 379 which is about an airport being constructed. I chose option 1 which is "We won't be 'International' for long without a capacity increase," laments Transport Minister @@RANDOMFEMALENAME@@ while wringing her hands. "If we want to remain a global hub, we need another runway and we need it now. We'll have to bulldoze a few houses to clear room, but just think of the @@CURRENCYPLURAL@@ we'll make from all those passengers." I would assume this would increase wealth gaps (which is what I was trying to do), but for some reason it actually brought them down from about 360 to 300, which is a very big decrease.

[Old Northwest]

I was doing issue 379 which is about an airport being constructed. I chose option 1 which is "We won't be 'International' for long without a capacity increase," laments Transport Minister @@RANDOMFEMALENAME@@ while wringing her hands. "If we want to remain a global hub, we need another runway and we need it now. We'll have to bulldoze a few houses to clear room, but just think of the @@CURRENCYPLURAL@@ we'll make from all those passengers." I would assume this would increase wealth gaps (which is what I was trying to do), but for some reason it actually brought them down from about 360 to 300, which is a very big decrease.

I imagine it’s related to the fact that the government is willing to intervene in the economy. If your nation usually does not do such a thing, especially if wealth gaps were already high, government intervention may have a big effect.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

This is correct -- also worth noting that the economic output and economy scores of your nation did improve, as promised.The cost was borne by the environment and by people's overall contentment, for the most part.

[Merni]

Why doesn't 724.3 increase corruption? (this nation, just now)

[Ehenhet Dralgad]

Authoritarianism shifted unstably in Ehenhet Dralgad recently. It's not that I disagree with the shift, per se - in fact, it's heavily aligned with the national narrative I was recently playing out - it's that I was watching that number at the time. The spike was smaller right then.

Is there any chance this game will stop retconning stats?

It sometimes declares "top x%" stats when they're actually a little out of range, too.

I'm not really a big fan of dishonest gameplay mechanics. It'd be enough to signal the change somehow; maybe create a system of "events" which can fire, informing the player that their nation's history has been warped in some way or another. Many but not all of these should indicate something about what change occurred. To minimize coding work, perhaps just one-liners in the national notices list?

[SherpDaWerp]

Authoritarianism shifted unstably in Ehenhet Dralgad recently. It's not that I disagree with the shift, per se - in fact, it's heavily aligned with the national narrative I was recently playing out - it's that I was watching that number at the time. The spike was smaller right then.

Is there any chance this game will stop retconning stats?

It sometimes declares "top x%" stats when they're actually a little out of range, too.

I'm not really a big fan of dishonest gameplay mechanics. It'd be enough to signal the change somehow; maybe create a system of "events" which can fire, informing the player that their nation's history has been warped in some way or another. Many but not all of these should indicate something about what change occurred. To minimize coding work, perhaps just one-liners in the national notices list?

Do you have an actual issue with an incorrect effect to report? "Instability" isn't particularly helpful... it doesn't even tell me which direction it should have gone! Do you want it to go up or down, and what did it actually do?

The game cannot and does not retro-actively alter stats. There are only 3 things in the game that can change your stats, and they are Issues, GA Resolutions, and Betas. You're not a member of the WA, and the last round of Betas was some months ago, so it must have been issues that caused the change.

Both of your problems can be explained by the process known as the Update. Twice per day, the server spends an hour or two (or however long it takes now that we've got 40k extra nations) and it re-orders every stat both nationally and regionally, as well as confirms WA Endorsements and increases Influence and Population. The fact that stats are only properly ranked twice a day can cause both phenomena you reported.

For one: The "retconning". The game does not store every stat point for the graphs - it only stores stat points from the time when your nation was Updated (plus stats at the time you check the graph). With authoritarianism, if you want it to go down (I'll assume you did), and you answer an issue that makes it go steeply down, then check the graph, you will have the steep drop. But if you then answer an issue that increases authoritarianism, then the stat will go back up. This intermediate point where the stat was way down before going back up again is not stored by the server, so it appears like it never existed. (If you wanted the authoritarianism to go up, replace all the places where I said "up" with "down" and vice versa, then pretend I said that all along)

For two: the top x% stats are collated at update, which means any new nations that are created between you checking the graph and Update can bloat the total number of nations, or, if they are created with stats at a higher level than you, then they can push you down out of the top x%. Badges can be given or upgraded at any point in time, but they only get taken away at update. If my Economy stat is at 90 and I'm in the "top 10%", then someone creates a couple thousand puppets at 91, those puppets can push me out of the top 10%, but the badge won't get taken away until Update happens.

[Aclion]

39.3 doesn't cancel the no adultery policy.

[The Free Joy State]

Why doesn't 724.3 increase corruption? (this nation, just now)

Basically, due to the way the different backstage stats work, which feeds the way the secondary stats work with each nation -- not every nation will see a rise in corruption with this option.

39.3 doesn't cancel the no adultery policy.

It doesn't, as this isn't a No Adultery policy reversal (changing it into one would entail some fairly hefty changes to the issue, and risk changing the original purpose of the issue).

However, it occurs to me that it might need a couple of additional validities on who receives it for the future.