by New South Hell » Wed Jun 17, 2009 4:35 am
by New South Hell » Wed Jun 17, 2009 4:45 pm
by [violet] » Wed Jun 17, 2009 10:26 pm
by New South Hell » Thu Jun 18, 2009 3:56 am
[violet] wrote:Thanks for keeping an eye on things!
The old criteria for moving between the "starter set" and the larger pool was having received 18+ issues or a population of 50M+, not counting the first one; it's now 20+/50M+, but the initial issue (the infamous #0) is counted, although only in nations who received it since the change.
Issue repetition in general: prior to my change, it was always possible to get a repeat at any time, but very unlikely. (Extraordinarily unlikely.) It's not more likely, but still should be very unusual, particularly for nations that are valid for most issues. I'd like to hear how often they come up in your ideobots.
by New South Hell » Thu Jun 18, 2009 4:33 am
by [violet] » Thu Jun 18, 2009 5:22 pm
New South Hell wrote:And getting a repetition at issue 20 still seems shocking to me - is it possible that that one had no unseen starter set issues for which it was eligible? (I've observed that highly undemocratic and repressive nations seem to have a significantly smaller pool of issues they qualify for, and Communist Ijeobot is certainly one of those.)
by [violet] » Thu Jun 18, 2009 5:39 pm
by New South Hell » Thu Jun 18, 2009 8:24 pm
[violet] wrote:New South Hell wrote:And getting a repetition at issue 20 still seems shocking to me - is it possible that that one had no unseen starter set issues for which it was eligible? (I've observed that highly undemocratic and repressive nations seem to have a significantly smaller pool of issues they qualify for, and Communist Ijeobot is certainly one of those.)
I doubt it had no valid remaining issues, although it probably had fewer of them than most nations, which increased its chances of getting a repeat. Prior to my change, the game would try 40 times to find a valid, non-repeating issue for nations before accepting a repeat; it now only tries 10 times. Let's see how this goes in your other nations; if we see another repeat or two in the starter set, I'll crank it back up some.
by [violet] » Thu Jun 18, 2009 8:59 pm
by New South Hell » Fri Jun 19, 2009 3:42 am
[violet] wrote:I do have a little script to simulate issue generation, but a difficulty is that different nations are eligible for different issues. So while I can easily simulate how it shakes out for a particular nation, it's not so simple to simulate how it works for all nations. (New South Hell, for example, seems eligible only for 96 issues, which is not many at all.) So this is where your ideobots are useful, as representatives of common issue-choices.
I agree that nations are now probably significantly less likely to receive a new issue immediately upon becoming eligible for it, which is not ideal, but, in my opinion, acceptable given the benefit of not having the server thrash around like an idiot trying to find valid issues during daily updates. (It's 15 tries now.)
by New South Hell » Fri Jun 19, 2009 4:15 am
by New South Hell » Fri Jun 19, 2009 4:29 am
[violet] wrote:I do have a little script to simulate issue generation, but a difficulty is that different nations are eligible for different issues. So while I can easily simulate how it shakes out for a particular nation, it's not so simple to simulate how it works for all nations. (New South Hell, for example, seems eligible only for 96 issues, which is not many at all.) So this is where your ideobots are useful, as representatives of common issue-choices.
I agree that nations are now probably significantly less likely to receive a new issue immediately upon becoming eligible for it, which is not ideal, but, in my opinion, acceptable given the benefit of not having the server thrash around like an idiot trying to find valid issues during daily updates. (It's 15 tries now.)
by Mayor For Life » Fri Jun 19, 2009 9:49 am
New South Hell wrote:...snip...
I'd be happy to share with you the code and other foundations for my ideological researches - which are an actual attempt to codify real-world political outlooks in terms of issue-choices. I think you could use this to run nations of various sorts, libertarian, repressive, capitalist, socialist, left-wing, right-wing, sensible, psychotic, and so on through the whole life-cycle, and see how it works out. It could help you find the right number to take the place of 10, 15 or 40 a little sooner...
- nsh -
by [violet] » Fri Jun 19, 2009 8:11 pm
New South Hell wrote:Dunno what it's like in Perl, but in the languages I use (including Python, which is Perlish on the inside and the anti-Perl on the outside), random number generation is pretty cheap.
Still, if I were out to choose an item from a set of items with different weights, I'd just use a technique where I get a single random number, and then subtract off the weights of each item in turn
New South Hell wrote:But what I was thinking was the ability to run some nations from birth to maturity and beyond, to get an idea of whether the gross statistics had changed and, if so, whether in a good way. For instance, in the case of yesterday's changes (yesterday's in my time zone), how often a non-starter issue will be chosen for a starter nation.
by Sirocco » Fri Jun 19, 2009 9:51 pm
by New South Hell » Sat Jun 20, 2009 4:10 am
[violet] wrote:New South Hell wrote:Still, if I were out to choose an item from a set of items with different weights, I'd just use a technique where I get a single random number, and then subtract off the weights of each item in turn
The problem here is if you're talking about 50,000 nations and 250 issues, that's 12.5 billion calculations just to establish the weights!
[violet] wrote:Part of my changes will definitely lead to more issue repetition in younger nations, as previously that was (almost) unheard of, while now it's merely unlikely. My thinking here is that speeding up the daily update is worth it.
by New South Hell » Sat Jun 20, 2009 4:27 am
Sirocco wrote:Sounds like I need to put through more 'valid for everyone' issues.
by New South Hell » Sat Jun 20, 2009 6:09 am
by Mayor For Life » Sat Jun 20, 2009 7:18 am
New South Hell wrote:...
Unfortunately, today I have much less time than usual to geek away in delight in NationStates-related activity. But the point is that with a little mathematics and analysis (and knowledge of the basic game parameters) one can do better than puliing numbers out of posteriors, even though some of us do have have very sophisticated posteriors that often generate useful numbers...
- nsh -
by New South Hell » Sat Jun 20, 2009 9:35 am
by New South Hell » Sat Jun 20, 2009 11:11 am
by New South Hell » Sat Jun 20, 2009 5:32 pm
by Monkeys in Helmets » Mon Jun 22, 2009 3:13 pm
New South Hell wrote:I hope nobody minds me making post after post on this thread with random thoughts. ("I need a dump truck, Mama, to unload my head.") But probably no one is following it but [violet], sirocco and really hard-core issue geeks, so I'm probably not annoying a lot of people, just important ones.
by Zwangzug » Mon Jun 22, 2009 4:10 pm
by New South Hell » Sun Jun 28, 2009 4:28 am
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