[DB] The Kosovo Poll and some weird numbers

Day 1,434, 07:22 • Published in USA Austria • by Penegrin


As we all know Plato decided that we the players should vote on the destiny of Kosovo. One option was having Kosovo as independent country and the other option is Kosovo was region of Serbia.

Having the players decide in this issue was indeed a very bad idea. And here is why:

1) Since Plato published detail numbers on how countries have voted tensions between certain countries were predictable. Kosov is a difficult topic in RL and even more so in a game which is fueled by nationalism.

2) It was also predictable that countries would most likely vote in favor of their alliance. Of course there are exceptions but I am fairly sure most players or eRepublik know nothing about Kosovo and thus base their vote solely on the fact that a new country would strengthen either the enemy or you own team.

3) I know very few games where it is as easy and rewarding to have multis. eRepublik had always problems and while the Admins strike once in a while we all know there are huge botfarms around. Looking at the numbers published by Plato and egov you can only come to one conclusion: massive amounts of multis were created to turn the poll.

Some Numbers

Let’s look at the numbers of Plato. According to him roughly 8300 Serbian Citizens voted and 96% of them in favor of Serbia. Looking at egov we see Serbia had roughly 5800 active (ie fighting) citizens which is a plus of ~2500 votes. Coincident? Let’s look at the other countries and compare the number of votes and active fighters (I took day 1422 which is the date the poll started):

Serbia: 8297 – 5806 (difference: 2491 votes)
Polan😛 4555 – 4585 (difference: 30 votes)
Turkey: 2847 – 2540 (difference: 307 votes)
Macedonia: 3379 – 3154 (difference: 225 votes)
Romania: 3139 – 2653 (difference: 486)
Bulgaria: 2823 – 2712 (difference: 111 votes)
Hungary: 2552 – 2657 (difference: 105 votes)
USA: 2379 – 2145 (difference: 232 votes)

So while most countries have very close numbers in votes and active fighters (only Romania which was also strongly pro Serbia in the poll has a huge difference) Serbia is a real exception here. Compared to its active fighters 43% more citizens casted their vote.

Of course we have to expect some differences especialy since the poll ran for 3 days. But seriously: 43%???

It should be obvious to everybody that something has to be wrong here and I ask Plato to have a look on those numbers. You can not make such a grave decision if you have to assume that a lot of cheating has happened here!