[SPQR] Numbers Don't Lie - Or How Low Bonus Strategy Saved eUS

Day 1,895, 22:12 • Published in USA USA • by Kemal Ergenekon


Numbers Don't Lie - Or How Low Bonus Strategy Saved eUS

"Numbers don't lie, but people do. - Cyber Witch"


It's time to have a look at the numbers again, and assess what the "Low Bonus Strategy" has accomplished. Are Dirty Plufferist Elitists right? Or the Anti-establishmentarian Naysayers? Neither, perhaps?

I will try to exhibit the analysis as simple as possible. There will be 2 tables and a single graph. The first table contains just facts. The second table contains analysis on assumptions that will be stated. The last graph depicts the most important two series from the second table, and concludes.


Facts on ATO starting from September 2012



Column 1: Date
Column 2: Election type
Column 3: PTO votes
Column 4: ATO votes
Column 5: Other votes
Column 6: Total votes
Column 7: PTO vote percentage
Column 8: ATO vote percentage
Column 9: Other vote percentage
Column 10: Summary of the result

Clarifications:

1) There was no PTO CP candidate on Sep 5 2012
2) PTO/ATO/Other votes are straightforward in CP and Congress elections, but not so in PP elections. For the numbers you see on the table, only votes in top 6 parties at the time were counted (USWP+AMP+Feds+WTP+AFA+iNCi).
3) AFA got 18 congressmen into the congress on Dec 25 2012; but one of them was an agent I planted while I was the Secretary of Homeland Security on November-December 2012. You know her by the alias 'Putri'. I would like to thank her once again for her service to the country.

Analysis of Table 1:

1) ATO has won every CP election
2) ATO has stabilized the loss of ground in congressional elections to 17-19 congressmen, but that is a dangerous number - its close to 1/3 of the total congressmen, and gives the PTOers the chance to block votes that require supermajority, such as impeachment and natural enemy laws.
3) If we do not count the defeat on Dec 15 2012, ATO has succeeded in guaranteeing a partial victory in each PP election; not losing any parties to the PTO beyond AFA.
4) If we do not count the aberration on Oct 5 2012 (due to some groups' hatred of Pfeiffer), it seems like the PTO has been slightly increasing its percentage.

Are the Naysayers right after all? The answer is: not really. We need to move on to the second table.


Analysis of potential and actual PTO numbers



Column 1: Date
Column 2: Election type
Column 3: Potential PTO votes
Column 4: Actual PTO votes
Column 5: Potential PTO votes - Actual PTO votes
Column 6: Potential PTO vote percentage
Column 7: Actual PTO vote percentage
Column 8: Potential PTO vote percentage - Actual PTO vote percentage

Clarifications:

1) Potential PTO votes are calculated as follows:
- Sep 25 2012 is chosen as the starting date
- Each congressmen gets around 20 citizenship approvals. So after each congressional election, the potential PTO votes is increased by the number of PTO congressmen times 20.
- On non-congressional elections, last month's potential PTO votes number is preserved.
2) As mentioned before, Oct 5 2012 election is an aberration (Pfeiffer's POTUS run). Not all people listed under PTO were actual PTO supporters.

Analysis of Table 2:

As players old enough will remember, eUS has experienced an extremely long period of 100/100 bonuses. During this time, foreign players were willing to pay exorbitant amounts just to get eUS citizenship. Even congressmen who weren't affiliated with the current PTO group decided from time to time to approve citizenship requests that weren't approved by IES, in exchange of money, or political support.

If eUS still had 100/100 bonuses since September 2012, the PTOers would not only be able to attract supporters and use every single one of their citizenship approvals, they would even be able to charge money for it and make a profit.

However, since eUS has applied the strategy of having low bonuses, the PTOers had 2 problems:
1) They couldn't attract new supporters to the country even though they had more than enough citizenship approvals (in months prior to Sep 2012 this certainly wasn't the case)
2) They couldn't keep all their members in eUS since not all of their members were hardcore PTOers - they went to countries with better resources.

Have a good look at Column 5 and Column 8. They are called "Difference". When it's green, it means the PTOers couldn't use their approvals and attain their potential.

Those numbers are the success of the "Low Bonus Strategy". The graph will drive the point home:



- The blue line is the actual PTO percentage.
- The red line is the potential PTO percentage.
- The green line is the 50% line. Going above it means the PTOers win.

As you can see, if we hadn't conducted the low bonus strategy, the PTOers would have already become the majority around mid-November 2012, and they would have handily won the POTUS elections on Dec 2012.

Also, recall that in this analysis, I'm not even accounting for the additional congressional positions they would have acquired as a consequence of their increased percentage in the congressional elections. That graph would have looked even more terrible.

Long story short:

- The "Low Bonus Strategy" has succeeded in preventing a PTO victory.
- It wasn't enough by and of itself to beat the PTO.

So the Dirty Plufferist Elitists are the victor. But as one would expect, it is not sufficient by itself. There are some reasons as to why:

1) The PTOers are creating a lot of multiaccounts. The multiaccounts do not care about bonuses, obviously, so they are unaffected by the Low Bonus Strategy
2) The econ module of the game is virtually dead. Since the prices of everything is falling, and the gold influx into the economy has increased due to Q4 training centers + training contracts, production and wages are no longer significant compared to people's wealth. Hence the number of people who care about bonuses at all is decreasing.
3) The PTOers are actively recruiting hardcore PTOers from abroad. There were 7 articles in different countries just yesterday. Even my undercover agent Putri infiltrated AFA by using a false identity posing as an Indonesian recruit, which is telling something.

What should be done:

1) We should continue with the Low Bonus Strategy, which serves to contain the PTO threat.
2) We should work hard to find new allies who can help with our ATO efforts. Now that eUS is in a new alliance, the time is ripe to find new allies and friends outside eUS. Once we defeat the PTOers, we can regain 100/100 bonuses, and reclaim our rightful place as an eRep Superpower.

Best regards,
Kemal Ergenekon




Supplementary Graphs added after Tiamati.Magick's request