Moo on National Goals

Day 775, 11:31 • Published in Ireland United Kingdom • by moomoohead

Setting national goals is difficult, even more so by the flawed calculations they are based on. You can apply logic, do multiple regression analysis, or even ask experts for there opion, but in the end it is still a bit of a guess. What I tried to do was be realistic, real goals give rewards to a country. Below is my thought process on setting the goals.

Military: Keep all regions.
It's not the time yet for conquest. I was asked today by several players why I did not put taking NI as a goal. Taking Northern Ireland is possible, of course, at a huge cost. But it would be irresponsible, because we wouldn't hold it for long on our own and this could backfire in a nasty way. It would show the rest of the world that we want to attack another country, without allies, and our willing to break agreements. It would have been reckless to set this as a goal.

Population: 12%
At the start of last month we had 1,640 citizens in this country and currently there are 1,478, which is down 10% and still dropping. This downward trend is likely to continue because of the lag time it takes people to die. If we have roughly 900 new citizens joining every month, that means we lost about 1,100 last month. I think if we get real war by joining an alliance and some new ideas for population growth we can reverse this trend. I have proposed a 12% increase on our current position, which would take our population back to 1,660 or a net gain of 180 citizens. This will bring us back to where we were 30 days ago, which in my view is realistic goal.

Economics: 45%
At the start of last month the GDP was 1,240 gold, it is currently down 20% to 988 but has started to rise. This indicator response very quickly to changes in the country I think the lack of constant war at the start of the month and the population decrease have effected this. There are currently too many companies for our population now and they are underproductive. I think it is realistic to aim to be back to where we were before this month and increase it another bit. 45% sounds unrealistic at first read, but in reality what it means is going from 1,240 at the start of this month to 1,430 at the end of next month, or a net gain of just 190 gold. The recent crash shows how volatile this is as a measurement. Setting a goal that did not include achieving our past performance would have been wrong. This goal was set higher then population because it does not suffer from the lag of death time.

I know there are flaws in the measurements, but I believe setting ambitious goals are important. They point you in the path you will be going.