The Case for Buidling Hospitals in the US: A Response to Tiacha
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by mngoose33
I haven’t written in awhile, but after reading the most recent Department of Education article about hospital construction, I wanted to add my own thoughts to the debate. If you haven’t read the article (and by all means you should, as it’s quite informative), the basic gist is that high-quality hospitals are very expensive, and building them in lots of regions doesn’t make sense in light of game mechanics. In Tiacha’s words:
“The more people there are in a region, the higher the wall that region will have when it is attacked. That’s one of the big reasons why the US is not buying more hospitals at this time. By having the population in one state [particularly an important state like New Jersey, which is an iron region], you make that region easier to defend…If the eUS bought more Q5 hospitals, it would spread out the population more, which would reduce the wall size of important regions such as New Jersey. This would make Q5 regions easier to attack by PEACE.”
This is a perfectly logical argument for preventing military takeovers. However, a few folks, including myself, pointed out that (1) consolidating too much of our population in a small number of states may leave us more vulnerable to PTO attempts and (2) a reasonable compromise might be to ensure each state has at least a mid-quality hospital to discourage excessive population clustering.
So, to test the theory that having mid-quality hospitals attracts population, let’s take a look at the data.
Hospital quality............Number of states...........Averag e population
............None........................ ............5....................... ...................57
..............Q1........................ ..............20........................ ................94
..............Q2........................ ...............6........................ ................206
..............Q3........................ ...............9........................ ................280
..............Q4........................ ...............9........................ ................458
..............Q5........................ ...............2........................ ...............2577
The data indicate that, on average, states with higher-quality hospitals attract larger populations. This isn’t surprising. But given that the 25 regions that have either no hospital or only a Q1 hospital (a near-majority in Congress) have only 14% of our population, it appears to me that these states are vulnerable to a PEACE PTO attempt.
So, just how hard would it be to PTO our Congress? Well, let’s look at data from the June Congressional elections.
Hospital quality....Number of states(avg)....Total votes cast (avg)...Total votes for winner (avg)
...........None................ ...................... 5...................................18.. ........................................ ...9
............Q1.......................... ...... .......20............................... ..20.. ........................... ............11
............Q2.......................... ..............6......................... ..........30............ ...... ................ .......9
............Q3.......................... ..............9......................... ...........47........................... ......... .....28
............Q4.......................... ..............9......................... ...........82............ ...................... .......52
............Q5.......................... .............2.......................... ..........699.................. ................. .....314
As the data show, a PTO attempt is certainly possible; the states with either no hospital or a Q1 hospital (which, again, are the least-populated states) require, on average, less than a dozen votes per state to win a Congressional seats. By contrast, states with Q3 hospitals require nearly three times as many votes to win a Congressional seat.
Now, some of you are probably thinking to yourself, “sure we’re vulnerable on paper, but if PEACE attempted a PTO of our smaller states, our government would see the voting anomalies and people living in Florida and New Jersey would buy moving tickets and vote in those states to stop it.” Fair enough. But given the current state of affairs in eUS politics, how confident should we be that our country would come together to fight off a PTO attempt and support an American, particularly if that meant voting for a party you don’t like? Additionally, if PEACE attempted a PTO near the end of the election, we may not have enough votes to fend it off or enough time to organize ourselves. If PEACE faked a PTO in another country earlier in the day and drew US votes overseas, we would be even more vulnerable.
Based on the data, I would recommend that HR, Emerick, Richard Brophy, or whomever else wins the Presidency should strongly consider placing more mid-quality hospitals in these 25 states that are currently underpopulated in order to attract more people. Do we want everybody to move there? Absolutely not; as Tiacha pointed out, population clustering is a good thing in Erep. But right now, our population is so clustered that we are leaving ourselves wide open to a PTO attempt. Fortunately, placing a few Q3 hospitals will go a long ways towards preventing a potential disaster.
EDIT: U.S. Naval War Collage raises some additional points about hospital placement in this article
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Comments
very informative! Thanks for the analysis and suggestions!
😕
It's just a bad idea. I am CERTAIN that America would come together to stop a PTO. The Party Presidents are a part of the Jedi Council, a big step in working together. They are smart people and can handle a crisis situatiuon.
I'm not so sure, Rhane...
Rhane, I hope you're right. However, if PEACE put forth a concentrated effort to PTO us after the majority of people had already voted, the data indicate that it really wouldn't take that many votes for them to succeed if they picked the states with low population. It's no coincidence that the least-populated states also have the worst hospitals. IMO, the cost of constructing Q3 hospitals in those a few of those 25 states is reasonable and prudent given the stakes.
While I have no doubt that eAmericans would come together to combat a serious PTO effort, it won't matter if there's a sufficiently concerted effort by a large number of PEACE nations at the end of the day, especially if they plan multiple PTOs in different countries.
We've already seen that PEACE is capable of using a multi-layer strategy to ensure that they succeed in at least some PTO efforts. It happened in Croatia just this month. Who's to say that they won't do the same here sometime? If they also launch fake PTO efforts in two or three other countries in order to distract us, it may very well succeed.
When it's possible to PTO the eUSA with a mere 350 votes, placed correctly, and when this is mainly because we have such a concentrated population due to the hospital situation, then we have a potential problem. I'd just as soon not see it become a real one.
Jaime, I couldn't have said it better. The PTO is the weapon d'jour. As such, we need to assess how vulnerable we are, and then ask ourselves whether it's worth it to purchase mid-quality hospitals in unpopulated areas in order to decrease the threat. This article was my attempt at such an assessment.
As Tiacha pointed out in the Dept. of Ed article, having a clustered population is a good thing in terms of game mechanics...to a point. But as with everything else in life, moderation is the key.
When you look at it, when was the last war that didn't involve a PTO of one country? Romania v Indonesia. And how long ago was that?
Excellently written. I'd like to see the second set of data broken down into numbers of states represented in each column (Q0-Q5), in order to give a sense of how many congressional seats are safe from PTOs and how many fit into the most vulnerable category.
And I'll say once again that the Dept. of Ed should refrain from "teaching" unsettled topics.
Voted.
If I were in charge of a PTO effort, I would have a few newbies start their lives in each targeted PTO state plus one veteran (let's put him in Florida) to guide their efforts. Then a few weeks later, the veteran would form a new political party with the 40 gold required coming from from overseas. The PTO newbies would join this new political party and each targeted PTO state would have a candidate. I would instruct the rest of the PTO guys to move and vote at a few minutes before the polls close.
Rhane - Face it. You won't have enough time to stop them.
@comandantedavi😛
Good suggestion, edited.
@jim: a PTO could definitely happen the way in which you described, but I don't think they need to be that creative. I think a concentrated effort near the end of the polls in every low-population state would do the trick. Building mid-quality hospitals in this region would help to deter such an attempt, as it would encourage increase population dispersal.
i think it's highly unlikely that we get PTO'd. I'm confident we would come together and vote, building up a margin that would be hard to stop. I think a great way to decrease the chance of a PTO is to encourage people to move back to their home states to vote which i know USWP does. this lets people fight to their fullest potential, feel like they are affecting their home state, and reduce the tiny risk of a PTO
@Dude:
The data indicate that there are 25 states in which a candidate needs less than a dozen votes to win a Congressional seat. The USWP vote-moving efforts will not address this shortcoming if the party is simply encouraging people to move to their RL state to vote. How many people who play this game are from Deleware in RL? Or North Dakota? Or Montana? My guess is, not many. And yet these states have just as much power in Congress as Florida or New Jersey. It is not enough to simply tell people to move back to their RL state to vote. We need to provide a greater incentive for people to move to these states permanently.
I'm not saying that we should build Q5 hospitals everywhere, because that would be a waste of money. Nor am I saying that we should have an equally-dispersed population...the game's war mechanics favor population clustering. But my point is that we've taken it to such extremes that we are leaving ourselves open to the PTO. We've signed over 20 MPPs to prevent military takeovers, yet the data indicate that we are quite vulnerable to a PTO attempt. Does it not make sense to make necessary preparations for such a political attack, just as signing MPPs helps prevent a military attack?
At the very least, we need to be understand that it really doesn't take many votes to PTO the United States if the enemy picks the right regions...and those regions also happen to have low-quality hospitals.
PTO risk is small. We have so many parties moving their candidates to other states and moving their voters to other states that it always evens out in the end. We've only really had one Congressman in the past few months who has been questionable, and he was quickly blackballed by Congress. Yes, there's always the possibility of PTO, but its highly unlikely. Sides, if someone attacked these low quality regions, our MPPs would kick in and we would crush the enemy. That's why everyone fears attacking the US: not only would our large two clicking population get them, but our allies would as well.
Tiacha, thanks for the comment. I guess my response would be that if moving votes causes things to "always even out in the end," then why don't the data reflect that? Look at the table again: it only takes 9 votes to win in states with no hospitals, whereas in states with Q3 hospitals, it takes 28 votes to win. That's a big difference. The data show that despite current voter-moving efforts, it DOESN'T even out in the end; certain states have very few voters. Those states also have bad hospitals. Coincidence? I doubt it.
I completely agree with you about our ability to fend off military attacks in these states, but that's a separate issue. Given our overall population and number of MPPs, you can't take us out by force. To bring down the US, you have to do it from the inside. Our MPPs are powerless to stop a politcal attack.
The data show that it really wouldn't take that many votes to pull off a PTO...particularly if PEACE faked a PTO in another country, got a lot of Americans to move there to fend it off, and then came to the US en masse to vote in places like North Dakota a couple of hours before the election closed. Building a few Q3 hospitals would be a good way to increase the populations in these states and, insodoing, decrease the likelihood of a successful PTO.
I still haven't heard from you in my article Tiacha.
I believe the army is losing most from what some more Q5 hospitals could provide. TO is another thing.
>The USWP vote-moving efforts will not address this shortcoming if the party is simply encouraging people to move to their RL state to vote. How many people who play this game are from Deleware in RL? Or North Dakota? Or Montana?
I'm confused about why you think we should put Q3's in states now. You said earlier (i think) that people move from their home states to a Q5 because they have a low Q hospital, and if we put a Q3 more people would stay in their home state reducing the risk of a PTO, but now your saying the reason we don't have high populations in those states is not because of the low Q hospital, but because people don't start their to begin with. I don't understand why you think people would move from their home state that had a Q1 hospital to a Q3 hospital that's not their home state and not a Q5. If they are going to move from their home state they would move to the Q5 to get the fullest potential.
and do i not understand the mechanics of the game or you because it sounds like you think we wouldn't see the PTO coming. Don't they have to set-up the party 2 days in advance so they can run for congress? and I think if we saw there was a risk of a PTO we wouldn't send people away to defend others, but stay at home and defend ourselves, probably getting allies to help us as well if we needed it. and many people save their votes to the end of the day (last 5-10 minutes) just in case there is a PTO that comes up towards the end of the day and their vote is needed somewhere else
Anything less than a q5 is bad, but we need more q5's. Also, in the past these hospitals were bought for the quality the population of that region could afford, thus the hospital quality was based on the the population, not the other way around.