The Economist ~ How to solve a problem like rank 29

Day 1,821, 10:42 • Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom • by Spite313


Dear friends,


Today I’m writing to challenge a particularly repetitive bit of New Era propaganda. If you click the little flag below your profile, it will bring you to the UK national page. You will see there a small note saying that the UK is rank 29. Now this is a particularly ambiguous piece of info, because it doesn’t explain the ranking system at all, just gives an arbitrary number. For those of you who were wondering, it used to be that countries were ranked by the collective experience points of members. These days they’re ranked by population.


First of all let’s debunk the biggest myth of all- that rank reflects relative importance. Let’s look at a few discrepancies. First of all Poland, the biggest hitting country on Earth. Poland does over 4 billion damage a day, making them the strongest country by damage. However they are way down in rank 8. Brazil which is rank 2, is 15th in the world by damage. You can see here that rank really means nothing in terms of national power, or importance. The most powerful country is six ranks below the fifteenth most powerful. Slovenia which is sixteenth for damage is 30th, behind the UK, in rank.



Oops, you look silly now


Actually New Era, and especially Don Dapper, has made such a big issue about rank that he’s spamming it everywhere like it’s some sort of argument that the UK is sucking, and blaming the government for it.



Here is a list of countries by damage, taken from egov4you, a statistics website. As you can see, the UK ranks above every single country Don mentioned. If you’re going to talk crap, at least do it sensibly. Some of the strongest countries in the world have relatively small populations. Croatia, one of the strongest nations, has just 2,800 active citizens. Mexico, 20 ranks below them in damage, have 3700.


Now the second great myth is that this rank - population - is the result of government rule. The truth is that it’s based on two things, player recruitment and player retention.

Retention is the main role of government, parties and MUs. All of these have a significant role to play. The forums themselves are a vital retention tool - it’s been proven that a citizen who joins the forums is significantly more likely to keep playing. Normally a player has a half life of about a day. About half of players only log in once, about half of those last a week, half of those a month. Players who last over a month are equally likely to be still playing over a year later (this information was given out by the eRepublik admins) and the retention rate only varies a few percentage points between the best and worst nations.


Getting players to keep playing means keeping them interested. In some countries this means nationalistic wars, which often get players over the “hump” of the first month and thus increase their chances of continuing to play. The UK has always struggled in this regard because we don’t really have a natural enemy in the real world. The continued simplification of the game has been the harshest cause of reduction in retention in the UK and worldwide. World population has more than halved in the last year, and continues to fall.



Recruitment itself is the main cause of rank changes. All of the top 10 countries by population are countries that have recently experienced “baby booms” where successful online advertising campaigns have resulted in thousands of new, division 1+2 players joining the country. These booms also have a half life, and once the boom is over countries slowly decline in population. For example Spain was rank 1 a few months ago, now they’re rank 3. Chile similarly, but now rank 5. It’s actually arguable how effective these booms are- the UK had the benefit of admin advertising on facebook and google a few months ago and gained around 1000 citizens, rising to around rank 15, though long term our population has been stable.


So what’s the recruitment solution? Recruitment means advertising, either by word of mouth, recruiting from other forums or paying for online adverts. This is something that can be done by any citizen- not just the government. Last time Goku was in the country, he was Minister of Recruitment and the population increased by around 10% by the combined efforts of himself and others who spammed forums and bought ads. That kind of increase would improve our rank from 29 to 27 by population if it was repeated again today. That isn’t to say don’t try- it’s to say that using rank as a way of putting the government down is stupid, and makes you look like a fool who doesn’t understand basic game mechanics.


In short, don’t trust statistics, especially those generated by the admins. The population of the country isn’t determined by the government, it’s determined by YOU, the average citizens. The military strength of the country is dependent on the MUs which fuel it, and that’s a much more important statistic.


Hopefully this has successfully debunked yet another durpy propaganda piece


Stay classy,



Iain