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by Sail nation world news service. . 361 reads.

The NationStates Chronicle Issue #3 - European elections, Chicken Overlords and an Arms Race?

The NationStates Chronicle
Issue #3 - 05/09/2020



Europe holds elections for Second Deputy Commissioner


Republic of Satherland won a recent election in the region of Europe to become Second Deputy Commissioner. This position is part of the European Commission, a group of three nations who may bring potential laws to the European Parliament (the WA members in the region) for a vote. Satherland won with 46 votes to Eurasies' 37 and Alienage's 2.
Minor News
  • Uniao da Cracolandia is raided by The North Pacific army and is held under occupation for several days (with assistance from other raider groups), although some of the raiders have left the region.

  • A major update was skipped earlier this week while hardware changes were being made to make the site more efficient. This made some stats a bit odd.

  • Both Thaecia and Europeia have held legislative elections recently.

The election did have some drama, as the poll had to be restarted after it was set up wrong. But also their were claims that Satherland was anti-Europe because of their residence and involvement in Thaecia, although these claims had little evidence on whether Sather was really anti-Europe. Alienage later dropped out of the election and asked voters to vote for Eurasies, although this wasn't enough for Satherland to be beaten.

Europe is certainly a region that despite having a large and active community, has been experiencing problems recently. Several nations have moved over the past few months to Thaecia due to various reasons, and some are unhappy about Imperium Anglorum's leadership as delegate. But it still remains one of the largest UCRs in the game and one of the most powerful voices in the WA. Only time will tell what happens next in this region🟥




Meme Puppet Storage Region Becomes Largest Region On Site


Chicken overlords, a region made for puppet storage and as a joke, has recently overtaken feeder region The North Pacific to become the largest region in the game. This is odd, as the delegate of this region has only two endorsements, and the RMB is not that active (more than most regions, but inactive for it's size). The region has a theme about Chickens being superior to humans, and has it's own (joke) religion for worshiping chickens. The region has also been collecting embassies, with over 400 as of writing.

One may ask how this happened, and while others have already covered this, I'll explain for you. If you search the world for nations named 'Womble', you get over 8,400 results. While many of these are people's actual nations, most of these are puppets, created for the sole purpose of expanding the region's population. Usually mass-creating puppets are for other purposes, such as R/D, card farming and N-day. These puppets are not being used for that though. Instead they are simply there to boost the region's population.

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List of Subscribers:
Skundi
The new cordian empire
Dizgovzy
Grey county
Tinhampton
Waldoven
Makdon
Of altonianic islands
Bormiar
Random Country 453632
Free Las Pinas
Npc west florida
Megistos
Wi sd ea d
Homyland
Oneid
Matroyska
Dollystana
Shangyuen
La Xinga
Team lennox
The Gold Mines
The peoples caribbean union

This brings up an interesting thought about the NS community. Many region builders will know the feeling of always wanting more nations in a region and then acting upon it through hours of recruiting or spending money on stamps. It can sometimes be the same urge that makes people want views and follows on social media. Players will do anything to make their region bigger and better. This is an unusual way of making a region bigger; it is rare for puppets to be created for such a simple use. But what a region doesn't gain from this is the community that a region with more individual nations has, or the WA voting power that sometimes comes with larger regions. Chicken Overlords worked towards this goal of becoming the largest region in the world, and they have achieved that, but what's next? Will the region attempt to continue it's growth, surpassing 10,000 nations, or even more. Will the region stagnate and it's position as largest region fluctuate as the number of active players change. Will it plummet once the puppets CTE? To be honest, this isn't really that worrying for most unless if those puppets are used for N-day in less than a month's time 🟥




Is NS becoming an 'Arms Race'?


NationStates is a very unusual site in the sense that it has many different mini communities, who each have their own ways of using the game mechanics to fulfill their objectives. We have R/D, RP, politics, cards etc. In some of these communities, being 'better' than everyone else has become less about skill or creativity, and more about having a powerful computer, technical knowledge and the right third-party software. For example, raiders and defenders use hotkeys to switch between nations and regions during tag-raids, alongside pulling as much data about update times from the NS api as the rules allow. In the cards community, players switch through hundreds of puppets to build up bank, and use increasingly-unusual tricks to gain deck value. I won't get into these as I don't understand most of these techniques.

So what's going to happen next? My prediction: N-Day. It's still about 3 weeks until the day where everyone sends WMDs at each other and completely destroys the world. We're already seeing factions being crafted together between big regions, such as ATOMIC. And puppets are being mass-created already to produce weapons and shields at an alarming rate when the time comes. I won't be surprised if people will use hotkey scripts to change between nations quickly enough that extremely large puppet armies can be produced and utilized to full effect. The result: A bad day for anyone who is not in a faction larger than a few hundred nations.

On the flip-side though, there is a reasonable case to say that scripts cannot be utilized much more than they are already. The api and script rules have strict limits on what is and isn't allowed, and punishments for breaking these can be severe. Luckily, most communities are focused more on creativity and enjoyment more than competition. For these communities, their relatively peaceful worlds are unaffected. Until their founders CTE and the raiders come🟥

Editor's notes
Sorry for not having as much news this week, that's because not many major events happened. I'm also sorry to hear about this format being copied alongside parts of news articles by a rival paper. Thank you everyone for your continued support in reading, subscribing, telling me if I made a mistake etc.


Have any news stories that you would like to see in here? Then TG me with a brief explanation of what has happened/what you want to be in the story. Please make sure that it is NS-related, interesting to the general NS community and notable. Please do not ask me to make a story about moderator actions. I reserve the right to reject any story that I believe shouldn't be in The NationStates Chronicle.

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