Demographics, Botographics and Scriptology

Day 1,633, 07:44 • Published in Bulgaria Bulgaria • by eDarkAngel




If you were wondering how after all of a sudden TEDEN started winning on all fronts it has started loosing again on all fronts, then this article might shine some inside into the reasons.

The most important in the short term is that 3 days ago I reported to the admins the scripts used by EDEN countries mostly to fight on the battlefield and more specifically a Greek script which skips the captcha on the battle-page. This explains he proficiency with which EDEN was able to turn the wall late in rounds during the time of day when they were considerably outnumbered. But I'll talk about the scriptology later as in the long term it is not that relevant, as admins will keep on changing things and scripters will keep on repairing their scripts and the chase will always be present. Then there is bad Stoich who will report the scripts, just as I did months ago with ONE scripts after which incidentally TEDEN started winning.


I want to look at the demographics and botographics of eRep however more closely as it has more long term effect on our gaming.


So let me begin by explaining what I have done, present a bit of data and then I'll some analysis on that data.



I made a Google doc (crude as it is) in which I collected the daily "new players" for 26 countries (don't ask how I came up with them I started with a few and at some point had added more and more that could be interesting.......luckily for me I stopped at some point). I also collected the data for the last 3 presidential elections for the same countries. The reason I picked the presidential elections is that it does not require for anyone to be present in a given region, to be able to vote, only yo hold the appropriate citizenship, thus it is a much better tool to measure activity then congress elections. I do realize this is imperfect tool for measuring active players especially with a lot of them holding foreign citizenship, however it is the best that can be done with the limited and inaccurate data available. Still the data is biased/morphed/imperfect the same way for all countries, so a comparison can be made and would be accurate even if the data itself might be different to some degree from the real numbers.

In short all of it can be found here.


So let's look at some of the more interesting numbers that came out of all this. The data is since the 3rd of March till the 9th of May this year (68 days in total):


New players registered since the 3rd of march: 190798 (for the 26 countries in question)
Total population right now: 203391 (for the 26 countries in question)
Average new registrations per day for the period (per day): 2806
Total new active players for the perio😛 - 264

On average there is 1 new registered player per 72.48 active citizens everyday or a 1.38% "fertility rate" which includes all the multies of course. I would be very worried if I was the admins with such numbers as it is at best equal to the "death rate" which is currently at 1.44%.

Some countries however have interesting specifics. For example in the period Turkey has 19965 registrations, yet they have lost a total of 62 active citizens for the period. In addition Turkey has one of the highest referral rates with 1 new registration per 49.69 active citizens which is 36% higher then the average. Other countries that have high referral rates are:


Average: 72.48

Mexico: 39.38
Chile: 40.6
Albania: 42.68
Italy: 44.03
Turkey: 49.69
Columbia: 52.56
Brazil: 52.68
Spain: 56.45
Argentina: 57.81
Germany: 58.59


On the other hand the countries with the lowest referral rates are (there are some surprises here):


Serbia: 128.05
Hungary: 119.82
Polan😛 113.86
Macedonia: 101.64
Ukraine: 99.83
Bulgaria: 96.31



What needs to be kept in mind is, that Chile has had it's first big BB and as it was a small country before this has morphed the data quite a bit and would explain why it is at the top of the list. To various degrees same can be said about Columbia and Mexico and in smaller degree about Albania, which have all gained active citizens (Albania very few in complaisance to their referrals). Also Bulgaria for instance has had a BB of it's own so the referral rate is higher then it would normally be, again this is visible by the fact that it has gained the most active citizens in the period.

What is very interesting is that all top ONE countries + Bulgaria are with the lowest referral rates, which would imply lowest presence of multies as well, while top TEDEN countries (especially ones with connections to Turkey) have some of the highest.

The only exception to this would be Spain, which is the only ONE, PRO-ONE or anti-EDEN country which has high referral rate coupled with negative retention which would point to high amount of multies.


Let's look at the active citizens numbers so we get a better picture (may elections vs march elections):



Polan😛 3771 total, - 656
Serbia: 3675 total, - 1318
Bulgaria: 3438 total, +348
Romania: 2697 total, -792
Hungary: 2367 total, -171
Turkey: 2277 total, - 62 Here however we have the stankovic alexa phenomenon where Turkey gained 481 voter in April and lost 543 in may, meaning that it's BB was mostly a multy boom and not a real baby boom.
Greece: 2262 total, -197
Macedonia: 2226 total, -304


Most countries lost more voters in April, some lost more in May, most notably Serbia, which lost over 1K.


More interesting however are some specific cases. For example Croatia lost 640 voters which represent 33% of it's active players. While some have immigrated, it is unlikely that even 1/3rd of those did so. This would place the death rate in Croatia on similar levels to the death rate in Serbia.


More important however is the list with countries gaining voters (active citizens), especially as the countries gaining them are not the ones with high resources thus unlikely to have immigration waves, but on the contrary would be emigration candidates:


Average: -175 or 10.69% decrease

Bulgaria: +348 or 9.88% increase
Chile: +340 or 45.33% increase
Columbia: +111 or 31.35% increase
Mexico: +87 or 26.69% increase
Ukraine: +66 or 5.17% increase
Albania: +53 or 15.59% increase
Argentina: +9 or 0.52% increase


All other countries lost voters (active players). With the exception of Ukraine all the countries in the above list are among the top in terms of total referrals, with only Bulgaria and Ukraine not being among the countries with highest referral rates.

Out of all this it is starting to clear up where the real players are and where the bots go, however there is another indicator to help an compare different countries.

So here are the number of citizens per voters (active players), again there are some surprises. The lower the number, the better and the less multies present:


Average: 4.77 citizens per 1 voter (active player)

Ukraine: 2.82
Hungary: 2.86
Polan😛 3.2
France: 3.46
Serbia: 3.7
Macedonia: 4.11
USA: 4.41
Greece: 4.42
Croatia: 4.44
Serbia: 4.49
China: 4.83
Bulgaria: 4.9
....
....
Argentina: 5.62
Indonesia: 6.07
Brazil: 6.26
Turkey: 6.42
Germany: 6.76
Spain: 6.83
Chile: 7.2
Mexico: 8.58
Columbia: 12.55
Albania: 13.93


Again here have to be kept in mind the BBs in some of the smaller countries and Bulgaria which change the numbers a bit, especially for the smaller countries. Still the numbers are pretty indicative.

TEDEN countries have by far more multies in their countries and the old multy havens of Serbia, Poland and Macedonia are now one of the countries with the lowest amount of multies. Again the only exception from the non TEDEN countries being Spain and to some degree Indonesia.


This is also visible from the average level per citizen in most of the countries:


Average: 17

Columbia: 7
Mexico: 9
Albania: 10
Chile, Italy, Germany: 12
Argentina, Spain: 13
Turkey, Germany: 14
Brazil: 15
Bulgaria: 16
Greece, France, Indonesia: 17
USA, Russia, Ukraine: 18
South Korea: 19
Romania, Croatia: 20
China, Macedonia: 21
Serbia, Polan😛 22
Hungary: 23
Slovenia: 24


Now let's make some analysis on this data, and some of the processes in play and what can be expected in the near and not so near future.


The "Turkey connection".


Consistently the countries that are closest to Turkey have some of the worst statistics in terms of having multies in their country (Argentina, Albania), some of the countries that have not as close, but still have connection to Turkey have some indicators high and others not as much (Brazil, USA). On the other hand, countries that for a long time had high multy indicators when Turkey was one of their closest allies, now have gone totally in the other direction and have some of the lowest multy indicators (Serbia, Macedonia, Poland). While this in itself is not "final judgment type of truth" it is a clear pattern that has evolved over time and is impossible to ignore.

More interesting however is the fact that both Ukraine, Greece, Romania and Croatia have not "benefited" that much, hence why all have suffered many defeats on the battlefields in the last 2 months, while the other countries in question have not.


Multy propagation in the new world.


As a whole the multies are now prevalent in TEDEN countries and by a clear margin, with the only exceptions being Spain and Indonesia to a lesser extent which have more considerate amounts of multies in countries opposing TEDEN.

Top multy destinations are Turkey, Albania, Argentina, Brazil, USA and Spain currently, with the judgment on Columbia and Mexico still open.


Demographic tendencies.


There are a few clear tendencies in demographic regards, both Poland and Serbia are becoming old powers, like Hungary, Romania has rejuvenated somewhat but the process has stopped, Croatia is slowly falling back from a power to a strong regional player and South America is going to be a new battlefield in the future, which may rival western Europe in the future, maybe even eastern Europe at some point.

Bulgaria is set to become the next #1 power and should outpace both Serbia and Poland. It has a much bigger potential then all top 10 countries with the exception of Spain, for which it is still unclear how much of the gains are genuine and how much are due to multies. Turkey has reached it's potential and plateaued with it's current play style and will likely be in decline from here on unless it changes drastically it's style of playing and tolerance towards their own cheaters as this is the main force holding it back.

Chile is the dark horse, with the biggest potential, but also the biggest question mark if it will be able to realize it, other countries to watch are Columbia, Mexico, South Korea (which now have a strong and stable and well trained in hardship community).

Macedonia has matured but seems to have plateaued as well and with Greece will likely be mirroring each other in the future, with Macedonia having the upper hand due to their different playing styles.

Romania has a slight advantage in active players, but not one that can be enough in the battlefield and will remain equal to Hungary. Croatia will continue to decline as may happen to Serbia as well, however the latter will dominate the former for a long time if there aren't drastic changes on the international scene, which are unlikely in the near future.

Albania, still has potential, but after nearly a year of waiting, it has become mostly a refuge for Turkish bots and not much else. It will grow over time into e medium strength country of the type of Ukraine, though there always is the possibility for a big BB along the way.

France seems to have recovered to be e medium strength country again, however in the past it has declined quickly under adversity, so this may repeat itself now again.

USA has the most question marks as it currently is a refuge for a lot of players from all countries because of it's bonuses, as well as a destination for a large amount of foreign multies, this however will change when the bonuses are lost. Also it will create internal political problems as probably nearly half of the active players in USA are foreigners right now.


Now I'll finish with what I started, more precisely the reason why all of a sudden the out of the blue turn around of TEDEN on the battlefields halted for the most part.


Simply put, after watching battles for a few days and analyzing the performance in them and the resources being consumed (TEDEN is consuming higher amounts of resources daily, though it still has 30-40 million currency more then the rest) it became clear there is another factor at play. The mere advantage in funds was not enough to explain he discrepancy n the battlefield, so I searched for some fighting scripts which could explain the late lightning fast charges of TEDEN armies in rounds during anti-TEDEN countries domination hours.


It did not take me long to find them, but as it was weekend I had to wait before I can report them.


Now this is nothing new in itself, 9-10 months ago I did the same with the ONE scripts back then which had similar effect on the battlefield. This time however there was a bonus, a script (most likely made by a Greek player) which bypasses the captcha on the battlefield page. This script would allow to hit faster then the limited 1 hit per second which has been programed by the admins to limit the effect of auto fighting scripts. This is how the wall could be turned in the prime time of ONE and Bulgaria with incredible ease and hold the wall late in rounds, thus winning rounds needed and then closing battles in TERRA prime time.


Most of the scripts were updated around the 1st of May with a couple in the week before that. I expect they will get repaired, but Stoich is bad and will report the repaired scripts again and so the chase will continue.


I'm not going to publish here links to the actual scripts as they do not need additional "marketing", whoever wants to check, can search them out with the key word "erep". I imagine there are other scripts going around from player to player, but that sort of propagation cannot reach the mass players thus they have a much more limited influence on the battlefields.


I'm especially going to follow the anti-captcha script as it is battle altering and with it a few players can turn and win a round against many times more players hitting on the other side.


If I have to make a summation of things, I would say that the big winners of Turkey going into EDEN are Serbia, Poland, Macedonia and Hungary, not because Bulgaria was chased away from EDEN and now fighting on their side, but because they have lost their multies and that has made them a stronger force.


While multies and bots can give advantage in peak moment, in the long term they are detrimental to the country they're in most of all, hence why one of the countries, traditionally with low amounts of multies (as is very clear by the data right now as well), Bulgaria has gained the most over the past 1 year. Bulgaria's statistics are currently around the average, in all categories, which make it an ideal study case for comparison and also mean, that it is probably the most stable in terms of development of all the countries. This is also evident by the growth which the country has had over the past 3 years, which has transformed from knee-jerking to stable over time. Most importantly it is consistent, even when it's governance is not the best it can be.

Some other countries are starting to move towards a similar model and they will start reaping benefits from it, most notably Macedonia, while becoming leaner has gained strength and has much bigger stability then Greece which on the other hand has become more and more volatile over time.


The big question mark and upon much of the foreign interaction in the gamin will be governed in the future is weather the new alliance which Bulgaria as the main force has undertaken to realize will succeed, if it does it will alter largely the battlefields on the map and maybe even the way countries interact in the game as the current dependance system is based on relations built and sustained for 4 years by players who have either lost adequate interest in the game or are holding on to power based on long passed glorification, rather then current excellence.





Be different be yourselves,



Demographics, Botographics and Scriptology
www.erepublik.com/en/article/2031363/1/20