Join the new world

A normal bell curve, applicable to both eRepublik and RL



The bell curve.
It is familiar to even the simplest of statisticians, for whom the wandering eye will always jump right to the symmetrical bell curve to explain even the most complex of trends.
And today, Hungary has fallen victim to the descending slide of the bell curve.

Are they dead yet? No, far from it. But today Hungary can no longer claim that they alone can stand up against the masses of Eden, (Fortis doesn’t exist, and never has) and the rest of eRepublik for that matter. However, it cannot be disputed that Hungary has already peaked as an empire, and decline (and ultimately defeat) in inevitable.

Like this war is now the Hundred-days war, Hungary was the Hundred-day Empire. Hungary’s power is inexorably linked to Peace, for much of the power of Peace is mobile Hungarian units flying from place to place in a manner very similar to the EMC. The true Hungarian empire was born on Day 541, with Romania’s crippling loss of WSR and Podolia. And the Hungarian empire peaked on Day 641, when the USA was pushed back to just Maine and Florida. With the exception of a few hours, they would never come within the single region of destruction as Indonesia had months before them.
Spain had only just begun their liberation, and Hungary’s fight against Spanish liberation had not yet begun. Yet with the units of Eden against them, Peace was unable to hold Asturias. Here was confirmation: Hungary has reached its peak, and can no longer fight off all its enemies at once.

From there it would only be downward, as the USA pushed back against Peace, tricking Indonesia out of an MPP with Portugal, overcoming all of Parter’s endless gold mines, forcing Indonesia to nearly bankrupt themselves defending California only to capture it a week later, and finally managing to take back 48 out of their 51 regions.

But there still remained Hungary. By now Hungary could not hold the doors shut against Eden as a whole, but they could still make quick work of any lone American or Canadian attack. On day 701, Hungary finally fell victim, like Romania before them, to tactics. It is a major turning point for an empire when it cannot resist tactics, or is unable to successfully make decisions fast enough to save one region and let another go.

So, where are we? Are we Romania after WSRI? WSRII? WSRIII? WSRIV/Podolia? The turnaround at Karnataka? No, Hungary is not following the same pattern as Romania. Hungary is Indonesia after California III. Hungary, like Indonesia, has plenty of fight left, but the external (and sometimes internal) demons are beginning to eat away at its strength.

There is a concept in eRepublik I like to call the collapse point. It is at the end of a country’s existence as an empire, but does not mark the end of a country’s power. Imagine it as a little past the 2 on our bell curve.

The collapse point of eRepublik empires as illustrated on a bell curve

It is both a time and a place, and can not be one or the other alone. The collapse point is when an empire is no longer able to defend it’s occupied economic centers and when the empire loses control of them. In simpler terms: Romania’s Podolia/WSR.

For Iran, that would be Liaoning/Jharkand. This also has a large significance because these are Iran’s only two Q5 Hospitals, and neither are in original regions.
I was too young to see the full collapse of Norway (that happened when I was about 10 days old 😛) or Sweden, but they may also have followed the same pattern.
Or, they may have gone the way of Pakistan: Slowly fading away, only to have their empires dismantled after most of their population had left the country or the game.

Hungary is approaching their collapse point, albeit slowly. Every day it becomes clearer and clearer: Hungary’s collapse point is not Hellokitty as many would have expected, but Nunavut and Alaska. (To Hungary: I hope you’re enjoying your -1 new land companies in Heilongjiang since it came into your possession!) The more companies that are created in these two regions, the more Hungary becomes invested in them, and the harder the fall will be. Yet without companies in these two regions, the Hungarian economy would first stagnate and then recede, causing Hungary to fall hard. It’s a no-win situation, yet every country that wishes to entertain its players for a long period of time through empire building (as opposed to the petty politics that tends to go on in countries like the UK and the USA) must invest itself in valuable foreign regions. The notable exception to this is Russia, considering that they have high of every RM in their native territories.

Indonesia is widely known as a crumbling empire, but they are not much further along on the bell curve of eRepublik empires than Hungary. Their collapse point is Karnataka/WSR/Western Australia (or WA). However, taking all three of these regions will not be easy. Most notably, WSR is an original region of Russia, another Peace member. So long as Russia does not take WSR back by diplomacy or force, Indonesia will remain an empire. Indonesia’s population may erode, but their economy and empire will remain strong with the possession of these three regions.

Romania followed an unusual path, in that it went directly from the peak of its empire to the collapse point. Empires traditionally do not follow this route, both in eRepublik and RL. They peak, and tend to have a long slow decline before finally collapsing. It took hundreds of years for the Ottoman and Roman empires to collapse, and it was more than 150 years between the peak of the British empire and its fall after WWII.

Hungary and Indonesia are far from dead. But as soon as they do collapse, there will be another nation to fill the voi😛 Russia. It will not be the first North American excursion that marks the Russian empire, but the second. The first was just the work of MPPs and Parter’s gold. As soon as Hungary loses Alaska, Russia will be there to fill the power void, likely beginning with a swift invasion of the USA. Of course, Russia won’t be powerful enough to overcome all the MPPs activated against it without the cheap iron that will be provided by WSR. So, before the next generation of empires (Russia and probably Poland) can rise, both Hungary and Indonesia must fall.

The loser in all this is Serbia. They had their baby boom, they have their enemy, but they won’t have their chance. The thing that prolonged the existence of Hungary will keep it down for the conceivable future: Allies. To date, everyone but Hungary has gone about assembling an empire alone. Hungary always relied on allies to keep their enemies busy, primarily Serbia and Turkey. Serbia’s conflict with Croatia was ultimately their undoing, as they were more than eager to participate in MPP-activating attacks against Croatia’s original regions.

The peace nations are slowly descending from their high, and as soon as the masses of Eden can overcome the masses of Peace, this will happen:


The future
They shouldn’t have activated all those MPPs


There have been quite a few empires, and I would like to illustrate them on a bell curve. Up until now I have been talking about the bell curve as a scale of time. However, the bell curve is intended to be a curve of distribution. The bell curve here is distribution of empires over time, from inception to peak to collapse.

The bell curve of eRepublik empires

The empires in fact do average out across the bell curve in the manner you would expect. With the exception of the peak, the empires tend to be spread out in a statically normal fashion. Of course it is not perfectly even, far more countries are on the far left (-4) of the bell curve than anywhere else. However, I believe this will even out with time, and lots of it. It may be decades before the bell curve is fully even.
I marked Serbia on the graph because although it will not mature into an empire, it certainly is a powerful country and is worth mentioning. If not for their own limiting circumstances, Serbia could very easily be the creator and destroyer of empires.

Of course Hungary still has a long way to go. They cannot resist tactics, but they still can resist regular attacks, as demonstrated by Washington. Quicksilver may have jumped on to the OMG WERE DEAD WERE DEAD boat, but Hungary is still by far the most powerful country on eRepublik, and will remain so for quite a long time.
Washington was a team effort, as demonstrated by the battle stats. This simply reinforces the point that Hungary can simply no longer hold off all of Eden.

So, Quicksilver, begin writing your empire pieces about Hungary and Indonesia, but hold off on publishing them. Most of the story can already be told, but much has yet to be forged in the cruel fires of eRepublik.


(~-pyroelectricity-~)