W16 update
Points-based:
C4: 59.73% (+ 0.92%)
HHI: 10.76% (+ 0.24%)
Village-based:
C4: 57.41% (+ 0.99%)
HHI: 10.05% (+ 0.26%)
Discussion
This is the first weekly update I've done, so there's not much to say except that the world became a little bit more concentrated. As we collect more data like this, we should be able to see the effect of certain events on the concentration of power.
For example, what happens to (the change in) our C4 and HHI when:
- a major war breaks out?
- a major merger occurs?
- a target (Ad Inf, PnX, Dust) disbands?
- summer vacation ends?
We'll find out more about this as time goes by, but in the meantime I did two projects (one big, one small) that might be interesting:
Project 1: where does W16 rank among other worlds?
Last week, I compared W16 to W1 and came up with scenarios that would put our concentration of power in line with theirs. That served as a decent introduction to the numbers and how they work.
This week, I'm going to broaden our scope a little bit and look at the first 20 worlds. Here are the top 12 worlds ranked by their C4 (all non-listed worlds are below 50%):
1. W8: 83%
2. W7: 81%
3. W10: 81%
4. W1: 79%
5. W6: 75%
6. W12: 72%
7. W4: 71%
8. W2: 64%
9. W5: 60%
10. W9: 60%
11. W16: 60%
12. W11: 52%
All other tribes are below 50%.
The first thing that strikes me is that the order is definitely
not based on when a world started, since the highest-ranking worlds are by no means the oldest ones.
The most striking example of this is W3, which doesn't even pass 50%. There's a logical explanation for this though: family tribes. W3 has three large families calling the shots, and they have "lower branches" high in the rankings (4th, 5th and 7th). If you add up all the branches as a single tribe for all three families, the C4 goes to 69%...more in line with other worlds that started at the same time.
A little digging shows a factor that
is important: maximum tribe size. As it turns out, every single world in the top 12 has a tribal limit of 80 or higher, and the entire top 6 has a tribal limit of 100 or above (in some cases
far above).
(Kudos to Dunbop for realising this immediately!)
These high limits have a number of effects, all of which contribute to a higher concentration of power:
- family tribes don't exist, since everyone can be squished into one tribe
- mass-recruitment is more effective
- there is less reason to cut inactive/incompetent tribemates
- mergers can occur far more easily
For next week, I'd like to dig a little further into this effect. However, I'll need your help! I don't play other worlds, but I know many of you do and you could really help me out here.
What I need are the names of worlds that started at roughly the same time but have very different tribal limits. E.g. if world 27 and 28 started at the same time but W27 has a tribal limit of 40 and W28 of 200, that allows me to compare them directly. With a few pairs like that, I can confirm and possibly quantify the effect of max tribe size on concentration...leading to a better analysis
Project 2: what's required for the end of the world?
As we all know, TW is essentially an open-ended game. In principle, there's no reason for any world to ever close as long as the owner make money on it.
However, in reality there are two worlds that have already been closed: DE1 and DE2. These were (to my knowledge) not closed due to lack of income, but rather due to lack of competition: one tribe dominated the world to such an extent that there was no point in going on.
Assuming TW is consistent in their logic, the stats of these worlds should provide a clue to what's required for further worlds to close. It is to be expected that if e.g. a tribe in W16 ever shows the same domination, W16 will be closed and we'll all find ourselves with a ton of spare time :icon_wink:
In this project, I'm using HHI instead of C4. The reason for this is that C4 focuses on the concentration of power among the top 4 tribes; it doesn't matter if these 4 tribes are all the same size or if one is huge and the other 3 are small.
Obviously, for this analysis it
is important if the power is concentrated among one tribe or four, and HHI can deal with that quite nicely. Here's how they look:
Points-based HHI:
DE1: 63.2%
DE2: 52.2%
Village-based HHI:
DE1: 62.8%
DE2: 51.2%
Unless evidence to the contrary pops up, I'm going to assume that 50% is the cutoff. If a world goes above 50% in HHI, a very valid case can be made that the world is over and it should be closed.
(Note that I have no evidence of worlds with a high HHI that are still open. Most worlds tend to hover under 20%, so it's perfectly possible that the cutoff is much lower than 50%...we just don't have any examples yet!)
For those of you wondering how we can get W16 to 50%...one tribe would have to eat every village in C², Plight, HRV, BANG, TKR and Ni. That's over 400 million points and nearly 45,000 villages, and the next-biggest tribe would be LS with 26 million and 2760 villages. It's
that difficult.
Looks like we'll be here a bit longer! :icon_wink:
