Post

The following has just occurred to me:

The population of a nation in this game grows at a constant rate that amounts to approximately 2 billion per (real-life) year. This number gets frozen while a nation is dead, and starts growing again if the nation is resurrected. This puppet of mine (Constantine Europa) has died and been resurrected a number of times. But I can tell that it has been alive for a total of 4 years and a few months because of its population.

Now the thing is... Constantine Europa is only in the top 19% of nations by population. This means that almost one-fifth of nations have been alive for a total time longer than 4 years.

That's a shockingly high proportion of (very) long-term players. NationStates has an amazing retention rate. And personal experience seems to confirm this: NS is the only place on the internet - other than Facebook - where I can run into friends that I haven't talked to in over a decade.