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The number of nations has been increasing for effectively the entire span of time we have detailed data for. Previous to this, the nation count had still been increasing since the site's "recent" low point of 50,000 nations in 2010. World Assembly nations, however, have struggled to keep up. There are a variety of contributors to this which include the rise in popularity of tag raiding and, notably since 2019, card farming.

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Spikey bits indicate many regions being hit in raids/defences/detags.

Although World Assembly membership over the years has risen and fallen, the volume of delegates as a ratio of all WA members mirrored that growth and decline relatively closely. This began to change in late 2016 and early 2017 where the gap between the two started to widen rapidly. By the start of 2018, the trend would lose cohesion altogether. In modern times, periods of growth for NationStates, including the return to school and rushes of account creation like YouTube waves, do not necessarily predict that there will be much (if any) growth in the volume of minor delegates.

What is the cause of this diminishing cohesion? It is not possible to say for certain. It does, however, coincide with a rapidly increasing power level for GCR delegates including The East, West, and South Pacifics, Balder, and The Rejected Realms across the same time period.

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For the purposes of this dispatch, a UCR superdelegate is a region which has at least one hundred endorsements for more than a few weeks to discount raids and other "flash in the pan" situations.

There are only three UCRs that match such a description during the beginning of this data's timespan, but all three are in decline. By April of 2013, it would the last time the UCR averages would be higher than the feeder averages, and the last time that the most powerful region in the world would be a UCR. Feeder power averages would continue consistently climbing until the present day, with sinker averages growing, albeit much more slowly. All the while, UCR averages have remained relatively stationary since 2015.

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Notably for feeder power, we can see different regions enacting World Assembly development programs across the years and at different periods, whether by tech infrastructure or delegate agenda focus. However, regardless of administration or government style, coup or controversy, all feeder delegate votes have been trending upwards for the last ten years -- both a circumstance of their function, and a feedback loop for attracting high level development talent.

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Click one of the spotlights below to see each region's isolated graph. Click a graph to open it in a new window.

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Sinker regions are notoriously inactive, or so their administrators have argued. It may indeed be harder to cultivate World Assembly engagement culture in regions that collect nations that have already proven their inclination to disassociation from a region or the site entirely. The same trends of growth can still be observed, however, if at a smaller scale.

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Click one of the spotlights below to see each region's isolated graph. Click a graph to open it in a new window.

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It's unfortunate to see steadily growing power divides, driven partially by game mechanics, but not all is bleak. On this pass through of data mining, I ended up seeing something I hadn't especially expected.

There were only four regions that met the "100+, not flash in the pan" criteria at the start of 2015. These were 10,000 Islands, Europeia, Europe, and The Communist Bloc. All very powerful regions in terms of their delegate votes, but that was the entirety of them. As of this moment, however, there are fourteen regions that meet that criteria, and this number appears to be growing over time. There is less of a diversity of minor delegates, but if a region is launched now there seems to be a much higher chance that the region will burn out of the world or grow to be a considerable player on the world stage. Or at least much more likely than in the past.

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10,000 Islands is certainly a region unlike any other. Their inclusion on this graph shifts the top level of the chart from 600 to an incredible 1,100. So, to make things slightly easier to read, we will exclude them for a moment.

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While fun to look at, the best part about this graph is that it appears to represent nothing in particular. Europe always trying to make the most of the nations in its region at any given moment through a slow and steady WA development program, TCB's eternal delegacies mixed with occasional exponential growth periods, TLA's heartbeat monitor, or the seismometer output of Europeia.

UCR power averages have held steady for the last seven years, so the rises and falls are mostly reflective of each individual region's governing methods and styles, and less of game mechanics making the trends for them.

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Click one of the spotlights below to see each region's isolated graph. Click a graph to open it in a new window.