Simcountry is a multiplayer Internet game in which you are the president, commander in chief, and industrial leader. You have to make the tough decisions about cutting or raising taxes, how to allocate the federal budget, what kind of infrastructure you want, etc..
  Enter the Game

Bug in Financial Index calculation

Topics: Problems: Bug in Financial Index calculation

Lord Mndz

Thursday, October 24, 2019 - 09:14 pm Click here to edit this post
I just noticed very interesting calculation of financial index. I am sure this is a bug.

As you can see profitability of the country is growing while Financial index was cut at some point and stopped growing.


FinancialIndex

CountryNumber=3245 in FB

Will Walker

Thursday, October 24, 2019 - 09:43 pm Click here to edit this post
Looks like it was cut when the costs were cut in some way.

Lord Mndz

Friday, October 25, 2019 - 05:13 am Click here to edit this post
I noticed this in many more countries where financial index should be well above 300, so this is definetely an error.

Andy, can you take a look into this.

John Galt

Friday, October 25, 2019 - 03:35 pm Click here to edit this post
First one looks like a shark fin

Lord Mndz

Friday, October 25, 2019 - 05:48 pm Click here to edit this post
I can add more of them, this is clearly a bug in the formula.

waiting for Andy to check and fix this.

Andy

Sunday, October 27, 2019 - 02:56 pm Click here to edit this post
The graph is strange.

However, the financial index is computed with current and previous year data.

This means that there is a large change in January, when it switches to more recent data and it can create a larger change in the index.

Please keep following it, a year is just two days.

I will look into this computation from this side.

There was no recent change to this computation. we have seen "jumps" up and down in January many times but there could be other factors too.

Lord Mndz

Sunday, October 27, 2019 - 03:51 pm Click here to edit this post
Andy,

I have noticed this behavior is many countries. My feel is that when FI reaches some high(>250) value it drops. Less profitable countries have higher Financial index, here is the example:

you can see the difference in profitability during the time and also in index, which indicates that there is some error in calculation.

Country on the left always had less costs and her income/cost ratio always been better. I cannot show that when the trend is only growing due to market situation, but in case you will not be able to find a reason for this I will wait for more obvious example. it feels like there could not be a country with Financial index higher than 300 or so.

Lord Mndz

Sunday, October 27, 2019 - 03:53 pm Click here to edit this post
123

I hope you can run some simulation with the formula you have. you can check too cases:

1st country income 360B/cost 60B Income/cost ratio is 6/1
2nd country income 360B/cost 120B Income/cost ration is 3/1

According the current situation the 2nd country would have higher FI index.

John Galt

Sunday, October 27, 2019 - 04:47 pm Click here to edit this post
Perhaps the finance index only looks at total income and not total profit.

Lord Mndz

Sunday, October 27, 2019 - 05:57 pm Click here to edit this post
In any way, the country which had less income and profit and worse rate of them had higher Financial index which makes no sense. I think this is just some bug in the calculation.

that drop in index i showed in the first post happened in more countries, so this is not just some random thing.

Daniel Iceling

Wednesday, October 30, 2019 - 11:43 pm Click here to edit this post
Lord Mndz,

My guess is something goes wrong when the index tries to exceed 300. At lower indexes it reliably trends toward the following formula...

(Total Income / Total cost) x 100 = Finance index.

The weirdness seems to set in, when the result would be over 300. It probably hasn't been noticed before, because Finance indexes that high are pretty rare.

Lord Mndz

Thursday, October 31, 2019 - 08:28 pm Click here to edit this post
Yes, this is very likely. I hope Andy is looking into this and will be able to find & fix this bug.

Lord Mndz

Saturday, November 2, 2019 - 08:29 pm Click here to edit this post
few more recent cases. Andy - are you investigating this?

FIbug

Lord Mndz

Saturday, November 2, 2019 - 08:33 pm Click here to edit this post
and few more... this is happening with most of my countries..

fewmoreFI

Daniel Iceling

Monday, November 4, 2019 - 09:30 pm Click here to edit this post
Lord Mndz,

Try not exploiting your people in slave labor camps. If the index goes back to normal when it's at a reasonable level. They'll know it's due to the high index.

Most of your Country's seem to suffer this bug, when they tried to go significantly above 250 Finance index. IE, when you were trying to take more than 2.5 times as much from your people, as you give them back in services/defense.

I'm thinking of calling this the "Finance Index says to stop stealing your people's money, like a third world dictator, bug" haha.

Signed President of DanNation on LU

Lord Mndz

Monday, November 4, 2019 - 09:54 pm Click here to edit this post
Lol:) i am still waiting for Andy to fix this.

John Galt

Monday, November 4, 2019 - 10:58 pm Click here to edit this post
my primary country on LU Atlas Shrugged has 308 finance index and doesn't experience this issue.

Lord Mndz

Tuesday, November 5, 2019 - 06:57 am Click here to edit this post
My finance indexes in the countries with problem should be around 400-500. I just hope that Andy find this bug as now less profitable countries have higher indexes. This is the main index in the game, it needs to be set right.

Lord Mndz

Sunday, November 10, 2019 - 06:20 pm Click here to edit this post
.

Lord Mndz

Friday, November 15, 2019 - 05:12 pm Click here to edit this post
shark fins are not solved

Link

Lord Mndz

Friday, November 15, 2019 - 05:16 pm Click here to edit this post
FInew

Andy

Friday, November 15, 2019 - 05:17 pm Click here to edit this post
As I said before, January brings major changes.

The index is based on this year financial situation and that of the previous year.
It means that comes January, the year before is dropped from the index and the computation moves one year forward.

also, any thought that the index grows in a linear manner is incorrect.

The index grows nearly linear at lower levels.
At higher levels, it is growing slower than linear.

We could make the January jump less pronounced but in most cases, there is no major change as the financial index is quite stable.

to prevent major changes, we could temper the calculation and make it change at a slower pace like in many other indexes and computations.

a slower change will also mean that the change in January becomes smaller too.

I will look into it.

Lord Mndz

Friday, November 15, 2019 - 05:46 pm Click here to edit this post
My observation is that the problem could be related with the speed of growth. The countries where I see the problem should have extremely high indexes but when it starts growing fast it drops. After the drop it wont start growing unless there are some changes in income/cost ratio.

look at the below, slowly growing index is not affected.

FISlow

Andy

Sunday, November 17, 2019 - 12:26 pm Click here to edit this post
As I said, in higher levels, the index does not grow in a linear fasion but slower.

the main event on your graph is a big change in January.
I explained it.

I will make a change in the computation of the index in the next update and slow down the changes to smooth fast changes and make the index a bit more stable.

Lord Mndz

Sunday, November 17, 2019 - 12:40 pm Click here to edit this post
Thanks, looking forward to it.

Lord Mndz

Wednesday, January 22, 2020 - 09:01 pm Click here to edit this post
Hi Andy,

the last changes you made had no effect in FI drops seen before.

this is the most recent one.

fiindex

Andy

Wednesday, January 22, 2020 - 09:16 pm Click here to edit this post
Typically it happens in January.

The FI depends on data from the previous year and this year.

if the last two years are very different, the FI can change a lot.
In January the year before last is dropped from the formula and past year becomes domonant in Jan-Feb..

Then the current year gains more weight each month.

I will see what can be done.

Most times, there are differences year to year but not very large changes.

Lord Mndz

Wednesday, January 22, 2020 - 09:25 pm Click here to edit this post
Maybe you need to calculate FI based on total income/cost of some long period, like taking 14 game months into account, then every next new game month will not have big impact to the total of 13 older months.

now it looks that 180 is taken into calculation eventhough this is not correct index at all.


Add a Message