The majority of defending gameplay happens during the NationStates game updates. These updates happen twice a day at 12 PM EST/EDT and 12 AM EST/EDT, twelve hours apart. Thus, it is necessary to be able to be online at these times in order to fully participate in defending.
These two time periods are where various changes happen, such as census rankings being updated, influence increases, World Assembly proposals being passed or defeated, and most importantly: when the game elects new delegates. Regions update in a fixed order which will generally stay the same with every update.
When a nation "updates", its endorsements of other nations will not count until the next update which happens 12 hours later. For this reason, defenders keep multiple nations stored in a late updating region in order to be able to perform as many defensive operations as possible; these nations are known as "switchers".
You can tell if a nation has updated for a particular update if there has been a recent influence change or if the region they are in has updated. This is what you will see on the nation happenings if a nation has updated:
![[Image: cdKXfNf.png]](https://i.imgur.com/cdKXfNf.png)
If a region has updated, the "Last WA Update" text on a region will switch to something like "seconds ago".
Next lesson: Switchers
These two time periods are where various changes happen, such as census rankings being updated, influence increases, World Assembly proposals being passed or defeated, and most importantly: when the game elects new delegates. Regions update in a fixed order which will generally stay the same with every update.
When a nation "updates", its endorsements of other nations will not count until the next update which happens 12 hours later. For this reason, defenders keep multiple nations stored in a late updating region in order to be able to perform as many defensive operations as possible; these nations are known as "switchers".
You can tell if a nation has updated for a particular update if there has been a recent influence change or if the region they are in has updated. This is what you will see on the nation happenings if a nation has updated:
If a region has updated, the "Last WA Update" text on a region will switch to something like "seconds ago".
Next lesson: Switchers