Reading the Big Cycle Chart

The Big Cycle chart visualizes Empire Scores for multiple countries over time, going back as far as data is available (typically 1960 onwards for World Bank–sourced metrics).

The default view

Top economies (US, China, EU, India, Japan, UK, Russia, Brazil, Canada, Germany) are plotted simultaneously. Each country is a colored line. Hovering shows that country's exact score for the year under your cursor.

Adding the All Countries overlay

Toggle All Countries in the toolbar to render every country on the map as a thin gray line, with the focus countries on top. This puts the major powers in global context.

Anchor mode

Pick an anchor country to re-index every line to the anchor's score over time. This converts absolute scores into relative scores — useful for questions like "how has China's power tracked against the US over 30 years?"

Date snapshots

Click any year on the X-axis to open a snapshot panel showing each country's per-dimension scores for that specific year — useful for understanding what was driving an inflection point in the chart.