3 Mafia
1 One-Shot Cop (may submit "no action" to preserve ability for later nights)
7 Townies
Day start, mandatory lynches and NKs.
I don't want NL-ing or NK-ing to be valid strategies.Adel wrote:Guardian wrote:One Shot
3 Mafia
1 One-Shot Cop (may submit "no action" to preserve ability for later nights)
7 Townies
Day start, mandatory lynches and NKs.
why did you use the "mandatory lynches and NKs" part?
I don't think another townie would be useful, I think that having an odd number of townies is better for the town than even. I also do not want to give someone the chance to completely screw over/unbalance the game by randomly shooting their one-shot cop ability on night 0.Korts wrote:I'd say either one more townie or cop head start would be better.
I have a couple of points... I've never really understood why 2:10 is supposed to be balanced. I've always wondered if optimal strategy there would be for one mafia to claim start of day 1. The remaining mafia member would have no one to tie himself to -- there are no links to look for. More links to look for between players is easier for town.Goatrevolt wrote:The town feels underpowered to me in this setup. I like the odd number of players, based on forcing a lynch + NK every night (makes things much cleaner), but I feel like a 1-shot cop is not enough town power to balance the ratio of scum-town. If mountainous is mostly balanced at 2:10, then I don't think a 1-shot cop is enough to shift the balance to 3:8. What about adding in a 1-shot watcher/tracker type role as well?
that's ridiculous. scum-play here is nowhere near good enough to make the percentages at all meaningful. this setup is balanced, and fun, and simple.Adel wrote:In a vanilla game with 3 mafia, between 40 and 44 townies is balanced.charter wrote:What is not balanced about it? Takes three mislynches for town to lose, with a one shot cop it looks pretty good to me.shaft.ed wrote:That's not balanced. you need to drop a mafia, and probalby a townie.charter wrote:This looks really good. I'd play this.Guardian wrote:Guardian wrote:One Shot
3 Mafia
1 One-Shot Cop (may submit "no action" to preserve ability for later nights)
7 Townies
Day start, mandatory lynches and NKs.
How many townies is a one-shot cop worth? Less than 33, obviously.
I submit that 3:8 +one shot with mandatory lynches and NKs isElmo wrote:The best reasonable case seems to be town lynched d1, townie NKed & cop gets guilty n1, cop claims sometime d2, mafia lynched d2, cop killed n2. Which leaves 2 mafia vs. 5 townies.. I gotta agree with Ether that 2:8+1cop seems closer to the mark for balanced, albeit it's pretty swingy.
In particular, it seems far more likely that the cop gets an innocent, especially if they're using the investigation n1. I think the cop delaying using the action is too risky, especially with the scum% and the fact scum will be cop-hunting like mad. If they kill the cop e.g. n1 they're basically home free. At that point, you've basically got something like two confirmed innocents (assuming scum don't CC the cop). I don't see how that can possibly be compensation for being in a vanilla 3:8.
I guess I just don't understand how you envision it playing out in a balanced way; one important thing is that before I'd actually seen a vanilla 2:10, I probably would have agreed, but I think that for whatever reason peoplemassivelyoverstate the effectiveness of scumhunting in vanilla games (I thought town would steamroller 2:10 and was shocked to hear they'd never won any).
Ha. Diminishing returns makes this untrue.shaft.ed wrote:Guardian by your logic then 4:6 is more balanced than 1:10
If you think not, I would like to see more 3 Mafia 1 cop, 7 townie games run with mandatory lynch/NKs. I think the game you mention is an outlier. I would imagine the town would win most if not all.mith wrote:Guardian, we've previously run 3 Mafia, 1 (every night, sane) Cop, 8 Townies. The scum woneasily. One game isn't conclusive for balance, but it did demonstrate what I would expect - most games, the cop will get traded for one of the scum (sometimes the scum will hit the cop at night first, sometimes the cop will have another investigation or two first). It's not a good balance. Not unplayable, by any means, but not balanced.
Why? By "throw the game" I mean give away connections to buddies. And by that I mean, if there is more buddies, more likely the bad scum player gives away connections to at least one of them. More buddies is more chances for bad players and moreover more chances for those players to mess up.mith wrote:"In 2:10, the scum are less likely to have a bad scum player who throws the game." - If we start to base balance on how likely a scum player is to throw the game, I fear for the future of the site.
I flatly disagree. In 2:10 vanilla, the inventive is to play as much like a townie as possible. Make the town have to randomly lynch you to find you correctly. In a 3:8 game with a cop (let's say a full cop for the sake of argument) you want to protect your partners as long as the cop lives, because if a few of you die early the cop will break the game later.mith wrote:"In addition, there are less interactions to go off of once you get one scum dead. With three scum, if that first dead scum has a pattern of behavior towards two other players, you can really take that and run with it. With two scum, that one scum probably will not give much information. His partner is also less likely to, since I think in 2:10 there is almost no incentive to protect your partner or treat them specially in any way." - Quite the opposite! There is far more incentive to protect your partner in 2:10, because you only have one of them.
I really disagree with this. 2:10 vanilla all the incentive is to play as town as possible, and ignore your partner. 4:8 nightless is somewhere in the middle. 3:8 with a cop you have to protect your buddies if they are getting lynched since a day 1, or even 2, scum lynch is disastrous.mith wrote:It's always a tradeoff - scum can distance and hope they are able to mislead the town in later days in exchange for an increased chance of getting one of them lynched early, or they can protect and hope power in numbers outweighs the risk of giving away the whole group. Balance can't (shouldn't) take that into account
I do not think the percentages are meaninful.mith wrote:In 3:1-shot:8, the random EV balance is hugely in favor of the scum (3:9 Vanilla is 16.5%, I'd guess this is around 25%). Sure, the town might have more information to work with, but they are further behind (and 2:10 is on the slightly questionable side of "balanced" as it is).
This is a strawman/misunderstanding. People are comparing 3:8 to past 2:10 games, based on how those 2:10 games actually went. I am saying that an advantage to my game, for the town, is it forces towns to play well. In those 2:10 games people are making anecdotal comparisons to, the town played badly. I am eliminating the town's option of playing badly.mith wrote:"Moreover, in most 2:10 games I have read, towns have lynched and scum NK'd every day until lylo." - 2:10 games typically start with a NK (so they're really 2:9). Even if they didn't, you're basically saying that because towns have played a game out wrong in the past, we should use that wrong strategy in determining the balance?
This percentage I find slightly meaningful, though I am distrustful of it. I think that the advantage gained is much more significant than the number "3%" appears.mith wrote:(FWIW, the difference is about 3%; 35% NLing D1, 32% only NLing in Lylo.)
What if we called the cop the "king," the townies "guards," and the mafia the "assassins"? It would be OK then, amirite?Adel wrote:not to mention that the performance and survival of a single player is the single most important variable for town success. That equates with a crap 12-player setup in my book.
I dispute this.Adel wrote:the king is a much more simple role to play well than cop...Guardian wrote:I disagree that, even the 1-shot cop, should expect to settle for only 1 scum death in value worth, on average. He should be able to prevent a townie lynch or get a scum lynch without claiming, and should be able to stay alive long enough to be making him confirmed to matter, at least some of the time.
What if we called the cop the "king," the townies "guards," and the mafia the "assassins"? It would be OK then, amirite?Adel wrote:not to mention that the performance and survival of a single player is the single most important variable for town success. That equates with a crap 12-player setup in my book.
If two townies fuck up in this game and get lynched ==> loss.Adel wrote:the guards fucking up is the major cause of town loss in that game, right?