Open Setup Certification Group

[mith]

Approved Setups

(as of 09-June-11)

C9
One of four variations, randomly chosen:

• * 1 Cop, 1 Doc, 2 Mafia, 3 Townies;
  * 1 Cop, 2 Mafia, 4 Townies
  * 1 Doc, 2 Mafia, 4 Townies
  * 2 Mafia, 5 Townies

F11
It consists of four variations, chosen at random

• * 1 Mafia Goon, 1 Mafia Roleblocker, 1 Sane Cop, 1 Doctor, 5 Townies.
  * 1 Mafia Goon, 1 Mafia Roleblocker, 7 Townies.
  * 2 Mafia Goons, 1 Sane Cop, 6 Townies.
  * 2 Mafia Goons, 1 Doctor, 6 Townies.

Pie E7

• * 1 Mafia Goon
  * 1 Mafia Roleblocker (for balance reasons, the Roleblocker should also be able to nightkill even if the Goon is dead)
  * 1 Sane Cop
  * 1 Doctor
  * 3 Townies

Vengeful 5P

• * 1 Godfather
  * 1 Mafia Goon
  * 3 Vengeful townies
  Nightless

Lovers Mafia

• * 2 Mafia Lovers
  * 4 Townies
  Nightless

Near-Vanilla

• * 3 Mafia
  * 1 Doctor
  * 1 Jailkeeper
  * 8 Townies

Vanilla Nightless

• * 6-8 players: 2 scum (2:4 to 2:6)
  * 9-11 players: 3 scum (3:6 to 3:8)
  * 12-16 players: 4 scum (4:8 to 4:12)

Bird 7P

• * 2 Mafia Goons
  * 3 Townies
  * 1 Cop
  * Doctor
  Day Start

2:2:9

• * 2 Mafia A Goons
  * 2 Mafia B Goons
  * 9 Vanilla Townies
  Day Start

Trendy and Subversive C9 V1

• * 1 Mafia Goon
  * 1 Mafia Roleblocker
  * 1 Cop or Nurse
  * 1 Doctor or Deputy Cop
  * 3 Townies
  Day Start

Trendy and Subversive C9 V3

• * 1 Mafia Goon
  * 1 Mafia Roleblocker
  * 1 Cop or Doctor
  * 1 Deputy Cop or Nurse
  * 3 Townies
  Day Start

Alternating 9P

• * 2 Mafia Goons
  * 1 Even Night Cop
  * 1 Odd Night Doctor
  * 5 Townies
  Day Start

Jungle Republic

• * 1 Seer
  * 3 Mafia (no NK)
  * 2 Werewolves (has an NK)
  * 6 Townies
  Day Start

Friends and Enemies (2:2:7)

• *2 Mafia
  *2 Masons
  *7 Townies
  Day Start

---

After some discussion in Site Ideas, I am starting to implement some of the suggested changes in the way we choose Open Setups to be run. The first change is a split in the discussion thread. The (renamed) Open Setup Ideas and Discussion thread remains open for posting new setup ideas. This thread will continue discussion of these setups, with the goal of "certifying" certain setups which meet some number of basic criteria.

Among these criteria are:

1. The setup must be Open or Semi-Open.
   
2. The setup must qualify as "Normal".
   
3. For the most part, approved setups should be small (5-12 players).
   
4. Setups must retain the basic premise of Mafia; the outcome of the game should depend primarily (though not necessarily entirely) on whether or not the pro-town players can determine the identities of the Mafia through their posting and behaviour. "Broken" setups (setups where the town has a strategy which maximizes their chances of winning through "Following the Cop" or similar methods should not be considered. (Note: This item probably needs clarification.)

This list should not be considered complete or final in any way; rather, it is a starting point for discussion.

I am looking for volunteers to be a part of a (smallish) group to lead this effort. Initially, our goal should be the "cerfitication" of a set of X (to be determined) setups meeting the above (or other determined) criteria which will form the "core" of the Open Games Queue. Members of the group will later be responsible for certifying other setups for possible use (whether as part of the "core" set, or the occasional setup with a more experimental leaning), producing standard role PMs and rulesets for these games, and maintaining information for these games on the wiki.

If you are intereseted in joining this group, post here. I will select the initial group based on how active you have been in discussing setups (particularly balance) in the past, especially in the Open Setup Discussion threads. This will be the first of several similar "steering groups" that will be started and/or revived over the next few days/weeks, and so if you have not been particularly active in the area of Open Setups, don't worry, there may be a group more suited to you that you can get involved in. Users who are not a part of the official group are of course still give their input here (and are encouraged to do so!). The group's primary purpose is to steer discussion and keep things organized so that the process keeps moving.

The Group (as of 09-Mar-09):

Adel
Korts
shaft.ed
Lord Gurgi
Xylthixlm
Ether

[mith]

(Feel free to suggest ideas for how to proceed with this before a group is officially selected; I intended to post some more here myself before I went to bed, but my cold went from bad to my-brain-is-melting, so I'll wait and post in the morning.)

[mith]

Yos, my initial goal is to go through the setups that have already been played, to get a starting set of certified setups that way. I'm sure we have plenty of setups already that work and that players like; we can add more as we go.

I'm still trying to figure out the best way to handle nominations/signups. The goal of the Open Queue originally was to give the players themselves an opportunity to choose the setup they were going to play. I think in practice, a lot of people have nominated setups without playing, and most of the players don't even read the setup discussion (much less post or nominate). Adel suggested just having all certified setups available for signups, but I feel that would be too confusing (particularly for newer players who just want to /in for the next game) and too much work on farside, if we had 20 setups (for example) available.

Perhaps a middle ground would be to break the setups into loose categories, with games from each category cycling in and out; for example, you might put Pie E7, California, Double Cop, etc. in a set of "7 Player Fully Open Setups" (which, narrow though it is, could probably be a set on its own given how many attempts have been made to fix the original newbie setup). You might lump together Vanillas of various sizes with any other setups that don't have investigative roles. There could be a set of Semi-Open games (C9, C9ths, Two-of-Four, Carbon-14, etc.). And so on.

But before we could do that, we need a list of setups to start with. I'm going to start going through them myself this afternoon (assuming this stupid cold eases up enough that I can think).

[mith]

Fixed. Just examples anyway, I don't know which of those setups we might want to certify.

[mith]

Another idea would be to cycle a game off the Queue once it's been filled and replace it with another from a similar category.

This is what I meant above; I probably wasn't very clear.

[mith]

Ok, here's a start at going through completed games; this is from the list in the old thread, up to Open 43. I'll work on it some more later (feel free to add to it yourselves).

Tiny

Pie E7 (1, 11, 20)
California (4)
Vengeful (7, 8, 14, 15, 26, 49, 58, 64, 75, 77, 92, 123)
C9 (10)
Double Cop (13)
C9+2 (18, 29, 43) - IMO, F11 is an improvement over this (very similar setups)
Roleblocker C9 (22)
Bird C9 (27, 98, 117)
Two of Four a7 (67, 101)
Two of Four b7 (68)
Two of Four a9 (69)
Two of Four b9 (70, 121)
Trendy and Subversive C9 (90, 91, 94)
Carbon-14 (96, 107)
Lovers Nightless (97, 102, 113)
Even/Odd C9 (103)
Lovers 2:5 (109)
Gurgi EC8 (112)

Mini

Basic Twelve Player (3, 9, 54)
Masons and Monks (12, 23, 56)
Strawberry (17, 46, 62)
Friends and Enemies (21, 42)
Quack Mafia (28, 57)
Pick Your Poison (32)
Twofold (44)
3:3:6 Nightless (48)
Daytalk Vanilla (59)
2:2:8 Vanilla (61, 72)
Friends and Enemies + Dayvig (63)
Mini Love (65)
Quack Multiball (66)
C/9ths (74)
Polygamist (76, 83, 88)
2:2:3:5 Friends and Enemies (78)
Mayo Clinic (99)
Friends, Enemies, and that Other Guy (100)
Impotence (106)
Weak M.D. (108) - I find the balance of this one... questionable.
Unclean (110)
Tread Carefully (115)
Follow The Cop... Or Not (118)

Large

Near-Vanilla (14, 53, 93, 122)
Big Love (35)
Picking Simplicity (36)
Lovers Multiball (86)
Double Day 3:13 (80)
The New C9 (50, 60, 81, 104)
Immunity (111)

Variable

Vanilla (2, 55)
Nightless Vanilla (6, 19, 41, 79)

Less Normal

Jester Mafia (25, 71, 85)
Fire and Ice (30, 84)
dethy (34)
Jester Mafia 12 (38)
Medical Mafia (40)
Assassins in the Palace (73, 73.5, 89)
Paris (114)
Masons and Mafia (119)
Rebels in the Palace (120)

Issues?

Switch (5) - see Yos comment
Crush (33, 105)
Crush Nightless (37, 39, 47) - weren't there some issues with endgames in Crush and Crush Nightless?
Baby Too Much Scum (45, 87) - Having an FBI Agent when the SK is already weaker than the Mafia group doesn't make much sense.

Broken

Texas Justice (24, 51, 52, 82)
Yoguraimee C9 (31) - reasonably sure that having the cops claim D1 is still a breaking strategy here
Don't Cut the Red Wire! (116)

Can't Find!

Open 95

[mith]

That's Pie E7 (or the part of F11 with both power roles), not California. (But I agree with Adel.)

The main reason for the move in the newbie games was to move to 9 player games (which are inherently less swingy and won't have a D2 lynch-or-lose). Not sure what the balance is on California (almost certainly in the scum's favor, and would probably be a better game with 9 than 7, but not unplayable with 7). That reminds me of a thread I want to start.

[mith]

Adel, I know there's no RB in California; you asked about California, shaft.ed answered about Pie E7.

[mith]

Alright, I've picked a group of five to start with. Anyone not picked, please do feel free to contribute! The main reason for limiting the numbers is to keep the number with mod rights on this topic managable. We may adjust the numbers/membership later, though.

I'll give the group editing rights for this and the sticky thread shortly.

[mith]

I'm going through Adel's posts now to update the list in post 43. I think while some of us work on wiki'ing the games, others can work on the setups themselves. (Setups that have been used will give us a starting point, and then at some point we can start going through the discussion threads for others that have been suggested.)

[mith]

Ok, my list is updated through Open 87. Going to take a shower now, will try to finish before I leave this afternoon (though I've got some other things to get done...).

[mith]

Members of the group should now have mod rights in this thread and the sticky. Test by editing this post, please.

[mith]

The list in post 43 is now updated through Open 123 (except I can't find Open 95 anywhere... did it get skipped, or am I just blind?).

Leaving pretty soon, but a couple quick comments:

A first step in sorting through these should be to group variants together; for example, there are four different Two of Four setups, and we have several options as far as certifying them:

1. Don't.
2. Certify (some of/all of) them separately.
3. Certify (some of/all of) them as a group (so a Two of Four setup might be run about as often as C9, but each individual variant only half/a fourth as often).

There's also some on the list that are combinations of more basic ideas... Polygamist is really just a combination of the 6 player Lovers Nightless (2 Mafia Lovers and 4 Townies) and the Hydra concept (double the normal number of players, paired) seen in Lovers Multiball. It may be worth picking out some of these more basic ideas that pop up in various setups (or could potentially be applied to a variety) for classification purposes (Nightless, Hydra, Double Day, etc.).

[mith]

I have two ideas why you can't edit... one of which I can fix (but probably not until tomorrow at the earliest), the other I'll have to talk to jeep about. Anyway, should have that fixed in the next few days, and it shouldn't slow us down.

[mith]

A couple of quick and random comments:

There are at least a couple of setups that have been "tested" through multiple runs, outside of the Open Game list (Vanilla of various sizes, but most commonly 2:10; and California). I don't think Vanilla needs to be certified at all (it *is* Mafia, IMO, everything else is just a variant...), just don't want it forgotten in the mix. (I know this is just a first run, and these and other setups can always be brought in later.)

4:8 Nightless is not biased toward the Town; Mafia are favored in that setup. I'm reasonably sure it hasn't been run enough to determine with any degree of certainty how much better real players do than the numbers; I'd be quite surprised if they do *that* much better, though. 3:9 is 50-50 with random play.

I wouldn't consider AitP broken (just subtle); I also wouldn't consider it "normal". It should probably be run in Theme Park in the future (I do have some thoughts on encouragement for mods to run Themed Open, or otherwise simplistic, games, but that's for another thread). And I agree that the rules about not claiming are silly; any rule like that will inevitably lead to mod interpretation of posts, and isn't necessary in that game.

E7 should not be attached to anything but Pie (it's a very specific reference poking fun at Pie's lack of binary skills).

Regarding standardized role PMs/rules, I know it seems like something everyone should be able to do, but we've had several games ruined or affected by misunderstandings in this area - there's just no reason for that when we can do something to prevent it. Fine with leaving room for the mods to add their own flavor touch (keeping in mind that these are normal games), but we do need to make sure the important stuff is clear and immutable.

[mith]

Ether:

"The town in 4:8 Nightless has four chances to lynch the first out of a larger pool of four mafia; each time that they score a hit, they get the extra lynch that a mafia nightkill would normally cancel out." - Ok... but the EV takes this into account. Sometimes it's counterintuitive, I guess. But the numbers don't lie; the Mafia is expected to win 2/3 of 4:8 games.

"A player who's obvtown can never be eliminated" - The existence of a player who is "obvtown" is the result of subpar scum play and/or exceptional town play.

Again, I don't know how much better real players will do than the EV, but there simply isn't any evidence to suggest that 4:8 is more balanced for forum play than 3:9. We've only had a small number of Nightless games. I can only tell you that with random lynches 3:9 is even and the Mafia should win 2/3 for 4:8.

(Just out of curiosity: How many players would you guess are needed to balance, 50-50, a Vanilla game with 10 scum? I may post a little "balance quiz" tomorrow, see how user perception matches up with the EVs.)

"The same ruleset doesn't work for every mod; one tends to evolve as the mod sees what works and what's superfluous/grates on the mod personally/doesn't get enough attention in standard rulesets." - This seems to miss the point of the Open Queue. The Open Queue

isn't for the mods

. It's for the players; standard games that players like and want to play multiple times. As a side benefit, it's a good place for new mods to get the hang of managing a game (and contributing to the site in that particular way, and so on)... not for new mods to try different rules out.

(We may be talking past each other a little bit here though; emphasis: "the important stuff". I think there is certainly some wiggle room regarding deadlines and the like that might depend on the mod's schedule.)

[mith]

The Balance Quiz.

(More later, which isn't EV related.)

[mith]

I edited the current list into the first post.

Ether also added to the group. I'll work on figuring out the topic-mod issue later.

[mith]

Ok, someone try editing this post. If this doesn't work, I'll drag jeep into it.

[mith]

Bah. Ok, I'll send jeep a message.

For Nightless, I'd be cool with anything from 40-50% (2:5-6, 3:7-9, 4:10-12, 5:12-15). But exactly 50-50 is fine for a start.

[mith]

Scum generally find Nightless more difficult because they can't get rid of pesky obvtown players. At least, that's what I'm told. So for that reason, I'd be less in favor of pro-town EVs for Nightless games.

[mith]

I'd break that down differently:

6-8 players: 2 scum (2:4 to 2:6)
9-12 players: 3 scum (3:6 to 3:9)
13-16 players: 4 scum (4:9 to 4:12)

Also, given the number of 7, 9, and 12 player setups that are run all the time anyway, I'd propose that we consider excluding them from the setups that can be run with variable numbers (Vanilla, Nightless, and Lovers being the most likely, I guess).

I'll see if I can throw together some numbers for multigroup setups when I have more time.

[mith]

Oh, I skipped over the "however many signup" part.

The only problem I have with that is that some people may prefer certain sizes of game, and wouldn't have much say in how big the game got. Not sure what the solution to that is, or if it's even really a problem.

[mith]

As I've said before: three games != statistically significant. Scum clearly need to step up their game, though.

I'm fine with 4:8 (same balance as 3:6, which is definitely preferable to 2:7). 4:7, no.

And you could include 2:4 if you want a 6 player option.

[mith]

I'm not saying it's meaningless. What I'm saying is that three town wins isn't conclusive evidence that a setup is in the town's favor.

As I said, I'd be fine with it being run. I think it's probably close to 50-50 in practice (EV is only 1/3). I

don't

think it's in the town's favor, though.

[mith]

That depends on the hypothesis. If the hypothesis is "The town will win about 1/3 of games, as predicted by the EV", probably one or two more games would do. If the hypothesis is "The town is favored", you'd need 6 or 7.

Assuming they're all town wins, of course.

(My statistics is rusty. I don't like statistics.)

[mith]

The binomial distribution depends on the probabilities; if our hypothesis is that the realEV is 1/3, that gives us one distribution (and corresponding range of statistically significant results), while if the hypothesis is that realEV is >1/2, we have another distribution.

In the latter case, the probability of getting three town wins by chance is at least 1/8 (12.5%). Statistical signifcance is a fuzzy concept, but generally 5% or 1% is used.

[mith]

Right. A sample of 5, all town wins, would get us under the 5% mark, but personally I still wouldn't consider that "conclusive"; if the scum won the next game, we'd be right back above 5% (well above, actually; over 10%). Thus the 6 or 7 I gave above.

Statistics always makes me feel dirty, and this is why.

[edit]That was re: 186.[/edit]

[mith]

I've submitted my PhD thesis in math, and have a degree in chemistry.

Obviously, I hate both statistics

and

biology.

[mith]

I guess the main decision to be made, then, is: 3:9 or 4:8 or both? (Well, similar decision for 16 players; 4:12 or 5:11. But they are basically the same question... if we prefer 3:9, we prefer 4:12, and if we prefer 4:8, we prefer 5:11.)

I'm still in favor of 3:9, but wouldn't mind seeing both run.

[mith]

Quick comment: It's probably already a little confusing that we have E7 (which is actually 7 players), C9 (also 7 players), and F11 (9 players)... adding in a Bird11 (7 players) is too much...

I do agree that any setup with C9 in the name that isn't semi-open needs a new name, though.

Adel: Do you also think California is a crap setup?

3-1-8 Strawberry is very tough on the town; the best they can realistically hope for is that they can trade the Cop for a Scum, and then it becomes a 2-X setup that's worse than 2-10 (already in the Scum's favor). 3-1-11 would be a more reasonable balance, or 3-1-9 with cop headstart.

I'm hoping a can work out a general method for finding the EV of M-1-T setups, but see the numbers thread for how messy it can get even for something as seemingly simple as California.

[mith]

I'd be fine with that, Ether.

[mith]

I'm a little meh on Polygamist, personally. I'd rather see two Lovers games run than one Polygamist. But no objection to certifying it, either.

[mith]

Sure. All that is valid. I think it would be better to just play the occasional games with pre-assigned hydras, though (similar to what Korts is suggesting, I think). Pretty much any small game would be viable (possibly even improved) by hydrafication.

[mith]

Ok.

Mostly I just wanted to say "hydrafication".

[mith]

shaft.ed/Xyl, you both seem to be assuming in the case of an X:X:1 endgame that everyone knows who the townie is - we can't assume that, and whether we can determine it at all depends on how draws are counted (do we assume that if it gets down to two opposing scum, they kill each other and all three sides have an equal share of the "everyone dies" draw, do we assume that they kill each other and everyone loses - the same thing from the townie POV, since the townie's goal should be to maximize his own share of the win *and* minimize the share of the others - or do we assume that the scum automatically draw at that point to the exclusion of the town?).

If we assume the latter, the townie's best and only chance is to NL (which the scum must agree to/suggest themselves, to avoid giving away information about who the townie is), and hope for the best in a shoot out. Whichever scum side is better at missing the townie wins, (or they both hit the townie, draw, or they wipe each other out, town win). 1-1-1 would be 25% for the town (25% for each scum group, 25% draw).

In the former case (personally, if there are two scum groups left that can both kill each other, I make them play it out - it's only a draw if they can agree to not shoot each other and actually follow through with that agreement - so this is where my ruleset would bring us), the NL plan is even (33% total for each, counting the draw share), but so is the plan where the townie offers himself up to be lynched (since the correct play after that is for the scum to wipe each other out; it's Prisoner's Dilemma). However, while the townie is the only one that can offer himself to be lynched, I don't think there is any informational advantage to be gained by him doing so - correct play at that point for the scum is to lynch him, to avoid going to night X-X-1 and knowing who the townie is.

The more interesting case is 1-1-2, where correct play is for one of the townies to offer himself up for lynching, to actually follow through with that play some percentage of the time (determined to reduce the scum's chances of faking this), and then the rest of the time lynch the *other* townie (which the scum can't fake) since we have a high likelihood that the first claim is legit. The game theoretical value for this is surely very much in the town's favor (I've actually won a game similarly myself, though in that one everyone already knew I was innocent, I was just getting the other townie to offer herself up so I - and the scum - would know who she was, and thus who the scum were).

Anyway, the point is that no matter what the draw rules, I think it's far more likely 1-1-1 would go to a shootout than a "kingmaker" situation. Even halfway decent players don't give the game away when there is a 25% chance of them winning.

[mith]

In practice? Sure. In determining balance? We can't assume that (see standard speech about random EVs).

The townie should claim townie. So should both scum. My point is that in 1-1-2, we can force some information to make it more of a Prisoner's Dilemma for the scum - in 1-1-1, we can't. The scum might have gained knowledge about which of the other two is the townie, and they might be wrong, and we can't assume anything for the balance of the game other than that they will shoot randomly.

[mith]

Right. I'm just not sure why you're singling out 1-1-1 as a "Kingmaker" situation; it's not, in the standard sense of the term - it may be the case that scum A is killed by scum B, and thus scum A's choice has the effect of acting as the decider between scum B and townie, but scum A doesn't know this going in, and his choice isn't arbitrary (in the actual game) since shooting scum B is strictly better than shooting the townie, if he can figure out which is which.

[mith]

I think any situation involving the word "dumbest" is still a game of skill.

After thinking on it in the shower, I've convinced myself that the best the town can do in a 1-1-2 situation is lynch a townie and go to 1-1-1 with no new information.

NL and randomly shooting at 1-1-2 yields: Town win (1/9), Scum A win (2/9), Scum B win (2/9), 1-1-1 (2/9), 1-1 (2/9). If 1-1 is a three-way draw (everyone dead), that's 7/27 for the town (compared to 1/3 = 9/27 if they lynch a townie). If 1-1 is a two-way scum draw, that's 1/6 (compared to 1/4 if they lynch a townie).

Now, consider a situation where a townie volunteers for lynching. If there is some chance that townie won't actually be lynched (because we assume we now know him to be innocent), we haven't gained anything, because it is now in all of the remaining three player's interest to claim to be the second townie (if the scum don't, they lose, under the assumption that a full-knowledge PD is a loss). If we NL, it is the same as if we went to night 1-1-1 (just ignoring the known townie), but doing so risks a scum offering himself as a sacrifice in the first place. Thus, we must lynch the claimed townie, even knowing that that claimed townie must be innocent, because that knowledge is based on always following through with the sacrifice and because nothing is gained by leaving that townie alive.

In practice, there would probably be some measure of "player A was online but didn't offer himself as a sacrifice, he must be scum", in which case it really could devolve into a kingmaker situation (with player A knowing he can't win because the other scum will shoot him). The theoretical perfect scum would avoid things like this, though.

[mith]

Moved over to the numbers thread. If my numbers are correct and I'm not missing anything, I've shown that the strategy up to 1-1-5 is either to NL or to sac a townie. I suppose it's still Mafia (you still want to be posting in such a way as to look townie, only now you're trying to persuade the scum not to shoot you, rather than the town not to lynch you).

[mith]

Actually, I suspect it would be less of an issue with power roles. The reason for the NL/sac strategies in vanilla is that the best thing for the town to do sometimes is to reduce the options and hope the scum kill each other. With power roles (particularly information roles), there are other ways of catching scum, and of eliminating possibilities. Hard to say for sure, though.

One obvious way it does change things (though not to "fix" it and make it more like Mafia) is that if there is a confirmed innocent in a 1-1-2, the best play is now for the other innocent to sac himself and put it into a full-knowledge Prisoner's Dilemma (which is game theoretically a win for the town, though of course in practice it doesn't always work out that way). 1-1-2 being a town win in those situations would ripple back into the strategies for larger numbers of players.

[mith]

(One interesting thing to calculate, along with the EV for the town, would be the percentage of games that end up in a "NL or sac is the best strategy" situation.)

[mith]

I'm talking strictly about near the end of the game, when most of the information has already been gathered.

At the beginning of the game, the main effect of power roles would probably be swing; a Cop might finger one of the scum D2, and hurt that scumgroup's chances (helping the town a bit, helping the other group more), and making it less likely it ends up in a X-X-Y endgame in the first place. Given how difficult it is to do EVs on even simple games with Cops, I hesitate to guess what the optimal strategy of the town would be in such a situation.

I think we're getting to a point that we can say that games with multiple, symmetrical scum groups may not be the best idea.

[mith]

Updated OP, sorry about the delay.

[mith]

As a quick back-of-the-envelope type of calculation, 3:3:5 has an EV of around 21% if the masons claim immediately. It is almost certainly better for them to not claim immediately, and I'd guess the EV is closer to 30%.

2:2:7 should be reasonable, I would think. 2:9 already has an acceptable EV of 35.21%, and the masons might bump that a bit. If you're aiming for 50-50, 2:2:13 is probably about right.

[mith]

I would avoid trying to put things in terms of "How many Townies is this role/group worth?". It's not that simple. The strength of the Mason group depends on how many Mafia/Townies there are. For that matter, the worth of additional Townies depends on how big the game already was (but the strengths of the Mason group and the Townies don't diminish at the same rate).

2:2:7 is probably already 40%. As a better strategy than the Masons coming out immediately, we can just pick a random player, have them claim, if they claim townie, lynch them, if they claim Mason we ask for a counter; if there is a counter, we ask the original claim to verify by outing their buddy (Mafia won't ever fake this unless it somehow gets to 2:2:1, since it's a instant loss for them; for that matter, they won't ever counter either, but this is just to be safe). Would need a bit of adjustment for endgame, but should still be a significant improvement. I'll see if I can work out the exact EV for this sort of setup when I am a little more inspired.

[mith]

Given that we don't even

have

EVs for anythng beyond Vanilla variants and very small setups, I am certainly not of the opinion that EV should be our only (or even primary) concern. I'm hoping to make some progress on that (though not in the immediate future; I've got to be thinking about preparing for my exam and looking for a job right now), but in the meantime, make use of whatever works for you... setups can always be tweaked later.

That said: The EV is a minimum expectation - the town has a strategy which guarantees the EV. However, I think we all agree that on average the town will do somewhat better (in most setups, anyway)... and that's why we don't have dice being used in all our games. But because towns don't use dice, skilled scum will win more often than the EV would indicate (while poor scum drag the "average" back down to put it in the town's favor, overall) - EV isn't a limit on what the scum can acheive, unless the setup is such that the town can't improve on random voting (in which case it's a bad/broken setup).

[mith]

To elaborate on what Ether said, C9 was developed to fix the Cop-Doc combo in the original newbie setup. It does that (to the point that scum are favored). Changing the roles to one-shots also "fixes" the combo to some degree. Doing both (one-shots *and* 50/50 chance of each role appearing at all) is overkill.

Not sure about the balance for Cowardly, but I don't think I would call it "normal".

[mith]

I suspect D1 Cop claim may still be the optimal strategy.

[mith]

Just a note to say that I'm in favor of the Marathon-Day-To-Test-Open-Setups idea and we'll do that in the near future. Thoughts on how to organize it?

[mith]

Someone send me a PM on Saturday reminding me that I need to adjust the procedure here/poke people/scrap this/some combination of the three.

[mith]

Sorry all, have been very distracted.

Let's scrap this for now as an official group. farside, feel free to carry on with the queue as you see fit for now. When I've got some time to think about it, I may come back to this and restart it somehow.

[mith]

Another site-policy related necro...

Thoughts on reopening this group? How would you like to see it work? Would you like to be a part of it? etc.

[mith]

I think one problem with the previous incarnation was that we got a little too hung up on certifying a small number of "core setups", and got away from the second part of the msision statement:

Members of the group will later be responsible for certifying other setups for possible use (whether as part of the "core" set, or the occasional setup with a more experimental leaning), producing standard role PMs and rulesets for these games, and maintaining information for these games on the wiki.

Even if we don't change the process itself, one thing I could see this group doing is reviewing completed games to see which worked and which didn't (and why), to give feedback to the List Mod. I'm also curious what process farside is using for selecting games (haven't discussed it with her in a while).