Mini 804 - The Resistance - Mod Abandoned

[NabakovNabakov]

/confirm

[NabakovNabakov]

It's a pathetic chance we manage to get no scum on the plans. I want to get a number of scum other than one on the plans, so I'd advocate giving plans to scummy people. I do not want a set of plans.

I agree. Sending plans to all town will be exceedingly difficult, and the worst situation for the town (one scum getting the plans) is fairly likely to happen if we go the all town route.

If more than one scum receives plans, we have a chance of one of two things happening:
-More than one chooses to sabotoge, and we get closer to identifying the Spies. (Remember, we're going to need a solid idea of who's who when it comes to distributing the last 5 plans to all 5 townies.)
-They WIFOM into inaction, and we win a round.

Preview Edit:
Or we could just do that, but I'm not really in favor. Randomly assigning the plans D1 feels like randomly lynching D1. Yes, it's difficult to get a handle on the first round, but it's even more difficult to get a handle on later days if you throw out your first.

[NabakovNabakov]

When I signed up, I always thought that the first decision would be rather arbitrary.

Either:

a) Nobody sabotages and we destroy an Imperial base. 1/3. We don't get much information, but getting a point can't be a bad thing.
b) Somebody or multiple people sabotage, in which case we gain information to use in following rounds.

In subsequent rounds, I definitely think we should try to get as many pro-town people as possible, but here, I don't think it matters that much, because whatever happens, we benefit. Fishy might be right that the least ideal situation is exactly one spy in the group; I don't know about that, and I don't think it's necessarily true that that spy will always sabotage. *shrug*

Basically, I'll approve any proposal the first day, because I don't think it will make much of a difference in the long run.

That roughly approximates the two things that can happen, but if we act intelligently, we can attempt to push the result towards what would be best for the town. Also, the more thought and discussion that goes into choosing who gets the plans, the more we can use whatever information is gathered. Knowing "X of Y" people sabotoged is one thing, knowing who stumped for who, who voted against the plan, what the person in charge was thinking (etc.), is something entirely different.

In terms of deciding which result works best for the town, the one thing that concerns me greatly is the fact that winning the game will mean winning an incredibly difficult final round. By the time 2 Imperial bases have been destroyed, the plan count will be at 5, exactly equal to the number of townies. Winning will essentially entail a flawless identification of the entire town, and we can't do that without information of the best quality. In my view, getting that information means holding rigorous discussions and attempting to snare as many scummy players as possible in the early rounds. Random assignment just doesn't do the trick.

And in case anybody is wondering, in a game like this with relatively incognita terra, setup discussion will be more than a sufficient conversation starter and scumtell generator for D1. Everybody has plan, and having a bad plan could be an intentional effort to hurt the town.

[NabakovNabakov]

V/LA until Sunday

[NabakovNabakov]

.....my opinion hasn't changed from last I stated. I see no harm in random assignment on Day 1. I don't think a fast Day 1 is a bad thing. So I accepted.

I'm far more interested about those to rejected it, all of them. Do you object to this random assignment because you already have the specific "candidates" you want in mind? Or is it just because you object to any particular person getting the plan.

Why have a fast D1 when you can have a leisurely day with a copious supply of feedback at absolutely no charge? The way the rules are structured, we could adhere directly to deadlines and still have an infintely long day. Of course, we're going to want to agree on a proposal sometime, but why not make use of the fact that we now have solid information (the voting record for last cycle's proposal) on which to build a better plan. I rejected the random assignment because there was a better path with no extra charge.

@KoC: It seems that you're trying to load the assignments with scummy people, but you also want yourself on them. Is this a confession?

It seems to me that ABR is trying to put together an assignment with the three players who have contributed least so far. I'm not sure exactly what the point of this is (maybe he would like to explain), but I think it goes against both the objective of information gathering (the more a player has said, the more we have to draw conclusions and directions) and the objective of ideal scum distribution (why put our money on unknowns?).

More later.

[NabakovNabakov]

Honestly, the BEST way to proceed is to have NO DISCUSSION, and group THREE SPIES TOGETHER.

Honestly, the BEST way to proceed is to wear A BLINDFOLD, and hit THREE BULLSEYES TOGETHER.

Even if discussion were so evil we would want to avoid it at all costs (I don't think it is), we wouldn't be able to. Unless, of course, every player in the game spontaneously decides to sublimate their will to yours.

The fact is, we will have to get fantastically lucky to win this game without discusison. If we assume that no discussion means essentially random distrubution of plans, reasonable play by the scum could leave us with a roughly 2.5% chance of winning.*

@FL: Why do you want townies on the proposal?

*There are 126 possible combinations of 5 people to place on plans in the last round, and only one is correct. Assuming a scenario where we have three tries, the chance of finding the correct combination by guessing is roughly 1/126 * 1/125 * 1/124.

[NabakovNabakov]

EDIT: "+" not "*"

*There are 126 possible combinations of 5 people to place on plans in the last round, and only one is correct. Assuming a scenario where we have three tries, the chance of finding the correct combination by guessing is roughly 1/126

+

1/125

+

1/124.

Also, the chances of such fortiutious events as having scum sabotoge four of the five plans, etc raise our win percentage to about 5%.

@ABR: If the town commits to a strategy of no-discussion and quasi-random assignment, wouldn't reasonable play for the scum be to simply not sabotoge at all (or only sabotoge when one scum is assigned to the plans) and wait until the round of 5?

Frankly, I did not come here to vote through randomly generated proposals and furiously hope that my 1 in 20 chance of winning plays out. That's what the lottery is for.

[NabakovNabakov]

I definitely support a guided proposal.

And I think Fishy's approach is a good way to go. We had established enough theory by voting time for the first proposal to determine that there is no plan that is really neutral in the eyes of the scum; they have no incentive (other than WIFOM) to vote for a proposal that is not 1-scum, so I think we definitely stand to benefit by drawing today's proposal entirely from either the pros or the cons of yesterday's proposal.

I'm going to abstract away WIFOM just for now so I can work things out; feel free to add it in later to the detriment of all of my conclusions.

-Scenario 1: Scum favored proposal. This would mean that only one of myself, ABR, and Crazy were scum. However, this fails to hold up because

both

ABR and Crazy supported the prosposal. If they are both scummy for supporting, than the proposal has two scum. This scenario contradicts itself.

-Scenario 2: Scum did not favor proposal.
--2A: Proposal had two scum: Unlikely. Both ABR and Crazy would have to be scum, and they would have had to have voted for a proposal that did not favor them. This is the other end of Scenario 1's contradiction.
--2B: Proposal had no scum: The most likely scenario in my eyes.

Therefore, a town centric proposal should either be the three who voted for yesterday's proposal OR yesterday's proposal itself, and a scum centric-poposal calls for selection from yesterday's rejectors (KOC, veerus, FL?)

The one issue I have with this reasoning is that it goes quite against my gut. I have misgivings about Rampage, Crazy, and Psycho, so I am apprehensive about assuming they are town based on a contradiction in a model.

[NabakovNabakov]

Nab's last post takes in absolutely no account for distancing/bussing/etc. To assume that the scum would always vote together is very bad.

Well, it would seem to me that distancing and bussing would work in a slightly different way in a game where it is incredibliy difficult to ever discover somebody's allignment for certain, but you're right, the scum might now always vote together. I acknowledged that when I said that I was abstracting away WIFOM (ie. any condition where the scum act against their best interests as determined by game mechanics in order to look better). I'm taking out that confounding factor in search of a decent starting point, otherwise we'll just guide this proposal to randomness anyway.

[NabakovNabakov]

Sorry, I've been busy the past few days, and it seems like I've missed the party.

For what it's worth now:

Rebels:
Me
Ort
Fishy
FL? (more later)
Psycho (but a misguided one)

Spies:
Crazy (for being generally coherent but not making sense. FYI, changing what you say every 5 minutes is an ideal way to confuse/mislead the town)
Veerus, KOC, ABR for continuing to support silent, random distribution in the face of overwhelming odds. I have yet to see from any of them an explanation of how their strategy delivers us anything better than 5% odds of winning.

I have some misgivings about FL's proposal. Even though it was "well documented" I

am

unsettled by FL's flip-flop from supporting to rejecting self-noms. If FL were actually a rebel, it should not have been an epiphany to her that she should be included in a rebel-based proposal. The flip-flop would have been avoided because the flop was obvious from the start.

But given the context of her ban on self-noms (rejecting one from ABR), I can see how that would be overlooked.

[NabakovNabakov]

Wait, you were going to sabotoge? I voted for the proposal with the understanding that neither of us would sabotoge. To me, the best strategy would have been having as many scum as possible on initial proposals doing nothing at all. By the time 5-man proposals rolled around, the town would be too confused/underinformed to hit the nail on the head. I also felt the scum had a massive advantage. Having one or two more town than were needed in the final round probably would have evened things out.

gg anyway.