Large Normal 203 | Scale of the Universe - Finally Over

[mastina]

Holy shit this is town sided af

You say, as the mafia have a near-perfect victory.

[mastina]

So let me understand it
There were 16 town and 4 mafia
While the normal numbers are 13 town and 4 mafia for this kind of setups

Where do you get those numbers from?

This was a 20-player game.
The town had five roles (neighbors do not count as a role unless they have an additional PR for balance purposes).
Each of those five roles was gated: the innocent neighbor could only reveal to the neighborhood; the weak vigilante died if shooting scum; the 2-shot vigilante had only two shots; the one-guilty cop shut down if getting a result on mafia; the non-consecutive doctor couldn't protect two nights in a row.

That is entirely normal--if anything it's on the lower side.
The mafia also had two power roles: a gunsmith to both be a pseudo-town-role AND their investigative (to find the vigs and to find the cop, because gunsmiths get a guilty on cops), and a rolestopper to protect against TWO vig shots and offer some protection against the investigatives.

If anything, the MAFIA were the overpowered ones. Not the town.

And, while my last comment was a little tongue-in-cheek, I say so more seriously with this explanation now.
This game wasn't townsided even remotely.
If anything, it was the opposite.

[mastina]

The vigilantes definitely made it swingy though, which is part of what got us. Agree though that the setup was townsided though.

One vigilante died if targeting scum.
One vigilante could only shoot twice.
Both vigilantes would run afoul of the mafia's rolestopper. (I'd have to double-check the review PT on this to be sure, but I believe this is true.) Unless shooting said rolestopper. And keep in mind, shots would not be refunded and

the death clause would still trigger

.

Say Boonskiies shot Nero Cain N1.
Say also Nosferatu rolestopped Nero Cain N1.
Boonskiies dies N1, Nero Cain does not die N1.

The 2x vig also does not get their shots back if shooting someone doc/rolestop protected.

The One-Guilty cop could only get a guilty on a single mafiate. Once getting a guilty, they'd be a VT.

The doctor was nonconsecutive. The doctor must

not only

choose to protect the correct player from the scum's nightkill,

but also

do so at a critical time. If they protected the night before, tough luck; they can do nothing to save the town player who claimed. Even if they do save correctly, well then, next night, their protectee is wide open to attack.

The bulk of the town's power came from the pseudo-masonry neighborhood, with the innocent neighbor reveal, in an all-town topic...yet even then, the neighborhood didn't end up helping the town because be it through a legitimate mistake on Boonskiies part or Boonskiies outright lying, he essentially singlehandedly destroyed that neighborhood's integrity. The power of that neighborhood relied on a combination of communication, anonymity, and the reveal, along with good luck and time, allowing players within to realize it was all-town and keeping it from the scum. But because that didn't happen (it

almost

did, but it didn't), the utility was wasted.

And, again.
The scumteam was half-PRs.
The gunsmith could find 3/5 key town power roles.
The rolestopper could shut down those same 3/5 town power roles. (Shut down a guilty, shut down a vig.) And this is easier to do than with a roleblocker, because the rolestopper is a more defensive role with a limited pool of targets. It's easier to guess who the town are going to target than it is to guess what some hypothetical player you don't yet know the role/identity of MIGHT do.

Plus the results do speak for themselves.
The town never once lynched mafia.
And you're telling me you needed

less

help to do so?

[mastina]

gunsmiths guilty cops?
til

It's amazing how little players who play Normals actually know about the Normal Guidelines.

Normal Guidelines

In Normal games on mafiascum.net, a Gunsmith gets guilties on all Mafia (except Traitors and Doctors),

Cops, Vigilantes, Gunsmiths, Role Cops, Vanilla Cops

, Backups of roles with guns and JoATs that have any of these listed powers.

If you just look at the page for any given role, the interactions between them are pretty well-defined. There's

some

room for ambiguity in some areas (sometimes for the better, allowing for mod interpretation creating interesting setups; sometimes for the worse, creating mod ambiguity allowing for confusion to occur), but for the most part, these things are pretty strongly defined.

[mastina]

Mastina how can you say a four town neighborhood is "nothing" for balance purposes?

Because neighborhoods, regardless of composition, are net-nulls on balance. They mean nothing. That's a universal balance constant. All moderators design games with neighborhoods as said neighborhoods being net-neutral. That's standard modding practice. They do not assign weight to the neighborhood. They feature the neighborhood for other reasons--to augment other roles in the game (which

does

influence balance), to implement a mechanic, because they wanted to, because they want to put something extra in, because they want to spice the game up with something interesting, and so on and so forth.

But neighborhoods, save outlier cases (an all-scum neighborhood is ridiculously scumsided), have no inherent value to the town, because they are NEIGHBORHOODS. Not MASONRIES. Players are

not

confirmed to each other. You can have any combination of alignments. Some alignments are ridiculous (scum-scum for instance), but there's no combination which is impossible. Scum-town, scum-scum (it exists even if it shouldn't), town-town. And the town has literally no way of knowing what the mods did. Fuck, some moderators create neighborhoods randomly before roles are assigned, meaning that by their inherent nature the neighborhoods

couldn't

hold balance impact on the game because there was no strategy behind their creation, just pure sheer luck.

Any assumption to the contrary, that a neighborhood must be town, that a neighborhood must give the town power, is a player assumption. Not a moderator assumption. And I'm telling you right here and now. I'm pretty sure it's universal to literally every member of the NRG. We treat neighborhoods as net-neutral to balance, aside from outlier cases.

Now, NEIGHBORIZERS, on the other hand...that's an actual role and that has actual balance impact. It's a ridiculously strong scum role and a moderately valuable town role. But that's because they get to choose who they are neighborizing, allowing for scum to manipulate the gamestate far more effectively and allowing town to influence things.

But neighbors, set in stone from the beginning of the game, are not inherently of value. They're neither detrimental nor beneficial. They simply are. Players can make neighborhoods be valuable, by using smart play and making accurate deductions. (Even if said deductions are Right For The Wrong Reasons.) Players can also make neighborhoods be unvaluable, by making bad play and making inaccurate deductions. (Especially if they've been bolstered by past successes which were right for the wrong reasons and think that past experience means they're right again.)

[mastina]

I mean I know it's dickish to say it's town sided as scum especially as we only lost one member, but I remember thinking like the power roles go on and on

You will never find a game with this many players with less town power roles make it through a review. Not in the Normal queue and

especially

not in a Theme game.

Five power roles is on the higher side of a mini normal--but is still within the bounds of said mini normal. You can have five town power roles

in a thirteen player game

. (Admittedly the standard is 3-4, give or take 1, but that places the lower boundary at 2 and the higher boundary at 5.) This game was a twenty-player game. When you have that many players in a game...you can expect there to be a fair amount of reasonably strong town power.

The general rule of thumb for power roles tends to be ~= #scum. At higher levels, this tends to break down a little bit; if you have five scum in a 21-player game, you'll want more than five power roles, but it's still close, and would be ~= #scum+1. There were four scum this game so the absolute minimum number of power roles you were going to see was four. And you ended up with five.

Micros have 2 scum and 2 power roles on average.
Minis have 3 scum and loosely average 3 power roles.
So a game with 4 scum has at least 4 power roles, maybe with an extra.
A game with 5 scum is going to have at least 5 but almost certainly with an extra.
A game with 6 scum is going to have at least 6 but at this point you're probably dealing with a game where it might even be TWO extra.

It's not exactly a linear increase, but you get the idea. If your game is heavier in scum, it will be heavier in town power.

[mastina]

Mastina for example the mafia universe championships (which is the standard for all sites) are 12 town 3 SCUM with NO power roles.

You might wanna check MD for what stats work out in mountainous games to be for mafiascum games.

Hint:
It aint great. (If you want to exclude the brainstorming of open setups, do this search instead.) To get a good idea of balance from reviewer eyes you can look at a thread like this one or more appropriately perhaps, this is a thread where balance gets discussed extensively, albeit for minis.

Towns inherently require power roles or mechanical assistance (e.g. White Flag mechanic*, nightless mechanic) in order to do well.

*I'd like to point out for the record that White Flag in spite of having said mechanic still has overwhelmingly been scum victories (that page is itself out of date btw since there's at least one extra), most of them quite crushing. Even when you give scum a handicap which should make the game easier on town, they still do well in mountainous games.

[mastina]

Yeah but I was counting these neighbors who all basically considered themselves confirmed town to be power roles lol

And that was an

assumption

they made.

Was it an accurate assumption?
Yes.

But it was an assumption all the same--an assumption which could have easily turned out to be wrong.

Let's say the neighborhood had three town and one scum.
Let's say the neighborhood assumed it was all town, as they did this game.

Bam. Town loses, off of an inaccurate assumption.

Neighborhoods are not masonries. If a player chooses to treat them that way, they do so at their own discretion.

[mastina]

So you're saying the mod error affected the game - why are mods so against telling people what is going on?
Somebody should have told boonskies that his shot failed

I cannot stress this enough: mod errors like this mechanically paint players as the wrong alignment. This is a big deal and it should never happen and remain unnannounced

For what it's worth I don't think Nexus was consulted about the mod error but if not he should have been. If Nexus had been consulted, then we would have Word Of Listmod on what action would have been most appropriate.

If he was in fact consulted, then there's that. The decision is what it is.
If he wasn't consulted, then you do have a fair point.

[mastina]

(This is how I play scum.)

Lies that's your towngame, look how many scum you caught.