Toriel's Patience (end)

[implosion]

EV time.

There is one very interesting wrinkle in EV analysis of this setup, which is that if we choose a strategy on day 1 and plan to stick with it, then Dunn has flat odds of 11/14 of being town. So in the point of the calculation where we consider Dunn's probability, it's ambiguous whether we should stick 11/14 or whatever the current random odds are. I think the current odds at that point are technically the right thing to put in. It's similar to the Monty Hall problem, but the difference is that in Monty Hall you don't get any new info by opening the door but here every townie we lim does make Dunn more likely to be scum and every scum we lim does make Dunn more likely to be town. Anyhow. Gonna be rounding to nearest % at every step for convenience.

Suppose we mislim twice. Then if we choose Fight, 3/12 that we go to 2:9 mountainous (35% town win) and 9/12 that we go to 3:8 mountainous (17% town win) for about a 21% EV.

If we choose Mercy, well, there's not a wiki page already in existence to make this easy. Assuming that spares are chosen entirely at random still, as with regular EV calculation. 3/12 that Dunn is scum and we go to 2:9 sparegame. To win from there, we have to spare correctly at 11p, 9p, 7p and 5p, for total probability of (9/11) (7/9) (5/7) (3/5) = 3/11 or about 27%. In the 9/12 that Dunn is town, we go into 3:8 where we have to spare 3 times to win and scum have to spare twice. From there, 3/11 that we hit scum at which point our EV is (7/9) * (5/7) * (3/5) = 3/9. 8/11 that we go to 3:6. From there, 3/9 that our EV becomes (5/7)(3/5) = 3/7, and 6/9 that we go to 3:4 at which point scum's EV is (3/7)(2/5) = 6/35 so ours is 29/35.

All in all, the EV is this:

(3 / 12) * (3 / 11)
+
(9 / 12) * (

(3 / 11) * (3 / 9)
+
(8 / 11) * (

(3 / 9) * (3 / 7)
+
(6 / 9) * (29 / 35)

)


)

Which, if I've typed it into Google correctly, is just above 50%.

So that's definitely a very strong argument in favor of sparing Dunn. Almost regardless of his alignment - in fact, if he's scum, correctly choosing Fight instead of Mercy improves our EV from 27% to 35%, but if he's town then correctly choosing Mercy instead of Fight improves our EV from 17% to a whopping almost 60%. At those odds, we would need *incredibly* persuasive evidence that Dunn is scum to want to pick Fight over Mercy.

There are caveats. The first is that this is assuming we mislim twice (if we hit scum then we can redo this under those assumptions; i highly suspect that we'll get similar results). The second and much more important is the degree to which EVs are reliable. EVs are questionable even for regular mountainous games, but in the sparing game they're perhaps even more questionable due to the view that we'll be hemorrhaging all our best/towniest players both by sparings and by nightkills, and that we will ultimately *have* to win the game in a 2:3 or 3:4 ElO where in principle all 3 or all 4 town will have to unanimously be correct.

[implosion]

ah hell yeah what a pagetop

[Lazy Shirou]

It's a shame my console version as a kid didn't have the expansion characters, I quite like Cammy

From the OG crowd, gotta go with Vega!



p-edit: wow that's a huge post...

[Taly]

because i suspect you but dont think itd be helpful for me to sort you by confronting you about it

ok but if you think I'm mafia why aren't you voting me?

this, you have a black and white way of framing people's thoughts that does not apply to me.

I'm trying to understand your decision making process - that's why I'm asking you.

because im unsure if you are namely because i have mostly townreads that could be wrong given more thought and content to them, so i cant confidently press a scumread with a vote since theres other ways to sort you more thoroughly, kind of like through this convo that isnt just me saying

"your post is weird, *votes*, you're scum"

gets a completely different response from you than this, that i dont know if it helps me clarify my thoughts.

[Dunnstral]

I appreciate your post implosion

[Taly]

i am curious though

dunn

, this isnt too necessary but why do you feel strongly on me being town?

i find it interesting i got a lot of townreads after i left the thread because the consensus was that i was aligned with

Key

before i did

[implosion]

There's an argument that if we're going the spare game route then it can be valuable to keep at least *some* reads close to our chests, or probably more importantly that once we start sparing, we all collectively frequently re-evaluate. I say this because one framing (I think Mandate was implying this framing earlier) is that we can think of the spare game as all collectively making a town->scum ordering and just sparing the top townie in that ordering every day. But if we make that list public then scum killing the top of that list is more impactful than it is in a normal game, because every time they kill someone, we can no longer spare that person.

[Taly]

There's an argument that if we're going the spare game route then it can be valuable to keep at least *some* reads close to our chests, or probably more importantly that once we start sparing, we all collectively frequently re-evaluate. I say this because one framing (I think Mandate was implying this framing earlier) is that we can think of the spare game as all collectively making a town->scum ordering and just sparing the top townie in that ordering every day. But if we make that list public then scum killing the top of that list is more impactful than it is in a normal game, because every time they kill someone, we can no longer spare that person.

i like the way you think

[Dunnstral]

I have to wonder if you would bother with the calculations if you're mafia.

i am curious though

dunn

, this isnt too necessary but why do you feel strongly on me being town?

i find it interesting i got a lot of townreads after i left the thread because the consensus was that i was aligned with

Key

before i did

Well I never thought you were aligned with Keyleth and I like to form my opinions. I think you are an emotional player as town and your posting some time after the start of the game made me think you were much more likely to be town than mafia.

[implosion]

Ari's posting is very curious to me. It doesn't make me feel anything strongly about her alignment right now though. There's a notion in my mind of embroilment in the gamestate which makes certain players like her easier to read, and I think the game state sort of needs to marinate more before I can get much of a read on her.

[implosion]

I have to wonder if you would bother with the calculations if you're mafia.

sadly i would *probably* make that exact post as scum lol.

I might or might not have gotten around to it as quickly though.

[Taly]

I have to wonder if you would bother with the calculations if you're mafia.

i am curious though

dunn

, this isnt too necessary but why do you feel strongly on me being town?

i find it interesting i got a lot of townreads after i left the thread because the consensus was that i was aligned with

Key

before i did

Well I never thought you were aligned with Keyleth and I like to form my opinions. I think you are an emotional player as town and your posting some time after the start of the game made me think you were much more likely to be town than mafia.

ok this passed the "am i being white-knighted" vibe check, not that i was really paranoid, but this is a thing i have to do in games where i become close to a near UTR

[Taly]

implo

i get the impression you're distancing from a stance on me, is that correct?

[Dunnstral]

im p confident I could win this game if it was like just a straight up sparing game and I got to be dictator

Who would you spare at this point Aristeia?

Include 6 names because mafia kill 3 times in between the spares. You can include yourself but not me.

probably Sakura? wouldn't really be sure atp. Think its probably a bad idea to consider more than one name at a time for the spare route because you'd just giving mafia nightkill targets.

I think your confidence in post 400 was unfounded.

well I usually am pretty good when I do things one step at a time and if I was a dictator with the ability to interrogate people for a week I'd probably be able to confidently find 1 town at a time.

I think its probably true I am more confident then I should be but I like to believe in myself.

There's an argument that if we're going the spare game route then it can be valuable to keep at least *some* reads close to our chests, or probably more importantly that once we start sparing, we all collectively frequently re-evaluate. I say this because one framing (I think Mandate was implying this framing earlier) is that we can think of the spare game as all collectively making a town->scum ordering and just sparing the top townie in that ordering every day. But if we make that list public then scum killing the top of that list is more impactful than it is in a normal game, because every time they kill someone, we can no longer spare that person.

OK fellas. Right now for the elimination I am thinking one of the names in my bottom group here:

Strong town: Brown Eyes, Meuh, Taly, Mandate, Shirou
Soft town: Sakura, Implosion, Keyleth, Merlyn

Remaining players: Beeboy, Alisae, Aristeia, Dannflor

Except I don't like the idea of voting the least active player, so perhaps not Alisae. Beeboy also has a low post count but they made one big post which looked over the game so they are fair game IMO.

[Dunnstral]

Or am I reading someone incorrectly here and should expand my pool?

[Lazy Shirou]

I don't really get the Sakura townleans

I think the slot is so-so

similar feeling towards Meuh but I think Meuh posts are townier on average

[Taly]

only people i have reservations on in your pool are

meuh/shirou

[Mandate]

Dunn, can you sell me on your beeboy vote?

[Aristeia]

sakura is probably the easiest player in the playerlist to read and she's p townie so far

[Lazy Shirou]

sakura is probably the easiest player in the playerlist to read and

she's p townie so far

how?

what would be different in her posts if she was scum in your PoV?

[Dunnstral]

Dunn, can you sell me on your beeboy vote?

They posted "Dunn is one of the most important slots to discuss" but then didn't feel the need to do that themselves after, really.
I think other players have been townier so they are in my PoE. I am not able to get a good grasp of how Beeboy arrived to their conclusions, even after reading their post.

[Lazy Shirou]

I think this game has a higher amount of "tough to read" slots than usual

This is gonna be interesting especially because it's also a game where we need to "find town" most of the time

[Dunnstral]

only people i have reservations on in your pool are

meuh/shirou

OK. I've explained my own reasoning and I get that it's not going to be convincing for everybody.

[Aristeia]

I think the main thread roleplaying was even funnier at some points though

but maybe that's just me

p-edit: Sakura...townie?

she's got a lot of idc energy

i already explained this to you

[Lazy Shirou]

Oh I didn't remember that, sorry

I also didn't remember that because I didn't find it convincing