Vote Count Analysis: How Do You Do it?

[mhsmith0]

All yall might enjoy this thread on the topic
viewtopic.php?t=73863

[mhsmith0]

I'd probably throw on a couple of other things too

1) When wagons are all on villagers, wolves are usually (though not always) less likely to be prominently driving any single wagon in particular (aggressive / powerwolfing wolves exist though)

2) When there's like two clear wagons and they're both town, and you have some number of players off of both wagons, they usually should get a lot of scrutiny - maybe it's something NAI (like a quickhammer or someone who 0 posted the day phase), maybe they're just really obvious towns in that spot (openly anti both wagons in a very prominent way), but otherwise that kind of positioning tends to be > rand wolf

3) Signs of bussing tend to be harder to pick up but are worth considered where they can show up as.

[mhsmith0]

I think there are some sites / metas where wolves are meaningfully > rand to split votes, but there are plenty where that's basically just NAI entirely.

[mhsmith0]

but what's the overarching idea or ideas behind all these patterns? that they're attention-avoiding? lack strong opinions?

I'd probably throw on a couple of other things too

1) When wagons are all on villagers, wolves are usually (though not always) less likely to be prominently driving any single wagon in particular (aggressive / powerwolfing wolves exist though)

2) When there's like two clear wagons and they're both town, and you have some number of players off of both wagons, they usually should get a lot of scrutiny - maybe it's something NAI (like a quickhammer or someone who 0 posted the day phase), maybe they're just really obvious towns in that spot (openly anti both wagons in a very prominent way), but otherwise that kind of positioning tends to be > rand wolf

3) Signs of bussing tend to be harder to pick up but are worth considered where they can show up as.

1) If the thread environment is such that wolves don't have to do anything to move the game forward in a favorable direction, then typically they find a way not to do anything - why take heat for an incorrect wagon when villagers will do it for you? (this then comes out later in game once you have more data to base things on, though sometimes role claims will give you info earlier)

2) similar idea - though here a lot of it is "ok everyone else wanted one of these folks dead, why didn't you, and why should we believe you're not full of it" - keep in mind that when a wolf is under pressure this is much less reliable (for instance, if the third wagon was a wolf but it faded away to make the top two wagons town, then wolves are likelier to have been materially involved)
also, frankly, in a spot where someone is off wagon in a v/v environment it can be REALLY easy to spot obvtowns in that spot, so "you were off wagon and you were NOT obvtown" is the more composite thing to be looking at

3) bussing signs are a different issue entirely, though i do think it can be instructive to look at overall game flow, who gained credibility from that wagon, and then how they acted subsequently - who's trusting who, who's engaging with who, is that what is "supposed" to happen if they were town, etc - this is more cross-referencing possible busses with behaviors that jar with how you'd expect a townie to act given that info, which is DIFFICULT for the most part, but from time to time you can get situations where it's relatively obvious

[mhsmith0]

I think a broad point to keep in mind is that wagonomics analysis is (usually) a starting point not an ending point. Trying to brute force VCA tendencies might get you something but it's still going to be inherently noisy and isn't a substitute for doing actual analysis of what is happening inside the game.

[mhsmith0]

but what's the overarching idea or ideas behind all these patterns? that they're attention-avoiding? lack strong opinions?

I'd probably throw on a couple of other things too

1) When wagons are all on villagers, wolves are usually (though not always) less likely to be prominently driving any single wagon in particular (aggressive / powerwolfing wolves exist though)

2) When there's like two clear wagons and they're both town, and you have some number of players off of both wagons, they usually should get a lot of scrutiny - maybe it's something NAI (like a quickhammer or someone who 0 posted the day phase), maybe they're just really obvious towns in that spot (openly anti both wagons in a very prominent way), but otherwise that kind of positioning tends to be > rand wolf

3) Signs of bussing tend to be harder to pick up but are worth considered where they can show up as.

1) If the thread environment is such that wolves don't have to do anything to move the game forward in a favorable direction, then typically they find a way not to do anything - why take heat for an incorrect wagon when villagers will do it for you? (this then comes out later in game once you have more data to base things on, though sometimes role claims will give you info earlier)

2) similar idea - though here a lot of it is "ok everyone else wanted one of these folks dead, why didn't you, and why should we believe you're not full of it" - keep in mind that when a wolf is under pressure this is much less reliable (for instance, if the third wagon was a wolf but it faded away to make the top two wagons town, then wolves are likelier to have been materially involved)
also, frankly, in a spot where someone is off wagon in a v/v environment it can be REALLY easy to spot obvtowns in that spot, so "you were off wagon and you were NOT obvtown" is the more composite thing to be looking at

3) bussing signs are a different issue entirely, though i do think it can be instructive to look at overall game flow, who gained credibility from that wagon, and then how they acted subsequently - who's trusting who, who's engaging with who, is that what is "supposed" to happen if they were town, etc - this is more cross-referencing possible busses with behaviors that jar with how you'd expect a townie to act given that info, which is DIFFICULT for the most part, but from time to time you can get situations where it's relatively obvious

1) Cool. "When wagons are all on villagers" is concrete enough. But I wonder how we make concrete "[not] prominently driving any single wagon in particular " or "[finding] a way not to do anything"? In posts I guess this would look like weak (?) or infrequent advocacy for the wagon. But what about in voting patterns? Maybe more shifting? Less?

2) your description seems to cast it as a special case of 1 but w/ some useful caveats.

3) this resonates but still leaves it challenging to detect bussing yeah. there's a level of WIFOM to it that makes the whole deal challenging -- the more scum go out of their way to lim other scum, the townier they might look, making it hard to predict or read them based on an incentive analysis alone.

"early on the wagon" isn't a perfect proxy for "prominently driving the wagon" but if you're doing a pure stats type look it's probalby the closest thing you'll get.