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.
(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 wrote: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.
Don't most information gathering roles also benefit from a No Lynch strategy since their lifetimes are increased and they have more nights to gather info? It seems adding a Cop would just double down on the motivation for town to No Lynch.
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.
I've always vastly preferred games with a single mafia group, I dunno about everyone else. That said I haven't played many with multiple group scum factions.
Succinctness is pro-town.
Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available. ~ Gregory Benford
the worst case scenario for 2:2:n is something like Open 61 (2:2:8 vanilla) where both scum factions lost after they cross killed the other last surviving opposing member N2. The scum players didn't seem to mind losing that way. IIRC, Guardian was really proud of replacing in, lynching an opposing scum player, and killing the last one the following night, even though he lost.
edited out my spellcheck fail
Last edited by Adel on Fri Mar 27, 2009 6:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Can a game where the scum is a single person and thus has no connections be called mafia? I'm not entirely convinced of that. Based on this I'm leaning no on 1:4.
Korts wrote:
Can a game where the scum is a single person and thus has no connections be called mafia? I'm not entirely convinced of that. Based on this I'm leaning no on 1:4.
Korts wrote:
Can a game where the scum is a single person and thus has no connections be called mafia? I'm not entirely convinced of that. Based on this I'm leaning no on 1:4.
ditto.
Meh, it's still an informed minority vs. uninformed majority. I have no problem with it.
Friends and Enemies and Enemies: in this form, I think it hurts mafia, because if the masons claim they can't counterclaim (3-man masonship vs. 2-man scumteams). This was the reason for the Friends and Enemies and Enemies and that Other Guy fix (2-man masonship plus backup mason).
Quack Multiball: definitely not. Way too many night actions, and quacks kill, don't they? Half the town would get massacred Night 1.
It's seems sort of silly to start talking about certifying Friends and Enemies and Enemies without discussing Friends and Enemies (3 masons, 3 mafia, 6 townies or something like that) first.
I replaced into Chess Mafia for 6 months, and all I got was a win and this lousy sig.
Thok wrote:It's seems sort of silly to start talking about certifying Friends and Enemies and Enemies without discussing Friends and Enemies (3 masons, 3 mafia, 6 townies or something like that) first.
2 comes before 3. We are counting up.
~~~
Can we all agree on two-fold? I think that one is certain to go through, we just have to certify a number of townies, and possibly write the role pms to prevent mod error.
I have no problem with 1:4. It seems like a good setup, to me. If we're going to be a stickler based on the number of mafia, not their nature, there's really no hope.
(11:26:07 PM) thesheamuffin: I'm counting gurgi because I would probably make out with him if I were drunk enough