To be honest, I disagree with almost everything you are writing here. I think you're misunderstanding the style that this guide is promoting. I think also that many of your responses are programmed and not thinking responses. That is part of what this guide games on. People don't really read what players are doing and then ask themselves "What is the scum motivation for doing this in this circumstance, what is the town motivation for doing this in this circumstance?" Instead, the question asked is, "Is this action something scum does?" All mafia have to do in today's environment is stay reasonably active, be consistent on semi-popular wagons, and try to keep their partners alive. The town does the rest. The conception that the mafia is meant to trick the town is outdated.
Parama wrote:You want to lynch the people the town calls scum who aren't scum and kill the people the town calls town who are town. It helps when the town's not letting the mafia speak for itself and is trying to push mislynches by itself.
The point I am making is that you don't want to be responsible for people being lynched, not all the time. You want to be behind the occasional lynch, but not every one, or people will figure out that you're misleading the town. You want to be on plausible alternative wagons a lot of the time, with the occasional strange splinter wagon to cover your trend. It doesn't matter if the town thinks someone is town, if they're contributing to the town continuing to lynch each other, you want them alive. The point is to kill strong members of the town, not necessarily the popular ones. Just because everyone agrees that someone is town does not mean they are right. If you defend that person and play your cards right, you've made a friend till lylo who will win the game for you.
Parama wrote:
Better option:
Find one weak player to call scum, one average player to call scum, and one strong player to call scum. Push hard on the strong one, but end up voting one of the other two by the end of the day.
Again, you don't want to be on successful wagons if you can avoid it. Or else you will run out of valid scumreads, as I said. You want to have more than one of your original scumreads alive in the late game. Then you can continue to reuse old points peppered with new information with minimal effort.
Parama wrote:Tell people this and they'll spam a thread. Tell them to post only when they have something to say and they'll lurk. Tell them to post when they have to look like they have something to say, and they'll probably do a damn good job fooling townies.
I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to get at here. You want to be posting lots early. People don't want to lynch the active members of the town because they have had it drilled into them since their first newbie game that activity is objectively good. Later you can get away with less because town reads persist after they should. I mean, when would you ever tell people not to post when they think they ought to? Again, I'm not really sure what your point is.
Parama wrote:
I don't know what time period you're from, but Lynch all Lurkers is usually a bad strategy. You tell them to get active, and then when they post substance you look for the holes in it. They've stopped being lurkers by the time you have grounds for lynching them, but it's easier to lynch an inconsistent townie than a lurking townie.
Though if you can catch a bad townie active lurking...
If you're actually getting lurkers to be active by pressuring them, I'm surprised. Lurkers are easy to lynch because they don't change their ways. And if you spend time pushing their lynch and they do suddenly begin to post, you lynch them for posting only under pressure. I just don't agree with you here. Lurkers don't defend themselves, it can't get much easier. Perhaps you have a hard time because you don't have a meta for lynching lurkers. Sculpting your meta is part of playing a good mafia game and a good town game. I can defend people as both town and scum because that's my meta. Being able to do that helps me win as either alignment. Lurkers are also good to lynch as town.
Parama wrote:
It really seems like optimal D1 scum play is to bus a partner to death and have that partner set up several subtle links... to townies. I think you SHOULD push your worst partner as soon as possible. Townies don't expect that, and the abundance of "OMG WIFOM" claims seems to be lessening as time goes on. Defending a partner can end up looking like "speaking for them" which is seen as a strong scumlink because... well, it is! Don't defend anyone too hard unless you're claiming you confirm them as town; and don't ever try to confirm a partner as town. That's suicide.
No. Busing is a bad way to play that makes it harder for your team to win. You want to be able to lynch your partner if they do badly, but there's no reason to kill them from the outset. It's stupid to do that, really. Why should you be more willing to defend a townie than your own ally, just because they might get lynched? Well I suppose that would be bad if you've already killed your third ally. Being connected to part of your team is not bad. People are suspicious if you have no connection to a player because that's how bad scum tends to treat their allies. I just don't agree with you at all on this one. Busing your ally might get you a bit of towncred, but certainly not enough to be worth an ally. This is why you divide your team in the minds of the town. That way if the town happens to get some of you, they won't consider the rest of your group to be at all connected. I have played games where my partners have died, and I have been 'cleared' as a result, because the town thinks the idea is so ridiculous they don't even consider it. That's how you win games.
Parama wrote:
Disagree, find one strong player to push suspicion against and try to rally the other strong players behind you. I personally see excessive defending of another player as a scum to town link; scum just don't defend each other very much these days.
So first you say don't defend your partner because scum do that, and now you shouldn't defend town because scum do that and don't defend their allies. Please be consistent if you're going to mount criticism. The point of being friends with a strong townie is so that you're not left in a position where you have to lead the town. You don't want to be saddled with the burden of proficiency. That way you can cut ties to him and lynch him if you need to when he has lynched too many townies. You're playing for time as mafia.
Parama wrote:If you keep pushing lynches other than the most popular, town's going to catch on eventually.
Not everyone can be on the most popular wagon every time. And as I pointed out before, if your wagons become popular push them to the ends of the earth. You don't want to be away from every wagon, just most wagons. You want to be consistent, but not mainstream. You want people to have vague good feelings about you, because those don't get contravened by facts.
Parama wrote:Though aim for confirmed townies if they're at least halfway decent. I did win a game once by leaving an idiot confirmed townie alive until MyLo and endgamed them.
See my previous response about what constitutes a "strong member of the town".
Parama wrote:I don't think everyone is capable of this. Partly because there's lots of people who find games more interesting as they go on.
Staying active works too. Then you continue to be town, but also run into the problem of being too town for too long. The point is not to suddenly disappear off the map and lose the good feelings people had about you.
Parama wrote:I think scum dying D1 should claim a PR and wait for it to get counterclaimed. They're already dead anywho; town tends to lynch claimed vanillas quickly on earlier days.
Again, see my previous response with regards to exceptional circumstances for a claim.