Mafia Skills

[shadyforce]

Skills rquired for playing mafia:

1. The ability to read between the lines, to analyse hints and tells, and to find scum/doctors/cops/etc.

2. The ability to persuade the town to follow your line of thinking, to present your evidence clearly, and to convince and lead the town to your preferred outcome.

3. The ability to do suspicious things in a non-suspicious manner, and to be able to lie without giving yourself away.

The third one mainly applies to scum, and maybe to a very small extent town but without a doubt, the first 2 are by far the most important. It's a toss up between the 2 as to which are more important though.

Dasquin and Yanqush:

Your proposed skills seem to be more towards surviving rather than winning. And don't give me the "if your alive at the end, you've obviously won" argument. Being an expert at survival will only delay your loss via cop claim, or end-game kill.

[shadyforce]

The second tends to be a result of the first. Unless you just can't post at all logically.

You'd think that but there are many examples of people picking out scum and getting lynched for their troubles. you only have to look at the new award suggestion: "Cassandra Award".

The key is to develop the ability to pick out scum at a rate high enough to be useful (i.e. significantly better than completely random). You will never get all the scum all the time, but if you are right often enough, people will begin to pay attention. As scum, if you have developed your scum catching abilities sufficiently, obviously that will help if there is more than one evil group, but even if yours is the only family, your method (whatever it may be) will begin to provide you with reasonable innocents (i.e innocents that you would probably pick out as scum if you weren't scum yourself).

The problem is, if you get so good at picking out mafia, you would be screwed when you are mafia as the town would expect you to constantly find them, and continual failure to do so will just heighten your suspicion.

As scum (and keep in mind, I've only actually played as scum maybe once or twice in the past year ), I tend to dissociate myself from the family as much as possible. I let them make decisions on who to kill, etc. Then I treat day as though I was just my usually sparkling innocent self. I pick out scum, generally without regard for the fact that I actually know who the scum are. Or, more often, someone attacks me and I defend myself and counter attack (it's easy to get away with an innocent lynch if they attacked you first). I am confident in my ability to be a very difficult lynch.

Same, or at least similar. I am

sort of

confident in my ability to play the exact same regardless of my alignment.

[shadyforce]

Well, I disagree. If I had the choice of being suspicious, but not enough to be lynched, and being very innocent to the town as a whole, then it's clear what I'll choose.

As a town player, this has many benifits:
* Being almost confirmed innocent increases the odds of the town for succesfully lynching mafia with strictly random lynches.
* Having someone seen as innocent to the town analyse the day's play means the town has someone they can trust (more than others anyway.) It leads to more accurate analysis and hopefully more succesful scum-finding.
* Most importantly: If you are sort of guilty, then that is only a help to your own selfish goal of survival, and NOT to the overall town goal. The mafia may not kill you, but they will kill someone, especially one appearing more innocent, or someone with a claimed role. If you appear suspicious, then the mafia are almost forced into killing you protecting the other members of the town. The only way this may not be optimal is if you are sitting on a doc role, but I put it to you that making yourself more guilty as doc is a very iffy way to play, and I wouldn't certainly not encourage it.

Conclusion: If you are town, make yourself appear as innocent as you can.

As a mafia player:
* The more innocent you are, the more you're a potential target for night kill. Ergo, the more likely you are to be doc protected. If mafia players are being doc-protected, then that is a huge plus for the mafia.
* Also, the more innocent, the more likely you are to avoid being investigated. Cops tend to investigate the suspicious players more than the innocent ones.
* As mafia, the only way you can die (assuming no SK - that complicates matters) is via lynch, so obviously you should play the way that maximises your potential for getting killed (which happens to be impossible, except with SK) and minimise the potential for lynch.
* The only possible counter-argument is that if you keep surviving the night despite being seemingly innocent, that makes you more guilty, is simply saying don't appear innocent, because eventually it will make you appear guilty, so instead, just appeear guilty from the start.

Conclusion: If you are mafia, make yourself appear as innocent as you

Overall conclusion: In my ever-so-humble opinion, Dasquin is wrong. But that's just me.

[shadyforce]

A confirmed innocent is a wonderful asset to the game but the earlier they appear, the more easily they can be picked off leaving the town with a difficult choice at the end.

No more difficult than the choice they have if the confirmed innocent isn't picked off! Consider the following example:

Player - suspicion level

Player 1 - High
Player 2 - Medium
Player 3 - ?????

Now imagine if Player 3 had a way to show he is fairly innocent. If he chooses to show it, then you'll have a day with {H + M + L}, then Mr. Low Suspicion will get killed and you are left {H + M}.

What if, instead he chooses to make himself more suspicious. Then we'll have a day with {H + H + M} (not so good) and then Mr. Medium Suspicion will die, leaving the town in a situation with {H + H} (not good at all).

It's clear that you surviving in no way helps the town. Someone has to die, and if you are least suspicious then it'll be you. It's not like the mafia want to kill confirmed innocent people, they HAVE to kill them. You are taking the choice out of their hands. If the mafia have to kill more suspicious people, then that is GOOD for them, as it is akin to being spoilt for choice, and not akin to being restricted for choice as you seem to imply.

I am fairly convinced that it is

never

a good play to deliberately make yourself more suspicious, unless the only person you care about is yourself.

[shadyforce]

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