Mini 917 -- Precision Mafia (Game Over)

[popsofctown]

FoS: Fate

I don't like Gears players.

[Iecerint]

Apparently, he wanted to waste his team's CP. Maybe because of recent rhetoric on the issue?

UnFoS; FoS: fifi

.

Well, if it's the former, he needs to die.

Frankly, I think the latter is more troubling.

[Cobalt]

Hi Iecerint. How are you?
if fifi is scum, he's wasting scum points. Let him. Scum need points to function. Town just needs to find and lynch scum. Let's not let the setup obscure the fact that the best way to find scum is dayplay.

[Iecerint]

<3 Cobalt <3

My take on the issue is a little different. Let me clarify.

See, the reality is that both town and scum need points to function. Uselessly wasting points is poor play regardless of your alignment.

What's missing from this analysis is the context. Others (including the Mod, I believe) had implicitly or explicitly said that conserving points was scummy. Since I think that minimal honest introspection would have shown that that rhetoric was a half-truth at best (at least, that was my experience), I think fifi's decision to use CP was motivated by an attempt to (!) appear town.

[AlmasterGM]

So he's either scum trying to look town, stupid scum, or stupid town.

Looks like a good R1 lynch to me.

[popsofctown]

So he's either scum trying to look town, stupid scum, or stupid town.

Looks like a good R1 lynch to me.

I also like this trichotomy

[Cobalt]

page 1 scum, my favorite kind.
non-bold intent to lynch: fifi

[J.R]

<3 Cobalt <3

My take on the issue is a little different. Let me clarify.

See, the reality is that both town and scum need points to function. Uselessly wasting points is poor play regardless of your alignment.

What's missing from this analysis is the context. Others (including the Mod, I believe) had implicitly or explicitly said that conserving points was scummy. Since I think that minimal honest introspection would have shown that that rhetoric was a half-truth at best (at least, that was my experience), I think fifi's decision to use CP was motivated by an attempt to (!) appear town.

Problem is, the scum could waste their CP just to appear as a town. So let's not judge based on the use of CP

[Seacore]

I do like the look of fifi either

Here's some thoughts, and cobalt knows how much I like posting my random thoughts.

Basically, we can't really organise just town or just scum using up their CP, since we don't know who is who. So we can only look at "everybody" conserving points or "everybody" wasting points.

Upsides for town with conservation

We have the points necessary to come back from a bad bandwagon or two.
We have the points to do our night actions, if we have any.

Downsides for town with conservation

Scum have the points left for their night kill and any other night actions of theirs.
Scum have the ability to distance by jumping on scum wagons and then jumping off again.

Upsides for town with wasting points

Scum have less points to throw around. They know how many they need to do all their night actions, they might start getting obviously stingy with them towards the end of the day. It might be a helpful tell.

Downsides for town with wasting points

We might get locked in to a bad wagon. It might take very little for scum, or even a misguided town, to lead us into the only lynch we can afford for the day.
We might not have points for our PRs.

So at the moment, I think conserving points is the lesser of the two evils. It gives scum more freedom, but I think the alternative hurts us more.

Thoughts?

Also, I don't consider conversation like this "breaking the game", I consider it "getting involved with the mechanics". If the Mod disagrees, I'll stop.

The players may use the command points however they deem most effective.

[Iecerint]

J.R. -- you have literally restated my point, except that you've ignored the context a bit and thereby demoted it a bit to 2TOWN4TOWN, which I don't think is all it is.

I do not think it is necessarily a good idea to have everyone talk in detail about their intuitions about the usefulness of using CP. I suspect that doing so would expose PRs.

Having stated that, though -- we have to either make everyone use all their CP, or conserve CP. Low CP only disproportionately negatively affects scum if they don't have any points at all. I suspect that the set-up is designed to punish game-breaking, though, so I'm inclined to conserve CP. I also think it'd make for a more interesting game.

[AlmasterGM]

Blah blah blah I'm going to speculate and try and break the probably unbreakable setup instead of scumhunt. I am probably scum.

Fixed.

[Seacore]

I'm not trying to break the set up

I'm trying to discuss how this THEME game differs from normal mafia and how we can use it to our advantage as town. We have already engaged in this by avoiding voting, which you seem to have joined in on. I'm just looking at it a little deeper.

I enjoy theme games because rules like this force you to think "how is this different".

In my experience, people who get nervous about me doing so are more often scum than not.

A game that I was in called Cults of Darkness and Shadows just finished, and I was trying to do something similiar at the beginning of the game, discuss the differences. I was nearly lynched for it, then people realised that I wasn't scum, then I was NK'd because the scum thought my thoughts were dangerous. In Day 3, people were going back to my thoughts and using them to try and win.

tl:dr Shut up and let me do my thing.

[AlmasterGM]

I'm not trying to break the set up

What are you trying to do, then? The OBVIOUS thing-to-do is we conserve CP. Any other speculation seems like trying-to-break to me.

In my experience, people who get nervous about me doing so are more often scum than not.

In everybody else's experience, setup speculation and in place of scumhunting / IIoA is a scumtell.

And what is "your experience" anyway? One game? Care to provide links to any other games where you successfully gave the town optimal strat on D1?

A game that I was in called Cults of Darkness and Shadows just finished, and I was trying to do something similiar at the beginning of the game, discuss the differences. I was nearly lynched for it, then people realised that I wasn't scum, then I was NK'd because the scum thought my thoughts were dangerous. In Day 3, people were going back to my thoughts and using them to try and win.

1) Meta FTL.

2) Counterexample: A while back I was in a game called Stratego mafia. In lylo, the town tried to win off of setup instead of lynching scum. The town lost.

3) Either way, the point isn't that you can't speculate. It's that you are speculating

instead of scumhunting.

That is the scumtell. And don't give me the "It's pg 2" garbage. There has been content. You have ignored it.

[Seacore]

I haven't ignored it actually.

I've said that I'm happy, so far, with a fifi lynch, there's not much to say on it other than voting off the cuff is obviously bad play, so fifi should die.

Have you done anything else other than say that you're happy with a fifi lynch? No.

What I've done:

Point out my thoughts and then agree with suscpions about fifi.

What you've done:
Agree with suspicions about fifi and give me hard time for not doing more than you.

[Cobalt]

why is trying to break the setup bad?

[bv310]

It's not just the scum that are going to be stingy. Any power roles that exist are going to try to conserve for themselves.

[bv310]

Cobalt, it defeats the purpose of the game if you try to break it rather than adapt to the rules.

[Seacore]

I wouldn't even calling it "breaking" the setup up.

Breaking implies that it's not supposed to be done and will ruin the game if achieved.

I'm talkinga bout finding out what's the best strategy for town. Why is that wrong?

[Seacore]

Also

I'm not talking about a strategy that will mean we don't need to scum hunt. Or that will result in automatic victory from day 1.

And I don't think I ever suggested such a thing.

I'm just thinking out loud about the set up, so that if together we can see a way to tilt the set up in our favour, we can do that.

[Seacore]

Breaking the game would be this.

We force everybody to vote 10 times and then unvote.
We then see if any night actions were successful.
Then we force everybody to vote 10 times (unvoting each time), keeping the final vote on a nominated person.
We see if that vote kills that person. We then see if any night actions are successful.

The next day we do it the same, except with 9 times, with the final vote on nominated person.
We do this until the lynch is successful, thus informing us of the exact number of votes needed to cancel out night actions, but allow a vote.

It's not perfect, but that's definitely what I would call breaking the game.

But we're not going to do that. We aren't talking about doing anything like that.

We're talking about playing within the setup to gain an advantage. Stop being hysterical.

[AlmasterGM]

I've said that I'm happy, so far, with a fifi lynch, there's not much to say on it other than voting off the cuff is obviously bad play, so fifi should die.

Cool.

Have anything other scumhunting to add?

No, of course not.

Have you done anything else other than say that you're happy with a fifi lynch? No.

What I've done:

Point out my thoughts and then agree with suscpions about fifi.

What you've done:
Agree with suspicions about fifi and give me hard time for not doing more than you.

1) I read this as "It's OK if I'm not scumhunting so long as you aren't either." Pretty bad defense, IMO.

2) You forgot to add "interrogate probable scum Seacore" under my list of accomplishments.

why is trying to break the setup bad?

Because you are going to fail on D1. It appears that RC has put substantial thought into this game. It has been reviewed by SpyreX. There is no way you will manage to crack the code this early. Now, if there's some obvious public service that needs to be pointed out, fine. But sitting around talking about optimal town strat INSTEAD of catching scum on D1 is a mistake.

stuff

more stuff

even more stuff

I like how you managed to do zero scumhunting in that spam of text. You also managed to completely avoid the actual argument/questions I had against you. Check out post 37, please.

[Cobalt]

Because you are going to fail on D1. It appears that RC has put substantial thought into this game. It has been reviewed by SpyreX. There is no way you will manage to crack the code this early. Now, if there's some obvious public service that needs to be pointed out, fine. But sitting around talking about optimal town strat INSTEAD of catching scum on D1 is a mistake.

I'm in it to win it. I'm definitely going to try to break the setup if there's a way to win.
Also, it's funny that you are attacking us for setup breaking and not scumhunting when you haven't done any scumhuting yourself.

[bv310]

I wouldn't even calling it "breaking" the setup up.

Breaking implies that it's not supposed to be done and will ruin the game if achieved.

I'm talking about finding out what's the best strategy for town. Why is that wrong?

It's wrong because it is trying to break. Instead of trying to play with the rules, you're looking for ways around them. That doesn't help anybody, and could easily lead to the mod just abandoning this.

Cobalt, seriously? If you're not going to play with the spirit of the game, then don't play at all.

[Iecerint]

I think the scenarios in the pre-game Mod posts indicate that a lynch cannot be stopped by overvoting. If everyone goes into PR debt some day, the lynch will happen as usual, but all night actions will fail. Please correct me if you understand differently.

[Seacore]

I'm not looking for ways around them, I'm looking for ways with them, what about that can't you understand?

Anyway, I'm over this.
I will and always will, look for advantage within the rules.

You know when you realise in a normal game that a doc can protect a cop? Oh my god, that's breaking the game, cop's should be able to be NK'd, you're breaking the game!

Or you're using the rules to give the town an advantage.

And I'm not adding "Interogate probably scum Seacore" to your list of acheivements because all you've pointed out is that I've done more in this game than you have. Thanks for that, I'll keep it in mind.