I guess I’m the only spectator still watching. Ryjae just proposed lynching the ‘two remaining unknowns’. There are THREE remaining unknowns (bufftabby, RoOsh, and Nanook). Methinks Ryjae knows something he shouldn’t!
Well, he did turn up scum in my investigation.
He is right though. The best shot town has to win this is to take Ryjae down to three handed.
I still think town is going to have to screw up fairly hard to not win this one. Though sach did point out to me how I could have guaranteed a win for town had I investigated someone other than Ryjae.
I didn’t run the numbers. Oh well.
Could you explain, if it won’t be a spoiler? I am still watching avidly and bemoaning the recent drop in post volume!
Well to be more precise, you could have guaranteed a win but at the risk of gaining no information had you investigated WF Tomba instead of RyJae.
in other words:
Bad: Night Three investigation of WF Tomba (dead townie)
Good: Night Three investigation of scum
Best: Night Three investigation of Town who survives the Night
Yeah, the extra confirmed townie would have made it mathematically impossible for the scum to win fi the town just lynched everyone who wasn’t confirmed.
As it is, it’s still fairly hard for the town to screw this one up.
It’s a fascinating (in my opinion) bit of counter-intuitive strategy. Essentially, confirmed townies are much more powerful to the town than confirmed scum.
Why? confirmed scum need to die (Town needs to lynch them)
Confirm Town require no action by Town (scum needs to nightkill them)
Going into Night Three, the Detective had Two Confirmed Town from previous investigations. The Masons claimed (Two more confirmed Town). So the three possible outcomes for the Detective were:
Case A: Investigate Town and find that townie dead in the morning
Case B: Investigate Town and find that townie alive in the morning
Case C: Investigate Scum
Case C is what happened which left the town with
5 confirmed Town and 4 unknowns and one Scum/Miller
Case A is the worst outcome for Town, the next morning there would be
5 confirmed Town and 5 unknowns
Case B is best as at dawn there would be
6 confirmed Town and 4 unknowns
At this point Town can lynch all unknowns in ANY order and guarantee a win.
The reason for the counter intuitive result is that by finding confirmed Town, the number of Townies in the unknown pool becomes less than the number of mislynches allocated to the Town.
By finding scum, the nightkill burden of scum stays the same and the lynch burden of Town remains the same.
Pretty neat huh?
So what I learned by watching this game is that the Detective is most powerful by investigating Townies with Longevity. Longevity is difficult to assess, but its probably in the Detective’s interest not to investigate someone under heavy suspicion. (i.e. it’s a good thing NAF didn’t investigate fluiddruid after the MadTheSwine lynch)
Which is something that was never going to happen, after that lynch I was almost postitive she was town, pedescribe too. My original PM to you said that I wanted to investigate Ice Cream Man, but unfortunatly I felt like Mad’s actions forced my hand and made me investigate someone I knew had to be town.
I didn’t expect the town to so willingly accept my claim, especially since I was confirming BlaM, so immediatly after Mads claim I knew I had to investigate the person I had campaigned hardest against (pedescribe), so when the new Day dawned my change in attitude would be obvious to all after I died (if I got killed before I had a chance to claim)
That is true, sachertorte, but there are two confounding factors:
a) The Godfather – if the scum have a Godfather role immune to investigations, then townies can’t be “confirmed” by a detective until the Godfather is dead. Now, given enough players who have been investigated as Town the Town can get the game to a three-handed match even with a Godfather.
b) “Longevity” – In the Batman game I mentally berated myself after brewha came back Town. But then Smurf posted the Do-Gooder/Playing for Keeps/Baddie breakdown and I realized that being able to confirm brewha as Town was immensely powerful. And then he was forced to claim Doctor and all of a sudden, the information was nigh-useless because brewha was going to die.
True
and
True
I think that’s why the Godfather role exists; otherwise the Detective role is way too powerful. At first glance it seems that the GF role is to give cover to one scum, but the implicit power is to mitigate the ability to confirm people as Town.
Also Longevity is something one wants in an investigatee, but not something that one can actually assess.
NAF, what made you investigate me?
Isn’t that always the case? I’m always surprised that Town ends up thinking in ways I didn’t expect.
To be honest, I didn’t understand your claim paranoia. I guess being the Detective makes you more cautious. But it was (mostly) clear that someone was the Detective. MadTheSwine’s false claim was a good one. His only mistake was waiting too long to do it. He had nothing to lose. But even with the false claim Town knew that someone was the Detective.
I thought your investigation of pedescribe was brilliant strategy in that you investigated someone who was unlikely to be lynched. After the MadTheSwine lynch, there was no way Town was going after pedescribe.
Accident, brilliant strategy… whatever.
Ain’t it always the way? Town never does what I expect though. If I was still alive I would be fighting tooth and nail against the nanook suspicion. The thing that is making them suspicious (the vote change) is exactly what make him least likely to be scum. It’s the same trap they fell into with fluid. You would think they would have learned.
To Ice Cream Man,
When I went back and looked at the first couple of lynches your vote pattern stuck out to me as different from the others. Couple that with you posting only a little bit so it was hard to get a read on you and I figured that you were probably scum. I also wanted to investigate someone who wasn’t making waves, because those are always the people who are the hardest to deal with in endgame. So you made my shortlist. On the day of Mad’s lynch I was going to investigate you or Nannook, then Mad claimed and Nanook moved his vote. That took Nanook off the table for me, I was positive he was town, and I thought I could keep him from getting lynched. Mad’s claim also made me reexamine my strategy (see above for why.) So then when you subbed out that clinched my investigation of you (I have a belief the power roles are more likely to sub than vanilla.)
Looks like Nanook has settled on bufftabby for Today. I wonder why he also thinks RoOsh is Scum. Surely he doesn’t believe Ryjae!!
I’m amused by RyJae’s statement that he is “Confirmed.”
The only thing he could be is Confirmed Scum. His Miller claim is anything but “confirmed.”
I was going to put this in the game thread, but then thought better of it.
But if anyone is interested in how I came to the conclusions I did about game balance, I will be happy to start a mafia game balance thread. We had one offboard, but I don’t think we ever did one sucessfully on the SDMB
It might be best to wait until this game is over first though.
Sach, I was assuming you were using JSextons formula…was I right?
Cheater! 
How did you know?
And what did you conclude?
I didn’t know, I just guessed. I knew I had been using it to help me think about game balance and that you were around at the time it was first posted. Also, it is a system proven to work (and work well).
What I concluded was based on the number of starting players and the number of claimed masons that there could not be more than 4 scum at the outset, but that it was unlikely that there was fewer than three.
If ryjae was/is a miller there could not be more than 3 or less than 3. I also figured (just based on talking to you in the past) that you would think that a vanilla miller was a stupid role (it is), and probably wouldn’t put it in, but allowed for the possiblity that you might have wanted to spice things up a bit.
This is why figuring out the mods is vitally important in any game. If you can get into their heads you can start to narrow down possibilities. I think town as a whole has used this idea to great effect in the offboard Batman game, which is why it’s so annoying that the paranoia running rampant there is threatening to derail the logical path we have been following.
So 90% Ryjae was one of 2 scum left, 10% that Ryjae was a Miller and that there was only one more scum left anyway (both after MW’s lynch). Functionally the same thing. But knowing that Ryjae was probably scum and letting him live…that gives you potential insight into who the other scum are.
Thoughts on the game. ShadowFacts is starting to get on the right track but it might be too little too late, and PeekerCPA just isn’t experienced enough to know how to read Nanooks action, I am glad to see he isn’t holding to it.
But I still think that town has this in a lock. They just need to not let the paranoia get to them. Random lynching of Roosh/bufftabby is the way to go. The confirmeds should just flip a coin and pile on. If they hit town lynch the other the next Day, if they hit scum take out Ryjae. If ryjae is a miller take out the one they didn’t lynch the first time around.
I am sure there is a flaw in the plan of that last paragraph, my ideas about this sort of thing are notoriously bad. (I find it highly amusing that RyJae is asking why the confirmeds aren’t following my plan from before I died.)
Sach, you going to play in the game USC and I are going to start in a couple of weeks? It will be fun and light. We just need to figure out how to make it fast too. Once we get the speed set I think we will be ready to go.
Maybe. Possibly.
But only if I can get killed fast.
I have a vacation in early June so joining a game at this point is probably out.
I figure it’s my turn to die quickly, but I’ve thought that in all three games I’ve played and that hasn’t really worked out for me.
I’ll kill ya!
Okay, small venting: How is having two masons instead of three non-standard?