I’m not rightly sure. If I have time, I’ll go read some games at mafiascum to figure it out.
Any enlightenment for me on questions 2 and 3, about tirial? His comments about Masons have me baffled and suspicious.
You have a good point here. Once the current games all wrap up, would it be worth running an all-rookie game?
Gadarene, ‘ill-thought out role claims’ is pretty much what I’m talking about. Prior to the role claim, I was confused what the fuss was about projammer. I had some bias due to NAF’s vociferous condemnation of projammer after he was nightkilled, but projammer’s reaction to being in the spotlight looked very much like scum as a do gooder claim is very anti-town. So the lynch is understandable.
Now that’s just projammer.
percypercy and dnooman are different stories. I don’t understand those decisions at all.
-
I think the doctor might self protect at this point in the game if the cop was alive and unknown. With the cop dead, the doctor role becomes less of “protect powerroles” an more of “try and guess who the mafia will target each night.” If the doctor at this point has no idea who is town, then self protection is a good option as the doctor knows that he is town.
-
I was wondering about tirial as well. I’m not sure, but it does seem quite a bit off. If there is information to be had he should just say it. Hinting at it, especially stating what someone needs to do to draw the same conclusion, is not very helpful, and not particularly obfuscating to scum.
-
With the town down 3 innocent lynches to 0 mafia lynches, Mason have no reason to play anti-town. Zero. I think they have zero reason to play anti-town regardless of the game state, but with a mafia victory looming with just two more mis-lynches… zero. masons are pro-town.
-
no comment
-
recruitment would be a silly mafia move last night. I think no kill is even more stupid. There is no reason for mafia to choose no kill; choosing no kill gives the town a half day reprieve. One more blocked kill attempt translates to an extra day for the town. However, if the doctor and nightwatchman were both dead, then a no kill might make sense in limited situations. Because no kill gives an extra half day, sometimes that extra half day needs another half day to make a whole day. (Wow, that was weird). Without a doctor or nightwatchman, the town would not be able to generate another half day. Currently, the nightwatchman and doctor are still in play, so giving half days (even if that alone doesn’t change the number of mislynches the town has) is a bad idea.
Might be…if we were allowed to set up an all vet game too. (Just to be fair)
FWIW, I agree. Until the somewhat odd role claim, Projammer’s biggest sin seemed to be avoiding get lynched in percypercy’s stead, and then avoiding get lynched in dnooman’s place. If the town doesn’t get beyond this “you were a suspect on day one, and yet you’re still breathing while other townies are dead” mode of naming suspects, they’re in trouble. Well, they’re in trouble either way, but you get the point.
Projammer, if you don’t me asking, what mistakes do you think you made?
Excellent question. One that I’m still rolling around myself. I was actually coming in now to try to get some clarification on some things that have been pointed out as mistakes.
Personally, I think my two biggest mistakes were being visible and surviving two lynchings where townies were taken. People were just tired of not knowing for sure about me and needed to get rid of the distraction.
The mistake I knew I was making but didn’t take time to resolve was in posting suspicions and votes without supplying my supporting evidence.
Then of course there were the two big missteps I made according to everyone else that I’m still not sure why they were mistakes.
-
Role Claim. I claimed a true, but unverifiable, role. By that time, there was pretty much zero chance that I would be recruited in any case the way everyone was eyeballing me.
-
Voting No-Lynch on day two. My prime suspect was out of town and I was loathe to vote for him without him being able to defend himself. I guess that’s just the do-gooder in me. Wouldn’t it be better not to lynch anyone that to lynch someone you’re not sure of and then find them to be town?
Yes- Town seems convinced that anytime a Town swings, it must be because a scum barely dodged the noose. Anyone who seemed to be “saved” by a lynch must be scum. That doesn’t work for me. Then again, they’re also convinced that anyone who has voted too much for Town must be scum, which also doesn’t work so well- I think scum must be doing a very good job this game of letting Townies pick each other off.
Man, I want to read through this game with perfect knowledge. That would be so interesting…
At this point I really don’t think the mafia is having to try too hard. They should be coasting down the middle of the stream. Posting enough to keep them away from being noticable for posting too much or too little. And enough content to avoid being pegged for fluff postings. They don’t even have to contribute anything original, just repackage what someone else has already said.
I think it becomes pretty easy to construct a scenario wherein a mason recruitment is poison for the mafia. If, for instance, there were three remaining masons on the town side, and two non-mason townies vs. one masonic mafioso and one non-mason mafioso, isn’t the newly made man’s best strategy simply to post “Hey, X and I are mafia. Lynch him first, and then me, and when you’re done, there will be more masons than townies, so I and the other masons will win.”
This complicates what I previously thought was a straightforward argument that the mafia’s best strategy is to wait until they’re down to the last member to recruit. Masons make my head hurt.
From the Mafia thread:
This is the kind of silly reasoning I’m talking about. (No offense meant to DiggitCamara.)
And Kyrie: I think you’re right. Under a very particular set of circumstances, it might well benefit a masonic mafioso to spill his guts publicly about his recruitment in order to ensure a mason victory. Interesting stuff.
Projammer,
I think you hit on something very important. I think it is very reasonable for you to have thought that just telling the truth is good for the town. We all learned a good lesson from this, the truth isn’t always a good thing to share. I recall in WW1 when the Seer role claimed, there was much chatter about why role claim when not in danger of being lynched. The town questioned the move simply because it appeared that a role claim at that time was not warranted and possibly not in the town’s best interest. They didn’t lynch, the the move was questioned. Basically, any statement of fact will be questioned. If that fact cannot be verified, it must be treated as useless or hostile.
And I agree with you. The two ‘errors’ you state are pretty much it. I think you also were victim of NAF’s accusations. If I recall correctly, your early statements were stating “Hey, look at me, I’m town” too much. NAF stated that this was a scum tell for Mafia 2, for which he knows perfect information. Guess that didn’t really work out for NAf huh?
**Dragoness **and Kyrie,
I also agree with your assessments. The town is too obsessed with statistics and voting records rather than logic and explicitly stated reasons for votes. A vote for town is forgivable, as long as there is adequate reason for the vote.
This is so true. And I think it is very interesting that no one on the dope seems to be treating this like the logic game that it is. If you read mafiascum.net they spend lots of time following the logical thread of a particular argument, but that is something that has rarely happened in these games (with the notable exception of the Rubystreak lynch in WW1).
I think this is strange because I would have guessed that the culture of the boards would have lent itself to just the opposite behavior.
In addition to being suspicious because it was unverifiable, the role claim, if true, was actually harmful. Even if you had engendered enough suspicion that there was zero chance that mafia would recruit you, there is value in the knowledge that you’re a do-gooder.
The mafia knew you were town, and were likely to believe your claim. IIRC, there were 14 townies left when you made it. Before you claimed, the mafia could recruit with 1/7 chance of getting a do-gooder. After your claim, though, they could recruit with 1/13 chance. (I’m ignoring the lynch that would likely take place before they got a chance to recruit.) So everyone’s first question became “why would a pro-town player make claim that can’t be verified and that’s harmful to the town?” A slightly deeper consideration leads to the realization that it’s only harmful if it’s true, and that, to a lesser degree, the same is true of any claim. I think it was your misfortune to encounter one of very few situations in which it makes sense for a townie to lie.
The no-lynch argument is seductive, but falls apart inductively. On day one, the town realizes that there are 16 townies and 4 mafia, and supposes that there is an 80% chance that they will lynch a townie. Being perfectly rational people, everyone posts “vote: no-lynch”, and little else, and no new information is gained. That night, the mafia kills a townie. On day two, the town realizes that there are 15 townies and 4 mafia, and that they have a 78.9% chance of lynching a townie. And so on. The no-lynch argument makes sense until the town has less than a 50% chance of lynching a townie, by which time they’ve already lost.
In other words, if you believe that no lynch is a viable strategy, you might as well not play. Which leads to one of the more interesting questions I have regarding this game: over a large number of games, can the town be expected to do better than a strategy employing random voting?
Well, they’ve fallen into a different kind of ‘logic.’ Unfortunately one that is flawed.
e.g. “dead player A was town, therefore player B is more likely to be scum”
Looks like logic, but is extremely flawed.
The type of logic and reasoning that needs to be used is more inquisitive and confrontational than I think a polite group of people (strangers) might be willing to pursue right off the bat.
Interesting question. But the answer depends on assumptions regarding gameplay. If we assume perfect players on both sides, then I would assert that each lynch would be essentially random, as perfect play would fail to reveal information sufficient to tip the balance in a particular direction.
Actual play is not perfect, and the information revealed and discussion process supposedly assists the town in identifying scum. In this case, the town should do better than random. Conversely, imperfect play by the town confuses information and should shift results to poorer than random.
Finally, there is the notion of perfect information given to the town in the form of the cop. This certainly should tip the town’s achievement towards better than random.
I just did a little bit of quick math: a purely random lynch by town yields terrible results. In a 4 person game with 1 mafia (25% mafia) a random lynch wins for the town with a 25% chance. But a game of 8 people with 2 mafia (I’m still suspecting a 15:5 ratio in the current game, i.e. 25% mafia), then random lynches will win for the town only 15.6% of the time. I suspect random lynches with 20 people and 5 mafia would be even lower than 15%.
And just for kicks: Random lynches would have led the town to their current state of 3 mislynches in a row 46.7% of the time.
Heh. In other words, the strategy is to identify the scum by eliminating all of the townies? 
Well, that certainly seems to be what we’re doing in Game 2…
I have to say, that fluiddruid was high on my scum list until she turned around and gave Town exactly the advice that we had concluded in this thread that they needed to hear- certainly the most pro-Town advice we’ve seen in several pages of posts. What gives?
And a general plea for information from the more experienced players: The more I think about this game, the more it seems very unlikely for a town to do better than random chance- it seems that the game itself is just ridiculously difficult for Town. Can anyone throw me a link to a game where Town played WELL? I desperately need to see a concrete example of all this “following the logical thread” and “more inquisitive and confrontational” logic to have any idea.
Dragoness,
I am by no means an experienced player. I’ve never played before, I just like to watch.
I didn’t mean inquisitive and confrontational logic. I meant inquisitive and confrontational behavior. The game is a matter of discerning that scum behaves differently than town. To discern scum from town requires that all town basically “play” the same way. That means tacit agreements that town doesn’t do anything that hurts the town. Previous games were hurt by townies misunderstanding the game and trying to save themselves as individuals rather than do what is best for town.
Initially town basically vote randomly; however, scum do not. Scum has information that town doesn’t, and that will affect their behavior. Unfortunately, these early games have set the precedent that anyone railroading a townie is scum. Which is not really the case, and probably is never the case. Town should be railroading someone just to put the pressure on and see how **behavior **changes. Then the logic kicks in and a new target is picked or the old target is labelled scum. All town should be flinging accusations; that forces scum to fling accusations too. Too many townies are afraid to say anything that might be wrong or be confrontational, and that hurts the town by giving scum comfy cover.
Omi no Kami wants out.
With mafia up 3 lynches to 0, I’d say that’s a pretty big town-tell; but I already thought Omi no Kami was town.
The town is right though, all town has to vote. Doesn’t seem to fit with Omi no Kami too well. While reading OnK’s responses I kept thinking, “Then why are you playing?”
I guess we reached the same conclusion.