OK, so I am trying to review the exchange between** Chronos **and JSexton which led to the latter voting for the former, and I am getting confused!
First of all, in post 104, Chronos says:
(snipped)
I just now realized that THAT’S NOT TRUE! If there is a tie vote in which we know that no Masons were involved, there are three possibilities:
There is at least one Wolf on the side that got the lynch, and none on the other
There were no Wolves involved in the vote, and the tie was broken randomly
There were Wolves on both sides of the vote, and the higher-ranking Wolf’s vote was determinate.
So that tells us…absolutely nothing! Either side of the vote could either have Wolves, or not. All we can know for sure (as Chronos pointed out in #101) is that, in the absence of Masons, the highest-ranking Wolf didn’t vote for the candidate who lived. As long as both the Alpha Wolf and the Seer are alive, that is indeed very useful information because it enables the Seer to be sure never to investigate the Alpha Wolf. But once either of those players are gone, it doesn’t appear that ties provide any useful information at all (since we don’t care where any Wolf except the Alpha ranks in the hierarchy).
A lot of the following discussion, including many of my own posts, overlooked this point. So this could be a scummy Chronos trying to spread confusion. But since nobody else noticed until now, it could just be that he was confused because it is confusing.
Then JSexton replied:
and got upset that Chronos omitted the last sentence when he replied (109). Chronos didn’t reply to him, and the matter was dropped until JSexton cited it in his vote post #280.
I’m not sure what JSexton meant here; what is the “bandwagon” that wolves might hop on? Maybe he means that wolves would switch votes at the last minute to avoid a tie? I don’t really understand the last sentence because I’m not familiar with the term “ninja lynch”, but it doesn’t appear that snipping that sentence dramatically changed the meaning of the quote. JSexton, am I missing something specific here, or are you just going on the general principle that snipping quoted posts without making it clear that you are doing so is scummish?
(snipped everything except his rebuttal to my vote)
Yes, it would be potentially difficult for the Masons to avoid ties without making it obvious that they are doing so. But they might be able to do so! In the worst case scenario, the Wolves might figure out who the Masons are. So what is the potential Town advantage of the First Mason not even trying to lie low, but just jumping straight into the worst case scenario?
The scenarios that you label 1 and 3 are rolled together into the first scenario I listed: There is at least one Wolf on the winning side of the vote. And I suspect that we will probably be able to rule out my second scenario, that no wolves are involved in the tie at all, just by the numbers. That does leave us knowing something.
The First Mason reveals himself and tells everyone how to vote on the first round, creating a 9-way tie. The first mason can assure the town that no other mason is among those voted against.
**We immediately narrow the Alpha wolf to two. **
The guardian protects the first mason on the first night.
During the next day we vote to lynch one of the two AND the First Mason names a successor (another mason) if he should die.
Anyone not voting as instructed can be assumed to be wolf.
OK, I hadn’t carried the thinking that far, but yes, that is the logical conclusion. If there’s a chance we could actually pull it off, I’m all for that. My one quibble:
They can be assumed to be either wolf or cat, and as mentioned, we have a lot of cats here.
Biotop, a few problems. One you’re making it easy for the scum to find the masons by limiting them to the group not voted for. Two and more importantly you’re putting our more powerful roles, seer and guardian at risk of being lynched.
It seems to me that we good townspeople need to take advantage of the tie breaking gift we have been given NOW. Voting willy-nilly, we are likely to lose a good townsperson on the first day and again on the first night. That benefits wolves and leaves us with nothing more than vague guesses and hunts for elusive tells.
Too bad you wolves can’t conspire a way out of this on your secret board, eh?
I haven’t been following the tie breaking discussion super closely, so apologies in advance if this is a stupid question. How do we know that the person claiming to be the First Mason really is the First Mason? Wouldn’t the wolves gum up the works with false claims of Masonry and false challenges to the real Mason?
How are our powerful members other than masons any more likely to die from this method? We could be randomly killing them ourselves on the first day.
The tie breaking mechanic IS itself a special power, and it belongs to us, the town. Townspeople working together using all our powers puts the scum at great disadvantage.
Anyone falsely claiming to be FM is a wolf who can immediately be exposed with a second mason outing him/herself. Unless another wolf claims false second mason, then we get the third mason and so on. When one of the group dies we know who all the false mason scum are. LYNCHING TIME!
I disagree. Now we have number advantage and information disadvantage. Later in the game neither may be true. And we might have fewer masons to trust later on. We know we have masons now.
If the Seer is leading the lynch at the end of Day, they should claim that they are the Seer. And we will move our votes. It means they will probably be night killed, but the guardian might be able to protect them, and it’s better to make the scum kill them.
If a wolf about to be lynched claims seer, the real seer can counterclaim, either sooner or later and we will have to decide which one to believe, but we will catch a wolf.
Your method puts our power roles at risk without allowing them to claim. I think it might be a great technique after our power roles are exposed, but I’m not willing to put our seer and guardian at risk on day 1.
Oh, wait, it can get even better (assuming compliance by all the Townies): The declared First Mason not only tells everyone who to vote for; he tells half the players to vote for themselves. That is to say, player 1 and player 2 vote for player 1; player 3 and player 4 vote for player 3; players 5 and 6 vote for 5, and so on. That way, if everyone complied, then we’d have a 50-50 shot of killing the Alpha outright, and if we didn’t, we’d know exactly who e was. This would also substantially reduce the risk to the Doctor and Detective, since the only way they’d die would be if they happened to be paired with the Alpha.
Once the Alpha is killed, we could repeat the same trick with whatever Masons are alive all declaring themselves and abstaining, and finding other Wolves in the same way. The best-case scenario for the Wolves would involve finding and killing the Doctor (or hoping that we accidentally lynch the Doctor), then killing the Masons, but I think that even if they get that lucky that way, we’d still end up finding at least two Wolves, and probably three or four, including the Alpha. That’d leave us with a huge advantage, well worth losing all of our power roles for, and that’s even leaving the Detective out of the consideration.
If we’re at a number disadvantage, we’ve lost. And if we ever gain an information advantage, we will be on the path of victory.
We will know exactly how many masons we have at every point. When someone dies through day votes or night kill, their card is flipped, and we learn their role and team. We should only use this stategy after our power roles are known. Are you really thinking this through? Our seer could investigate the alpha wolf tonight and we could lynch him tomorrow. Are you willing to give up that chance?
Oh, and to be clear: The Wolves could clearly not accept such a scenario, so they’d have to gum up the works. But any way they could do that (again, assuming compliance by the actual Townies) would inevitably result in outing an equal number of Wolves and Masons (and simultaneously remove all risk from the Doctor and Detective). Outing an equal number of Wolves and Masons wouldn’t instantly near-guarantee Town the win, like compliance would, but it’d still be a great outcome.
Hell, yes, I’m willing to give up the chance that the seer could investigate the alpha, since that’s one of the worst things that could happen to Town! C’mon, TexCat, you know better than that!
Ninja lynching is a last second vote right before deadline. What I was saying was that a wolf can vote (or even unvote, if the votecount is right) last second to ensure there is no tie, nullifying any possible gain of tiebreaker info. Yes, doing so is highly suspicious, and probably leads to that wolf being lynched the next day. BUT, and this is what my last sentence was about, that’s totally worth it to the scum as awhole if it avoids having multiple wolves publicly exposed. Chronos’s response to me snipped that sentence and then responded as though I’d implied there was zero risk to the wolves for last minute vote switching.
Snipping is fine in general, as long as you aren’t snipping important context and then pretending it never happened.