Mafia: The Mob is Recruiting [Game Finished]

[QUOTE=Hawkeyeop]

I’ll have a vote later today. My main two candidates are Menocchio and Sinjin. I was bothered by Menocchio’s vote for me. Bad strategy is not a scum tell. Even perfect strategy would be difficult to develop a consensus on. No scum is going to convince the rest of the town to go along with a plan that has obvious flaws. For someone who suggested that the Vig role claim, it seems disingenuous for him to vote someone else for a “bad idea.”

[/QUOTE]

Another thing I didn’t like about **Menocchio’s/b] vote for you is that it seemed like an attempt to start a bandwagon, an attempt that could be easily explained later by a “but he practically TOLD us to vote for him for it!” type of statement. The hypocrisy of it aside, it appeared to be a thinly-veiled attempt at deflection. It was a highly opportunistic move to make, and after you gave the opening, I was curious to see who would take advantage of it.

Speaking of opportunism, we have Pleonast

[QUOTE=Pleonast]
What do I take from Drain’s attack? Poorly reasoned, but is it scummy? Maybe. Men was getting a lot of votes YesterDay. An early vote with reasoning (even if it’s poor) could start a bandwagon. And, if a bandwagon did start, Drain could reasonably claim she wasn’t following it. Perfect way for scum to make an attack.
[/quote]

For one thing, I don’t think the reasoning is very poor. Keep in mind that this is just one reason out of many that people have voted for him. But second of all–how could I reasonably claim I wasn’t following a bandwagon? By reasonably saying that instead of following it, I started it? Keep in mind that there are very few scum at this point, and it’s in their best interest to not play leader-of-the-pack. And while I won’t vote for a claimed town power role at this point, I still don’t entirely trust that you’re a humble priest. That is, after all, the easiest role in which a scum can hide. For you to come out in defense of Menocchio, to the point of voting for me on reasoning more tenuous than the reasoning I initally used to vote for him, is curious to say the least.

Ugh, I hate it when I blow coding.

[QUOTE=Hawkeyeop]

2 cops
1.2 successful investigations a night.

3 cops
1.2 successful investigations a night.

4 cops
.8 successful investigation a night
[/QUOTE]

I’m fairly sure that’s not how probabilities work–I’ve crunched the numbers as a mental exercise, and I’ll post those on request, but as someone else pointed out already it’s still not worth exposing the Cops.

[QUOTE=Drain Bead]
Ugh, I hate it when I blow coding.
[/QUOTE]

Oh, but the coding loves it. :wink:

[QUOTE=dotchan]
I’m fairly sure that’s not how probabilities work–I’ve crunched the numbers as a mental exercise, and I’ll post those on request, but as someone else pointed out already it’s still not worth exposing the Cops.
[/QUOTE]

I might not have clear. This is the average amount of successful investigations we would have a night, not the probably that we would have successful investigations. So for say 2 cops

9/25 of 2 successful investigations

12/25 of 1 successful investigation

4/25 of 0 successful investigations

(92)+(121)+4*)/25=1.2

Blah. I wrote up a post , but by the time I hit the button, I got a board down for maintenance error. To sum up : Weekend got the better of me, I won’t get time to really read till tonight…so I will catch up and post some substance tonight / tomorrow during lunch (damn lunch meeting today).

Bah, I meant to preview not post. Let’s try that one more time for readability sake.

I might not have been clear. This is the average amount of successful investigations we would have a night, not the probability that we would have successful investigations. So for say 2 cops:

9/25 chance of 2 successful investigations

12/25 chance of 1 successful investigation

4/25 chance of 0 successful investigations

((92)+(121)+4*))/25=1.2

The Day ends at 11am on Tuesday, March 11.

Vote Tallies:

Menocchio (3) - dotchan, Drain Bead, chrisk
NAF1138 (1) - Blaster Master
Hawkeyeop (1) - Menocchio
Hal Briston (1) - Millit the Frail
Drain Bead [sub for Idle Thoughts] (1) - Pleonast
Pleonast (0) - (Darth Sensitive)
hotflungwok (0) - (Blaster Master)

Yet to cast a vote on Day 3:
NAF1138
Hockey Monkey
bufftabby
Diomedes
MHaye
Santo Rugger
Koldanar
Hawkeyeop
HazelNutCoffee
Hotflungwok
OneCentStamp
Freudian Slit
sinjin
Hal Briston

No current vote:
Darth Sensitive

Unvote Hawkeyeop
Vote Drain Bead
Not for voting for me (though she’s wrong, of course, it was an innocent mistake), but for smudging Pleonast for defending me. This seems like an attempt to set up an easy target, given that I’m still under the hot lamps from Yesterday and haven’t role claimed, and she’s working on the *second *easiest target while she’s at it.

Oops forgot the bold. **Here’s the same vote again with proper coding. **

Unvote Hawkeyeop
Vote Drain Bead

I also still don’t like Hawkeyeop’s plan. I just suspect Drain more at this point.

I’ve been thinking a bit about the beat cops. Because of the wierd probabilities around them, I’m having a hard time figuring them out.

First, if I’m reading the rules right, their investigation returns ‘town’ or ‘scum’. Of what use is that to the scum? The only thing they gain if they recruit a beat cop is denying the town his info, and possibly messing up other beat cops by investigating constantly.

Second, is there any way to help them? Organize the investigations without compromising who they are? I couldn’t think of anything, but there might have been some way of doing it in prior games. We don’t know how many there are, so we don’t know what chances they’ve got. Since they seem to be our main source of actual knowledge, is there anything we can do to help them?

Third, is there any way for them to share their information without revealing themselves? And if they do reveal themselves, is this grounds for an automatic lynching just to be safe?

[QUOTE=hotflungwok]
I’ve been thinking a bit about the beat cops. Because of the wierd probabilities around them, I’m having a hard time figuring them out.

First, if I’m reading the rules right, their investigation returns ‘town’ or ‘scum’. Of what use is that to the scum? The only thing they gain if they recruit a beat cop is denying the town his info, and possibly messing up other beat cops by investigating constantly.
[/QUOTE]

Capo Cops can return “Town” or “Power Role”
Consigliere Cops can’t investigate at all, but like every other turncoat power role give a 5% chance (each!) of revealing a town power role to the scum.

Plus we can’t use 'em. So they’re worth grabbing if you’re scum or keeping if you’re town.

[QUOTE=Hawkeyeop]
Bah, I meant to preview not post. Let’s try that one more time for readability sake.

I might not have been clear. This is the average amount of successful investigations we would have a night, not the probability that we would have successful investigations. So for say 2 cops…
[/QUOTE]

I follow your math, but wouldn’t you divide that sum by three to get the average? (Since there are three distinct situations: 0 successes, 1 success, 2 successes.)

At any rate, I have a feeling that the Beat Cop’s ability lies slightly less in their role investigation and more in their chance of witnessing something, especially if we have multiples of them.

hotflungwok, I don’t think we need to consider auto-lynching claimed power-roles until we’re further into the game. Don’t forget that Beat Cops return a random role on the Boss, so even if a dead Beat Cop turns up innocent we can’t take their results as canon. (Plus, what does that mean for the player(s) whose role that the Beat Cop reveals?)

Hey, my car got towed this morning and I have spend the last 5 hours dealing with that. Give me a few minutes to get things straightened out at work and then I will make a substantive post with a vote.

I plan to post my list of most likely to be recruited as well as my current list of people I think that not been recruited as of today.

[QUOTE=dotchan]
I follow your math, but wouldn’t you divide that sum by three to get the average? (Since there are three distinct situations: 0 successes, 1 success, 2 successes.)

[/QUOTE]

The fact that there are 3 distinct situations is already taken into account in the math.

There is 36% chance of 2 successes
There is 48% chance of 1 success
There is 16% chance of 0 successes

Intuitively, since the odds of 2 successes is greater than the odds of 0 successes, the answer should be greater than one.

[QUOTE=dotchan]

At any rate, I have a feeling that the Beat Cop’s ability lies slightly less in their role investigation and more in their chance of witnessing something, especially if we have multiples of them.

[/QUOTE]

The odds of each individual beat cop witnessing an event is less then 1/40. Even then, we only get a lackey and not the boss. It is probably enough to tilt the equation to make 3 beat cops investigating ideal, but doesn’t do more than that.

The weekend got the better of me. I’ll do my best to catch up tonight and post.

Ok, quickly because I have 2 minutes and this post will only take that long to write.
NAF1138
Hockey Monkey
Drainbead
MHaye
Santo Rugger
Pleonast
Blaster Master
HazelNutCoffee
Freudian Slit
Hal Briston
This is the list of people I think it is most likely the mafia will try to recruit. They are all either vets, or town leader types, or have played scum succesfully in the past. Everyone on this list should be killed before endgame, myself included. This is less true if we catch the boss at some point, more true the longer we go without catching the boss. But I think letting any of these players survive until endgame would be a mistake.

I have been thinking about it, and killing off a certain number of players isn’t such a bad thing for us. We need to make the pool smaller. A large group staying alive will only play into the scum’s hands. IF I were the vig (and this is just advice, please make your own call) I would take these players out on any Night when you don’t feel you have a strong bead on someone.

More to come as I catch up on my workload.

Oh, and vote Hal for fluffyness and being on the above list.

Ok, as usual, couldn’t participate much over the weekend – catch-up time. Apologies if any of these issues have already been settled – I’m running through these as I see them.

This is really sticking out to me…yes, I know there is no guarantee that we have a Police Chief, but it’d be a huge risk for scum to make that kind of false claim. I’m going to go the other way on this and take a (post-boss-lynching) Chief claim at face value, unless otherwise disputed.
[QUOTE=dotchan]
I’m still modding the off-board game, and I see no point in posting for the sake of posting, especially these first few Days when there’s so many people. I’ll pretty much just post to FoS, vote, or discuss game theory where applicable.
[/QUOTE]
Bwuh? I have no problem with someone not being vocal when there’s already enough noise going on, but modding the off-board game is the excuse? Most of that post is fine by me, but that first bit strikes me as odd.
[QUOTE=Darth Sensitive]
But I’m wondering how good of an idea it is for the masons and priests to claim together, with the masons claiming as priests too. That keeps numbers of both obfuscated and builds a core of protowniness. Priests can’t be recruited, and masons only have a small chance. So that would take them off the possible recruit list.
[/QUOTE]
I dunno…seems like it would be a very tempting place for a scum or two to hide out.
[QUOTE=Menocchio]
Perhaps the vigilante [should claim]? Just because he’s out doesn’t mean we have to put him on a leash.
[/QUOTE]
Ack! No! If scum try and recruit him, we get one of their names! Hush, little Viggie, don’t say a word… (and as I read further on, I see this has already been covered…ah well).
[QUOTE=bufftabby]
FoS Hal Briston. Almost all of your posts have been fluff. When you did strategize once, you followed it up by saying not to listen to you about any analysis. You set off my my suspicion sirens, but my scumdar isn’t sure quite what to make of you yet.
[/QUOTE]
<shrug> Get used to it – it’s early in the game, when my participation is lowest. The one time I led the charge from the get-go, I opened my mouth a bit too much and the town lost a major power role. I’m certain I’ll catch flack for it, but I start slow and build with each passing Day…simple as that.
[QUOTE=sinjin]
Substance to Fluff Ratio: 5/16. And there wasn’t much substance in the substance.
[/QUOTE]
Huh…besides that personal bit being a completely subjective load of crap, I wonder if anyone is thinking your analysis might be a hyper-townie scum move? I mean, it’s not offering anything helpful in the least, but it serves up a very nice illusion of being a helpful townie. (And as I go further, I see NAF finds fault here as well)…(and further still, that Millit bought into it…sorry, fellow former table-carver, he’s wrong! :))
[QUOTE=Diomedes]
Part of the problem with voting Hal for lurkiness is that he’s always quiet the first couple Days, and tends to ramp up his participation when there’s more to talk about. Like all of these games, we’re flying blind here in the beginning, and there are players that tend not to want to speak unless they have something useful to say (whether they’re scum or not). We’ve had two pages of discussion on how to properly classify lurkerdom, for heavens sake!
[/QUOTE]
Huh…didn’t know I was becoming that transparent with my style. Well, obviously this post is a good start (or should I break it up into six or seven separate posts for those who are blindly obsessed with hard post count numbers?)
[QUOTE=bufftabby]
Oh, but the coding loves it. :wink:
[/QUOTE]
Damn you, I wanted to make that joke…

[QUOTE=NAF1138]
This is the list of people I think it is most likely the mafia will try to recruit. They are all either vets, or town leader types, or have played scum succesfully in the past. Everyone on this list should be killed before endgame, myself included. This is less true if we catch the boss at some point, more true the longer we go without catching the boss. But I think letting any of these players survive until endgame would be a mistake.
[/QUOTE]
That’s a smart idea. However, making that post becomes a flat-out brilliant idea if one reads it with the assumption that you’re scum.

Think about it: “Here’s a list of experienced players [who aren’t scum]. Make sure you kill them all off, town [so we don’t have to and so the heat stays off of us]!”

Not saying that’s actually the case, but if it turns out you’re the Godfather, allow me to be the first to tip my hat to you for that one.

[QUOTE=bufftabby]
Seriously, guys. Okay, props to sinjin for doing further analysis on our very lurkiest, separating the substance from the fluff. Right on. But I took like two and a half hours to go through and count everyone’s posts, by hand, no fancy spreadsheets etc. Now I’m really feeling like it was for no reason at all. No one has mentioned it; hell, I don’t think anybody even read it. I’m a very discouraged newb townie right about now. I’m also a whiner, I guess.
[/QUOTE]
I’d like to apologise. I remembered [post=9557342]798[/post] but didn’t check back to see who wrote it when I made my earlier post.

It’s actually useful to have two people do this sort of work to guard against error by the data compiler.

Now I’ve said that, the lack of posts by Santo Rugger is odd. He’s quite keen, as the first two day’s posting level shows. I hope he’s alright.