Mafia V: The Cult of Sekham

The Game Room
281

Back, and reading. I’m going to concentrate a variety of responses into one post, to avoid drowning the thread in little posts. I want to start here:

[QUOTE=MadTheSwine]

I didn’t say we didn’t need to figure out how many N-B’s and Cultists there are either,I said it was an accepted scum tell to bring it up.
As far as figuring out how many there are..well,everyone can make a fairly educated guess, discussing it means nothing and gets us nowhere, as only the Cultists know for sure.
So on top of your original tell,I ain’t to keen on revenge votes or word twisting either.

[/QUOTE]

  1. He did not vote for you; there was no revenge vote. This looks to me like someone trying to get a vote in for no particular reason.

  2. You win the First Internally Inconsistent Post award for this post, in which you tell Clockwork Jackal that he was twisting your words by saying that you don’t think it’s important to figure out how many N-Bs and Cultists there are *in the same post where you explicitly state that you don’t think it’s important to figure out how many N-Bs and Cultists there are. * Sure, you didn’t state this in your initial post, but CJ inferred it and, based on the evidence above, it was a reasonable inference.

  3. As he pointed out, CJ didn’t say no one looked scummy, he said no one looked summy except for Hal.

Strong FoS MadtheSwine.

[QUOTE=Pleonast]

You’re suspicion back on me would usually seem scummy to me. That’s not a good way to dispel suspicion on yourself (attacking your attacker). But, I think in your case it’s a the reaction of a newbie Townie. Be more careful in the future.

[/QUOTE]

Disagree. I’m not sure why revenge votes have such a scummy reputation, but in my (admittedly limited) experience they are employed by the good guys exactly as often as they scum. The thought process of the typical townie seems to go: I know I’m innocent, and anyone who wants to hang an innocent is probably scum. And on to revenge voting.

[QUOTE=MHaye]

I agree with this; I always feel that random voting is a mistake. As is pressure-voting - voting someone just to get them to say something specific. I never do them, and neither will I respond to them, even if it means I get lynched (or, in this case, drowned). I’ll go along with FOSs though, because they can’t be turned into a bandwagon.

[/QUOTE]

This is going to be, I think, an unpopular opinion. I don’t think that I think that bandwagons are necessarily such a bad thing - even if - and again, I know how this sounds, but it’s worth saying it anyway - they end in a townie death. Bandwagons carry information. Who started it? Who jumped on it? Who jumped on it for little apparent reason? Who piled in at the end when the outcome was inevitable anyway?

I’m not saying we want a bunch of out-of-control bandwagons that lead to town lynches, just that we shouldn’t spend so much time quaking in fear of a bandwagon that we refuse to vote, or spread our votes so thin that it’s easier for scum to control a lynch.

And you know what? On that note, and on the basis of the admittedly modest evidence presented above, I’m going to start out my Day by voting to:

Dunk MadtheSwine

282

[QUOTE=Scuba_Ben]
It seems to me that the flaws are (1) the first person to post is almost certainly NOT the cop/detective/Oracle/Zadoc, and (2) nobody can tell which “investigation” was legit until the cop has been killed off. Do I have that right?
[/QUOTE]
Huh…I forgot about the “fake detective” bit. Well, I wouldn’t write it off as an altogether terrible idea…

(1) If the town was playing it smart, they would do it randomly…the real detective would occasionally post first.
(2) The flip side of this is the removal of the danger of the detective being murdered without ever getting a chance to spill the truth. Yes, he’ll breadcrumb, but we all know that can get seriously wrong in its interpretation.
(And before anyone starts yelling “scum tell!”, yes, I said “they” in reference to “the town”. We’re dealing in the theoretical here, not the actual town in this game.)

283

[QUOTE=Mtgman]

For the first lynch I suggest we all use random.org The numbers show that in a game with no investigators(which the first day basically is) the best strategy is random voting.

[/QUOTE]

Oh, for the love of… :smack:

Ok, maybe this is because I have a lot more experiance playing IRL where this sort of analysis is next to impossible to do, but this isn’t a numbers game. Yes, you can use the numbers to help you, but the scum aren’t robots. Statistically maybe a random vote helps us in the short term, I don’t know, but we have to start playing for the endgame NOW. We can’t rely on a detective to save our asses like they did in WW1 and Pirates. Even if we kill scum today with a random vote, what do we learn? If all everyone is doing is random voting WE LEARNED NOTHING? We are back at square one again tomorrow, and the scum have just gotten a free shot at taking out one of us.

284

[QUOTE=HazelNutCoffee]
I was wondering about the powers of the Oracle and the Apprentice - if/when the Oracle finds out the identity of the Apprentice, would it make sense for the Oracle to perform the ritual on the Apprentice until the Apprentice’s accuracy reaches 80%? Or should the Oracle just ignore the Apprentice and concentrate on finding the cultists? And when would it make the most sense for the Priest to protect all of us at the price of being able to protect no one the following night? It seems that early on in the game, a few dead bodies are a necessary evil in helping us gather clues as to who the scum are.
[/QUOTE]

Just wanted to clear this up since it looks like a mis-understanding of the rules. The Oracle needs only investigate the Apprentice once, thereafter the accuracy improves, regardless of whom they investigate, for each night the Oracle lives. I apologize if that wasn’t clear in the rules.

285

[QUOTE=sachertorte]
Lack of consensus is bad. I don’t know how we can force ourselves to reach a consensus in only 5 days, but letting a relatively small number (25%!) of votes determine the lynch was very bad for the town. *Everyone *needs to vote even if ‘unsure,’ otherwise we risk giving scum easy cover.
[/QUOTE]
On the surface I agree with this, but, on the other hand it gives scum a chance to justify their votes (or rather, avoid giving reasons for them).

Lack of consensus isn’t ideal, but it’s often a symptom of little information to go on rather than a problem itself. I’ve seen many times that people were convinced by the tiniest turns of phrase to vote for someone, hiding the legitimate scum coersion that was occurring.

IMHO, vote your head or your heart, but don’t hide behind votes only you’re voting for (which is basically the same as not voting) late in the day.

286

On random voting versus non-random voting. There are two main types of analysis here. The largest body of mathematical analysis I’ve seen on how to vote on Day 1 was based on a lynch needing a plurality of votes, not a majority. It was also highly advantageous for all the votes to be revealed at the same time, so no factions got a chance to “skew” the numbers after seeing the initial spread. So people could vote with random.org and, because there’s been no Night for the scum to stragetize during, we’d either get really random results(which is a strong strategy for the town), or we’d get the scum bandwagoning to direct the vote(which gives them away, and is also a fine thing for the town).

I don’t think I’ve seen analysis for the particular setting we have right now, where it takes a majority to dunk on Day 1. So I’m up for discussion, but I don’t think we should take it too seriously. We may get lucky and dunk the Prophet, but probably not.

Enjoy,
Steven

287

[QUOTE=fluiddruid]
On the surface I agree with this, but, on the other hand it gives scum a chance to justify their votes (or rather, avoid giving reasons for them).

Lack of consensus isn’t ideal, but it’s often a symptom of little information to go on rather than a problem itself. I’ve seen many times that people were convinced by the tiniest turns of phrase to vote for someone, hiding the legitimate scum coersion that was occurring.

IMHO, vote your head or your heart, but don’t hide behind votes only you’re voting for (which is basically the same as not voting) late in the day.
[/QUOTE]

There we go, this here is sound advice. What’s more, it is important to always state they why. Why are you voting for someone? A vote without a stated reason does us no good.

288

I agree with the first half of Mtgman post. Investigations cannot distinguish cultists from non-believers. (Now who was it that said this game is skewed town? I think not).
For the alchemist we could employ a similar verification test used in M2 to verify a miller claim, but only if the Crusader has skipped the previous night kill and only with 75% success rate.
I also think Mtgman is astute in noting that the alchemist, on average will hurt the down by roleblocking.

I do not agree with Mtgman’s assertion that a day one random lynch is optimal. I read the paper (I think) he did, and the analysis pretty much is stuck with random lynches. There really isn’t any other way to do a mathematical analysis. This game isn’t a math game, it’s a social game. So the day one strategy is to talk. The end of day dunking may not end up better than random, but the chatter sets up social analysis for future days. The paper ignores the social aspect of the mafia game.
I also found the paper’s analysis to be needlessly complex.

289

[QUOTE=Mtgman]
Although, now that I think about it, odds are the Cultists will take care of the Psycopath for us. They’ll know who he/she is because they’ll know who they tried to night-kill when it failed(activating the Psycopath), so I don’t think normal everyday townies need worry on this front.
[/quote]

Not necessarily. A failed night-kill could also mean the person was being protected by the Priest or the Disciple. It could also mean the Alchemist was successful in blocking the cultists.

There are four power roles that help the town (Priest, Disciple, Oracle, and Apprentice), one that is supposed to be helpful but potentially dangerous (Crusader), and one that is neutral (Psychopath, if activated). Blocking a citizen or a non-believer, while not helpful, does no harm; blocking a cultist has at least a chance of preventing a nightkill. There are perhaps 5-7 scum in this game (and this is including the Prophet and the Avatar, I thing). It seems like that in the beginning of the game, at least, blocking a random someone has a higher percentage of either doing nothing, or doing something beneficial.

It seems like there will never be a consensus on this, but even for those of us who are regular citizens, I suggest that it might be more helpful if we posted some kind of reasoning behind our votes. That way, if we are murdered in the night, those surviving can re-read what we’ve posted and see if there was something in our words that prompted the cultists to hasten our death.

Just some thoughts.

290

[QUOTE=Blaster Master]
Just wanted to clear this up since it looks like a mis-understanding of the rules. The Oracle needs only investigate the Apprentice once, thereafter the accuracy improves, regardless of whom they investigate, for each night the Oracle lives. I apologize if that wasn’t clear in the rules.
[/QUOTE]

Ohh, so all the Oracle needs to do is perform the ritual itself - not necessarily perform it on the Apprentice? I understand now. Thanks for the clarification.

291

[QUOTE=HazelNutCoffee]
And when would it make the most sense for the Priest to protect all of us at the price of being able to protect no one the following night?
[/QUOTE]

my read on that ability is to avoid an endgame recruit. Theoretically, the Priest is unrecruitable and unnightkillable. Barring a lynch the Priest can use the protect everyone when it is likely that the recruitment is going to happen. In M3, the optimal recruitment time was when there was one mafia left. With the Priest mechanic, waiting becomes more risky since a recuitment when everyone expects it could be easily blocked by the Priest.
Now that recruitment is tied to a specific player, I don’t anticipate an endgame recruitment anyway.

Oh, I know. The Priest should protect everyone to prevent a scum win. In other words in the endgame if going into night a scum kill wins the game, the Priest should protect everyone.

292

Okay! A new start and a new game. Time to dive in.

Just to let everyone know, I typically reply to things post by post..so as I’m replying to one, I have not yet read any posts after yet, but normally go back and make corrections as I learn more and more and get more and more caught up.

[QUOTE=Hal Briston]
Ok, I’ll kick this off with a strategy question:

Do believers care if non-believers live or die? Since A) Non-believers are capable of taking a win away from believers, and B) Scum show up in investigations as “non-believer”, my initial thought is “no, not really…better them than me”.

Off base or makes sense?
[/QUOTE]

Well, as far as I can tell, believers win only if the cultists are dead, right? Not if non-believers are dead, so there’s a better chance winning with them…however like you say (and with your own experience as a group that could take a single-only win) it would open the door to a non-believer (but not cultist) win alone. So I think it’s something that should/may be looked if the believers are being picked off left and right and not so many vanilla non-believers.

And, going on, basically what FCOD put better.

[QUOTE=NAF1138]
FINALLY!

I would like to start by FOSing Mad, for destroying the pirates chances in the last game, and being the first to post durring the day in this one.

AVAST!

er..I mean…HERETIC!
[/QUOTE]

Are you joking? Sounds like you are so I’ll give you the benifet of the doubt. :stuck_out_tongue: But like I said before in the last game, I just hope that people don’t use past game roles and stuff as a reason to look at someone suspicious.

Andddd…going on..I see Mhaye saw this too.

Andddddd, going on, I now see your post saying you were. Don’t scare me like that, NAF! :smack:

[QUOTE=Hal Briston]
I suppose it would depend on how many of them there are to start.

Anyone care to speculate on the distribution this time around? We’ve got a larger starting pool than ever this time, and three groups instead of two.

With 30 players, what do you think, six cultists, give or take one? How about the non-believers…more or less than the cultists?
[/QUOTE]

Just going off of what I’ve done in hosted games, I usually make the scum about 1/5th or 1/6th the total number of players. But then you have to wager in the other roles that have potential to kill, plus the recruit. I’d say, with all of that put together, about five or six scum would seem most likely. As in, pure scum as opposed to non-believers.

[QUOTE=Clockwork Jackal]
Hmmm…well, I’ll post now, even though there’s no real information to go on right now. Except for one little thing (which I’ll get to in the next paragraph) no one really looks scummy to me yet. I think I’m just gonna play as though I’m getting killed tonight, and just tell everyone my thought processes. OK?

[/QUOTE]

Snipped and bolding mine.

See, this gets me a little. I’ve said this before too in other games. Why feel the need to say this and put it out there? It’s sort of a given and just strikes me as something someone would say to subtly throw someone off. That and that nobody strikes you as being scummy yet. Well it’s the first Day. What were you expecting? :dubious:

[QUOTE=MadTheSwine]
I have noticed two accepted scum tells so far(according to outside sources I have read), and as has been pointed out in other games, scum tells aren’t always scum tells, but I think it’s better than random votes at this point.
The first one is from you Clockwork, saying no one looks scummy.The second was from my good buddy Hal speculating on how many cultists and non-believers there are.
Course it is early,but those are my thoughts so far.
[/QUOTE]

Good to see I wasn’t the only one that caught it.

[QUOTE=NAF1138]
Then vote for lurkers, that is a legitimate vote at this stage.

[/QUOTE]

Majorly snipped.

Maybe just me but I feel that’s just as bad. Seems like giving an easy out to scum (who know who is what) to just gang up on someone who’s not posting as much. If someone is lurking too much, I just feel a sub out would be the best course rather than a pile on.

And about the whole random voting thing (this is to everyone who was talking about it, not just NAF). Here’s what I think and have said before. It’s the first day. Yes it REALLY IS random for the good side and yes the for the scum it’s not, but that doesn’t matter because EVERYONE will be acting like it’s random. So in the end, where does it get us? Nowhere. So while I don’t think we should pussyfoot around and not vote at all, I also don’t think it’s wise to just throw votes out there, here and everywhere cause it could start a bandwagon really easy that scum might take advantage of or at least help along a bit.

[QUOTE=MadTheSwine]
WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? Lurking???
[/QUOTE]

Hahahaha. I like the light hearted play. :smiley:

[QUOTE=HazelNutCoffee]
But Clockwork Jackal didn’t make a revenge vote. All he said was that he was inclined to FOS you for saying that speculating on the distribution of players is a scum tell, which seemed to imply that you were discouraging such speculation as unnecessary. (I see that’s not what you meant, but it initially appeared that way.) He didn’t even point an actual FOS your way. If anything, it would seem that your vote for him is something of an over-reaction.

I do agree that discussing the distribution of players is not very fruitful this early on in the game, which is why I will withhold pointing a FOS at you for now.
[/QUOTE]

I dunno… I said earlier that s/he just seemed iffy and it tripped me a bit too (although I didn’t vote as MtS did)…and so far, I’ve learned to trust my meter trips.

[QUOTE=ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies]
FWIW, I don’t think everyone is going to be agreeing on any one particular point any time soon, if ever.
[/QUOTE]

Ladies and Gentlemen. The sanest post in here.

293

[QUOTE=Hal Briston]
Huh…I forgot about the “fake detective” bit. Well, I wouldn’t write it off as an altogether terrible idea…
[/QUOTE]

Heh. I agree it wasn’t that bad. The problem was the strategy was partially implemented then abandoned; leaving the detective exposed. Had everyone joined in, the detective may not have been exposed so early. Either way, the gambit assures a dead detective in log(N) time. Not so hot.

294

Wait, what? Is **Mtgman ** saying we should all use random.org and reveal at the same time and go with the results? Is that seriously what he’s saying?? Am I missing something here because that seems like a bad, bad, bad idea. I’m going to go back to my fallback whenever someone suggests a strategy: How does the town benefit from this? I see three drawbacks for the town:

  1. There are still going to be those who delay even a minute or two that could throw the vote a certain way by casting a non-random vote and saying it’s random. And even if that doesn’t happen, if the votes truly are random then suspicion will fall upon those people who voted for the dunk unfairly.
  2. The chances a pro-town power role could be revealed are small, but possible; in fact, probably at a greater percentage than a normal vote. If a power role is revealed, I damn well want a trail to who forced that to happen. Plus, will there even be time for a role-claim? Will that role-claim be more or less believable?
  3. This negates any information that could be gleaned from today’s conversations. There will be no trail to follow.

I hope I’m just understanding wrong, and it’s against my nature to vote this early in a Day, so I’m not going to accuse or FOS Mtgman, but MAN, this seems like a bad idea of epic proportions.

295

[QUOTE=sachertorte]

Oh, I know. The Priest should protect everyone to prevent a scum win. In other words in the endgame if going into night a scum kill wins the game, the Priest should protect everyone.
[/QUOTE]

But if the Priest dies, the opportunity is wasted. Even if the Disciple is still alive, the number that the Disciple can protect is reduced to two. I was thinking vaguely it might make sense for the Priest to use this ability when there is a possibility of a maximum number of kills (such as after the Psychopath is activated, although we’d probably have to guess at that, or after the Avatar is lynched). A normal night will have a maximum of two kills (cultists and Crusader, who could potentially kill a citizen) while an unlucky night could have three or four (if the Psychopath is activated and the Avatar gets lynched).

Gah, my head hurts. Is the bar open yet? looks hopeful

296

[QUOTE=Idle Thoughts]
Maybe just me but I feel that’s just as bad. Seems like giving an easy out to scum (who know who is what) to just gang up on someone who’s not posting as much. If someone is lurking too much, I just feel a sub out would be the best course rather than a pile on.
[/QUOTE]
Problem with that thinking is, that’s the exact strategy the pirates used in M4. Auto intentionally lurked and committed the kills so that there would be no trail. I was hesitant to lynch lurkers in M4, but once lurking became an actual scum strategy I think the rules on that one changed.

297

[QUOTE=HazelNutCoffee]
Gah, my head hurts. Is the bar open yet? looks hopeful
[/QUOTE]
Oh, I’m sorry, weren’t you aware? Adamsborough is a dry town.

298

One note I would make to the general discussion. It’s ok to talk a bit about the Apprentice, but remember, he/she is basically a beat cop. How many townies died in MII because they tried soo hard to make a beat cop a useful role? Blaster Master has thrown in a twist here with the “increasing chance of success” rules, but we’ve got about a 1/15 chance the Oracle will investigate the Apprentice early enough in the game to make this happen(one one of the first two Nights). Even then their feedback won’t be really useful until they hit the “false readings come up as blanks” stage, which won’t be for several Days at the earliest. We can save the discussion of that role until then, when there will be a smaller audience and we’ve got a little bit of a feel for each other.

NAF, I agree with you about real-world games. I wouldn’t roll a dice for a vote on Day 1 in a live game. I’d be reading body language and tone of voice. Since all that is unavailable here, I’m thinking it comes out to a wash and random voting is as good an approach as any. The hundreds of games played on mafiascum.net have left a strong impression of random voting being the best Day 1 strategy for the town. A number of players have argued against it and tried to shoot it down, mostly because it turns off newbies when they’re killed for essentially no reason on the first Day of their first game, but it’s still pretty much the norm there.

Enjoy,
Steven

299

In response to a rules query:

At the beginning of the game, the Apprentice starts with 50% accuracy. There are two ways the Apprentice can improve his power, through being discovered by the Oracle and gaining his tutelage or through the Oracle’s death. As an example, let’s say that the Oracle happens to investigate the Apprentice Tonight, the Tutelage bonus is immediate, and thus, the Apprentice’s investigation Tonight will have an accuracy of 60%. If they both survive the Night and the next Day, the Apprentices accuracy will then be 70%. It’ll look something like this.


Night	Apprentice %	Oracle Investigates
1	50%		Player(1)
2	50%		Player(2)
...
**i	60%		Apprentice
i+1	70%		Player(i+1)
i+2	80%		Player(i+2)**
i+3	80%		Player(i+3)
...

If the Oracle dies before he discovers the Apprentice, this power cannot be activated. If the Oracle dies during the training process, the Apprentice’s accuracy is frozen (he doesn’t unlearn).

Regardless of whether or not the tutelage is activated, when the Oracle dies, the Apprentice WILL receive the Oracle death bonus and it stacks with the Tutelage bonus. Thus, if the Apprentice was fully trained, he will acheive 100% accuracy on the night following the Oracle’s death (he has to find out he’s dead before he can loot his belongings).

I hope this clears things up a bit.

300

[QUOTE=HazelNutCoffee]
But if the Priest dies, the opportunity is wasted.
[/QUOTE]

Hello Mr. Risk, I’d like to introduce you to Ms. Reward.

Also, why would the Priest die? The Priest is not night killable and is not convertable. The only way for the priest to die is to get dunked. And I for one don’t plan on dunking any priests.