Welcome Kyrie
Welcome to the game!
…unless you’re a Cultist, in which case I hope you die soon.
–FCOD
Oh yeah, that’s another thing. Most of the two pages I needed to catch up on consisted almost of nothing but Oracle and Apprentice talk. Whatever happened to trying to find out who was on your team or not? 
To HOPEFULLY get it back to that, I’ll start.
Right now I’m suspicious of a few,…most notably Clockwork Jackal/Kyrie for CJs few posts earlier and sachertorte for seemingly wanting to investigate the roles as much as possible. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of others have spent time talking about this too but I’m in the mind of those who think that it doesn’t really hope town and doesn’t really matter at this point. How much more do you need to learn about it? What else are you confused on? Anaylzying is good and all, but even I know sometimes it’s too much. At you’re looking at a world class analyzer here.
And lastly, the only other one who has been brought to my attention is Pleonast by way of storyteller. But granded, he’s the lowest of them all.
Now that CJ was subbed out, I’d really like to see a lot of posts from Kyrie.
Obsessed is a good word; I don’t deny it. Although I’m obsessed with analyzing game mechanics in general, only so far it’s been fairly investigation oriented. I posted my thoughts on the Avatar which is admittedly radical, but does present a pretty cool option for what we could do if investigators found the Avatar but we had no nightkillers to dispatch him at night. I don’t have any good ideas on the Prophet. Obviously we’d like to dunk him ASAP, or at the very least get a recruitment to happen sooner rather than later, but I have no ideas on how to enourage this to happen.
Lately my thoughts have been drifting to non-believers. Someone upthread said something about thinking the number of non-believers could equal the number of Believers. That got me thinking. I don’t think that would be the case, because that’s quite a lot of millers. The fact that the game is designed so that non-believers can win with believers makes me think the number of non-believers is fairly low, but not tiny. I’ve also been thinking about what to do about non-believer investigation results or role claims.
Take a look at the forbidden thread for M3. I think that pretty much establishes my mindset, approach to game analysis, and general obsessive demeanor.
I see what you’re saying, but I don’t think it matters. The Oracle will investigate a certain number* of randomly chosen people during the game. It doesn’t matter what criteria he uses to split the pool - either his investigations will include the Apprentice or they won’t. I’m assuming no evidence arises during the game to suggest a possible Apprentice to the Oracle; if it does, then he should follow his hunch, of course. But otherwise the only difference is that an external observer with full knowledge could see that the Oracle was predestined to fail. He could see that anyway, if the Oracle published the entire list of investigatees at the start of the game, whether the Oracle had split the player list in half by number or by any other means.
Summarising: If the Oracle and Apprentice are investigating opposite halves of the player list, there is no objective difference in the chance that the Oracle will find the Apprentice; but there is the small improvement in that the two are guaranteed not to investigate the same person. (Not that this is a huge chance anyway.)
- About 7 each given the death count per day and the probability of the Oracle or Apprentice getting whacked.
Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou.
Just to clarify my position;
We knew this already. We all get your point sachertorte. The benefit gained by this idea of yours is so infinitesimal that ANY risk it adds to the oracle is soooo not worth it. Enough of this however, at least from me.
sacher, the way you cling to the Oracle/Apprentice discussion is amazing. For the record, we understand your plan perfectly, as Queuing has already stated. We just don’t think it’s a good idea, as has been explained so many times already I have lost track. I would vote for you if I thought a cultist would be stupid enough to paint such a wide target on his own back. I am more inclined to think you may be just an overzealous believer, but we’ll see.
Idle Thoughts, re-reading your post, I see you did not defend MadTheSwine per se. And I have already stated that I found **Clockwork Jackal ** somewhat suspicious as well. I am STILL pointing an FOS at MtS. He originally pegged both **CJ ** and Hal ** as suspicious. When CJ ** defended her(him?)self and responded to MtS by saying he himself looked scummy, MtS accused her of a revenge vote and voted for her. It was pointed out that **CJ ** did not, in fact, cast any kind of vote. MtS acknowledged this but kept his vote. If his vote had been prompted by the supposed revenge vote, why wasn’t it retracted after he found out his mistake? If it was the original “scum tell” that prompted the vote, why **CJ ** and not Hal?
MtS also accused CJ of twisting his words, but to me CJ’s interpretation seemed like a valid one. Saying that discussion of X is a scum tell does sound like an attempt to stop people from discussing X. (X = the distribution of the roles amongst the players.)
But like I said, I’m waiting for MtS to come and defend himself before I cast a vote.
The anser to your second question, if I’m no longer advocating a random Day 1 vote for the town. Not because I’m convinced it’s a bad idea, or unimplementable, but because with so many people opposed to the idea I’m not interested in shoveling sand against the tide. Plus the approach is only mathematically sound if employed by the entire player base, which it obviously won’t be.
Ok, going back to post 294 we find the following list of objections, specifically.
We could also do something like post a random number generator based on an anagram or hash of your username, so the randomness is transparent and in-thread. So we would know the votes were not cooked. Probably too much work though. Say everyone went to a website and ran an MD5 of their username and then ran all the numbers in it together to make one big number, then ran that through a modulus operation for the number of players. That would be random, but verifiable, so no one could cook their votes. No one could “respond” to a vote by throwing their weight behind a townie. Multiple passes would be necessary to achieve a majority(making a new player list from the ones who had the most votes and using a lower mod number the next time), but it would be impossible to cook the votes this way, so the time factor goes away.
Ok, I gotta ask. How in the heck did you figure out the odds of hitting a power role with a “normal” vote? I guess you could say the town rarely hangs power roles because those roles roleclaim at the 11th hour and avert disaster, but then they’re as good as dead anyway because the scum will kill them for us(probably after we speed lynch some other poor townie).
With purely random votes we’re looking at a number of scum divided by number of players probability of lynching scum. We’re looking at the same formula for pro-town power roles. We know we have at least 7 pro-town power roles, and, based on NAF’s info, probably 7 or 8 scum. So the odds of hitting a scum are probably equal to the the odds of hitting a power townie and both are less than hitting some other role. Roughly 23% chance of hitting scum, and 77% chance of hitting pro-town, a 23% chance of hitting a pro-town power role.
I’ll cover your comment about traceability of the reasons behind a vote after the next bit.
Not true, the conversations still contain nuggets of info(although probably not useful until we have a larger body of data including how people react to night kills and the revelation of who we dunked) it’s just the first day’s votes which provide no useful information. Which, let’s face it, the first day’s votes aren’t that useful anyway. You can’t establish a pattern from a single data point, and scum can pretty much all vote for scum on the first day and they’ll be lost in the noise. Aside from the case of them all voting as a bloc(which would be suicide), we probably won’t be able to glean any useful information from Day 1 votes, ever. So why not make the scum vote randomly?
Let’s look at the pros of a, verifiable, random voting process. Firstly, it’s verifiable. 
Secondly, it does what so many people here are trying to do with their FOS and early votes, except with teeth. It straps someone into the dunking chair and says “tell me why I shouldn’t let the fishes nibble your tasty bits.” A honest townie can either take one for the team, or roleclaim. If they’re a power role they get a reprive, if they’re a Monk, they get off. If we aim the vote process at scum they can either claim power role, in which case we expect them to be sacrificed during the next night or two or swing the dunking chair back their way, or they can take one for the team. Scum claiming Monk is a Bad Idea™ because all it takes is one real Monk counter-claiming and then we dunk them both and have a nice trade of 1/23rd of our citizens for 1/7th of the scum.
Thirdly, it’s an objective, transparent, process. If we use subjective processes, such as our own guts, then they can be manipulated by those with more information than us, i.e. the scum. If we start a bandwagon for someone the scum know is the Prophet, they’ll work hard, subtly, but hard, to derail it or start another for someone else. How could they do this with an objective, transparent, process? Say, “please don’t kill him/her, he’s/she’s the prophet” or support his/her false roleclaim(and give themselves away in the process)?
Ultimately it’s down to math and game theory. The study I cited shows the random vote to be an optimal strategy for the case with no detectives. I say this applies to Day 1 because the Oracle, and his/her Apprentice, have no information, so they may as well not count. The math works out, and even though I’ve said it before, the standard day 1 voting tactic on Mafiascum.net is random voting. It hits a townie more often than not, but it negates the scum’s greatest advantage by forcing them to vote without including the hidden knowledge they have in how to vote.
More to come, including a meta-discussion about the value, or lack thereof, in discussion pro-town strategies and some particular comments.
Enjoy,
Steven
Last edited by Mtgman : Today at 4:21 PM. Reason: Added fake edit tag to mess with people’s heads. 
Now I wish I really could edit. 
That first sentence is mangled. Suffice to say I’m no longer advocating a random voting process.
Enjoy,
Steven
Well, of course, there are no absolute tells. Whatever people identify as “mafia tells” are avoided wisely by the mafia, and presenting such tells also manipulates the townsfolk into acting defensively and not exuding such “tells” so they can continue play. That was in essence the point of my point - defending other posters in Day One isn’t a true tell, as there are many reasons why not to do it as Mafia and reasons to do it as Town, contrary to FCOM’s assertions.
Nonetheless, some strategies are more viable than others and I maintain that it is best to stay off the radar for the first few days for Mafia. Loud people, or, contrarily, people that lurk too much are accused, but seldom are inoffensive or unaccusing souls. These tend to be accused later, but not in the early game, and when it comes down to it, these threads are so long that mild patterns (unlike voting/FOS) are difficult to track and digest real life days and weeks later.
In any case, my ultimate point is that NAF should not be suspected based on the strength alone of an argument that doesn’t hold true, which is, defending someone is scum behavior. I don’t believe that it is based on my experience in the games; it is very likely to be one of the following:
- An honest Citizen explaining their thoughts innocently
- A scum trying to hide their trail
- A power role trying to breadcrumb (unlikely now)
It is accordingly less likely the earlier it is posted to be done by a pro-town detective-type power role as it is very dangerous to post anything in such a role that you are not sure about, as it is very likely to be taken as God’s truth if you die (though this is arguably not the case for Day One as long as town is on the ball enough to point out that no investigation could have been done yet, but, it is also the case that if the person ends up actually posting suspicions of them due to an investigation result, and dies, it dilutes the effect somewhat if the trail goes back to Day One as well, so caution is advised).
Huh? Wha? Did you just say that they should out themselves after 4 or 5 Days? Why would they need to do that?
FOS DiggitCamara
In general I agree the pro-town power roles should not take marching orders from the hoi polloi. This doesn’t mean the group should refrain from discussing them. It’s not like we’re pointing to a particular person’s post and saying, “Oracle tell!” or “That’s a very Priestly thing to say.” The Cultists are still on their own to find the individuals who have the pro-town power roles. Discussing pro-town strategy does two important things. It helps educate the newer players on how those roles work. Also, it provides chatter for the holders of those roles to hide amongst if they wish to leave breadcrumbs or get feedback on a particular strategy they’re considering. I disagree with the idea that talk about pro-town strategies should be muzzled. Consider the reverse, would you think it wise to forbid discussion of Cultist strategies in case we come across a good strategy they hadn’t considered? There are probably three times as many townies as there are Cultists, invariably we’ll have a broader spectrum of ideas on how the Cultists should approach the game than the smaller group would. Strategies they may not have come up with in their Night-based discussions may well come up here. Should we refrain from discussing them because we don’t want to help them beat us? I think not. I think it’s important to have frank and open discussions about each and every topic anyone feels is strategically important. By the same token, I don’t want the game bogged down with theoretical discussions about extremely unlikely events.
This may seem weird to anyone who interpreted my post on page six(number 298 in the thread) as saying we should shut up about the Apprentice and Oracle. That’s not what I meant, I meant we should consider the Apprentice as a confounding factor whose information is so unreliable as to be useless, and therefore not worth much in the way of brain power to analyze the role. A large number of low probability events would need to converge in order to make the Apprentice(pre-death of the Oracle) a useful asset for the town. Sorry about this, whoever got the Apprentice, it’s nothing personal. If you could try to do a prescient “I’m about to die, here’s who I investigated, the results and when I did it” post right before you get sacrificed/crusaded/psycopathed/avatared/dunked I’d still appreciate it. Thanks
Enjoy,
Steven
Mtgman, in your discussion about random voting above, I think you said that power roles should roleclaim on Day 2 - the day following the random vote. I hope I misunderstood you, as I cannot imagine why you would want to expose the town’s secrets so soon, and for no good reason. Actually I can imagine why - if you are Cult.
If I misunderstood you I am sorry - some of those long posts make my eyes cross.
Because, hopefully, they’ll have enough information by then to reduce the number of unsuspected/suspected townies by a bucketful.
Think about it: after 5 Days we’ll have at least 10 players less (it’ll tend to be around 12, unless the Psychopath is activated and the math gets fuzzy from there).
Let’s assume 10 players less:
Therefore 20 players left. Deduct 2 “confirmed” town folk (Oracle + Apprentice). Imagine they only inspected living players until then (5 inspections each). Which pretty much gives the town an overview of about 50% of the Town–who should be suspected, who shouldn’t, who should be re-inspected, etc. etc. It forces the Cultist’s hand, since they’d have to attack unsuspected Townies.
Sounds pretty good to me.
Which is why it most certainly ain’t gonna happen.
I have no idea…but the way I see/saw it (which is why I am where I am now) is because of this post from MtS (the original one that started it). Reading that, it just seems it’s already apparent Mad had suspicions about CJ. Not only that, but it was something I notced myself, before I ever even seen Mad’s post there. So keeping his vote, even though what finally stoked it was misinfo about a revenge vote, still doesn’t strike me as all, off the wall, odd or shady. I’m not saying that I trust Mad any farther than I can throw him, I’m just saying, based on what I’ve observed and felt myself, that his kept vote isn’t all that off base, that’s all.
And about Hal, that’s something else entirely. It must have tripped his (Mad’s) meter but it didn’t mine. YMMV.
** sachertorte ** (2) - SnakesCatLady, Pleonast
** Clockwork Jackal / Kyrie Eleison ** (1) - MadTheSwine
** MadTheSwine ** (1) - storyteller0910
** NAF1138 ** (1) - FlyingCowOfDoom
** Voter - Action - Votee - Post **
** Pleonast ** - Vote - ** USCDiver ** - 221
** DiggitCamara ** - Vote - ** ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies ** - 225
** MadTheSwine ** - Vote - ** Clockwork Jackal ** - 244
** Pleonast ** - Unvote - ** USCDiver ** - 248
** DiggitCamara ** - Unvote - ** ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies ** - 251
** storyteller0910 ** - Vote - ** MadTheSwine ** - 281
** NAF1138 ** - Vote - ** Clockwork Jackal ** - 344
** FlyingCowOfDoom ** - Vote - ** NAF1138 ** - 383
** Pleonast ** - Vote - ** MadTheSwine ** - 387
** sachertorte ** - Vote - ** FlyingCowOfDoom ** - 388
** NAF1138 ** - Unvote - ** Clockwork Jackal ** - 394
** SnakesCatLady ** - Vote - ** sachertorte ** - 403
** Pleonast ** - Unvote - ** MadTheSwine ** - 405
** Pleonast ** - Vote - ** sachertorte ** - 405
** sachertorte ** - Unvote - ** FlyingCowOfDoom ** - 416
A LOT can happen in 4 or 5 days, and there’s no telling what the town will look like by then. We’d be better off discussing what to do now, rather than worrying about an uncertain future. I am tempted to say that power-roles should not role-claim until they absolutely must, but then again I am reminded of sturmhauke’s play in the first Werewolf game, where his initial role-claim seemed much too early to be sensible but ended up being the key to the town’s victory. So it depends on the circumstances; but again, what good does it do to discuss these things now, when we’re not even halfway through the first day?
DiggitCamera, you never answered my question about your post 342, when you said that a “random vote” might be an excellent strategy. Care to elaborate?
HockeyMonkey: I forgot to mention one other thing–I was referring to Days, not days, by which I meant to say that an outing of the Oracle and his/her Apprentice would take place in about 5 gameDays.
As to your question, HazelNutCoffee… heh… well, I didn’t want to wake up that pack of dogs unless someone else understood my implicit idea (I’ve done that before, remember, Idle Thoughts?)… on the other hand there is a REAL advantage in having two separate “detectives” around… but here goes nothing:
If everyone (and by everyone I mean at least 80% of the current player population) were to publish a “random vote” (with unvoting, of course), the Apprentice could hide his/her “random vote” among the noise.
With a truly random vote (by everyone else) you’d have votes flying every which way. However, the Apprentice with his/her “random” vote could actually purposefully be voting for the Oracle. The Oracle would only have to cast his/her real night-time investigation in the Apprentice’s direction…
Since everyone would be adding their own really random vote to the mix, the noise would make the hidden information all but inaudible to the Cultists.
Anyway, it’s just an idea.
It’s actually a good Oracle strategy to hide for a few days and then reveal what you know(almost certainly at the cost of your own life). The key to understanding why is to know what the real value of the Oracle role is. The role doesn’t sniff out Cultists, it validates townies. After four or five nights you’ve got probably one to two Cultists and three to four townies you can verify with a tell-all post. The town dunks the Cultists, and the verified townies join the Monks as a trusted block of players who can see the game through. You can’t get a majority without either convincing this block(and it narrows the field of people you can convince them to dunk if you’re a Cultist trying to misdirect the town). The life expectancy of an Oracle is usually about the number of residents divided by four, so we can expect them to live, at max, eight Days. Witness the crushing blow dealt by the Oracle in the original Werewolf game when the “wait a bit, then tell all, in a clear and unambiguous way” strategy was employed. I think, but I haven’t run the numbers, that if we have five Day/Night cycles worth of data from an Oracle, that would be enough to break the Cult’s back. It depends on how fast we lose Monks really.
One thing I haven’t seen mentioned, and I think we should, would be the night kill math. How do we interpret a night with just one kill? No kills? Three kills? How do we detect the recruitment? These are going to be key questions. I’ll think about them a bit and post my thoughts later.
Enjoy,
Steven