Scum mafia: On Cecil pond [Game Over]

Because you have explicitly stated the desire to lynch spawn. Strongly. And yet you vote for two players. What is your angle? Why are you voting for two players when you WANT SPAWN DEAD? I agree with Ed that your stance is hypocritical. Why should you get to vote for two players when you have explicitly stated that spawn should be killed? It makes no sense. And is unfair to everyone else.

Gah!

To be a little bit more toothy about it. Allowing scum to vote for two players allows them to hedge their bets. With one vote, scum have to make a decision, “Do I vote for scum, or do I vote for Town?” which is an uncomfortable position. With two votes you ease their decision by letting them spread their votes out… a scum here a town there…

I don’t want scum to be comfortable.

OK, I find that more understandable. I was thinking in terms of more votes = more information, and that scum would be uncomfortable making more votes than they had too. The hedging aspect hadn’t occurred to me.

The only reason it would make sense to look at **Peeker **tomorrow is with the knowledge of Scuba’s alignment. If **Scuba **were to come up Scum, what would be the reason to look at Peeker? We’ll be looking instead at the people who *voted *Peeker. Lysing him without that crucial piece of knowledge is a pure shot in the dark.

To be honest, I’m not sure that’s all that bad for Town. I would say that a major reason why scum lost T2 was because of exactly this kind of voting pushing a fellow scum over the top at a critical juncture of the game.

As for the Scuba_Ben train, I don’t find it significantly less substantive than the peekercpa train. Personally, I’d prefer a two horse race to a one horse race anyway. I’d prefer one of the horses to be Freudian Slit, but that doesn’t seem to be happening.

Possibly. But are you saying that in T2 you had two votes? I’m pretty sure we didn’t.

Look at it this way. If we had 5 votes, do you think that would be better or goddamn confusing?

Unity. A very special number.

T2 was a borda count game. Everybody had three votes. One counted for 3 points, one counted for 2 and the last counted for 1.

Yeah, there is that assumption. I guess I’m still looking at the game through ‘peeker is Scum’ goggles. I should stop that.

Yes, I understand, I only put forth the idea. Sometimes it helps to have concrete examples to work with when trying to discern which options are viable.

Yes, I read and understood that post.

What that post fails to take into consideration is the actual game. We’re assuming that we have no information at any point, and that the only real information we have is from the dead players. I disagree. We have information now. We get information in a variety of ways. I maintain that there may be times when it is to our benefit to use an extra player lynch to gain more information sooner.

Think back to Colorless, when Freudian was on the block every Day, isn’t it likely that lynching her along with the other lynch might have provided a good deal more information?
I think that’s the problem when we draw up strategy in the abstract.



              Case 1              Case 2
Lynch One     No Information      No Information
Lynch Two     No Information      L1+N1
Lynch Three   L1+L2+N1            L1+L2+N1+N2
Lynch Four    L1+L2+L3+N1+N2      L1+L2+L3+N1+N2+N3


L1, L2, N1. N2, who are these players? No, once we assign them to players and look at thow they are currently playing, we already have information.

This isn’t a strictly by the numbers game. Sure numbers are helpful, but a lot of it is gut, thought, insight, investigation…

I mean, unless someone wants to drag up Chronos’ program and use that…which, I think will be proven ineffective whenever her runs the data from Colorless through it.

We don’t need any more information on any of the Spawn.

I’m assuming that in the case you cite that Freudian was scum and that you wished you had lynched her. Well, the converse is true too. What if Freudian was Town? Wouldn’t you be happy that you didn’t lynch her?

Whatever. Your failure to lynch scum is NOT because you couldn’t take out two at once. It’s because you convinced yourself that lynching Freudian was not the right thing to do.

I’m not saying that flips are the only information we have, only that town should be able to make better decisions with more information.

OK, lets try a concrete example. Lets say we lynch peeker toDay, and keep an open mind on Ben. Tomorrow we should be able to make a better decision on whether Ben is scum or not:

  • Maybe a vig or an SK will take out a scum? That would give us a big dollop of information.
  • There are likely to be one or more flips during the night. Inevitably, some townies would have been suspicious of any killed townies. We now have a clearer read on the game, and more energy to devote to the case on Ben.
  • If he is town, there is a small chance scum might NK him. Unlikely, but not impossible.

Postponing a lyse of spawn doesn’t give us any more lynches in total, which is the critical number in a game of Mafia.

I may have to drop any suspicions I have based on the mechanics of this game. I was thinking Ed was playing a strong pro-town game, now I’m not sure what to think.

well, not exactly. I was 100% sure that lynching Freudian was the right move for Town in that game…

If YOU had lynched me, you would’ve had some ‘splainin’ to do, 'cause that would have been seriously gasterdly.

Yes, you’re right. For now anyway.

It’s still best in this case to lynch Spawn.

I’m just cautioning against taking such a strong stance on lynching Spawn that it’s difficult to overcome our predisposition in the game.

I think our discussion has been too abstract so far. As a game gets going and things get complex, it’s never so cut and dry as when we talk about Player A, and Player B, and Player C.

You say that we can make better decisions based on more information, and tehre may come a time when we should be willing to sacrifice letting a Spawn live to get even more information.

Ad, while I agree that now isn’t the time, I don’t want to get so firmly entrenched in lynching Spawn every Day that we never overcome that mindset.

How am I suddenly not playing pro-Town? By continuing to suggest that we keep our minds open?

Sorry. But you can’t seem to acknowledge that it is possible that I both see and understand the same things you do, and yet have reached a different conclusion. I am not accusing you of failing to grasp game mechanics, in spite of the fact that your opinion on this differs from my own. It’s actually insulting, a little, the implication that the only way I could have reached a different conclusion is if I’m “having problems” (or, I guess, pretending to, though why I would do that is utterly beyond me).

I can help you with that. I’m not having any problems with the game mechanics. I understand them perfectly. I understand your argument, and sach’s argument. There is not one bit of it I don’t follow or don’t grasp.

I don’t agree with you. I think you are wrong, incorrect. I find your argument unpersuasive, in spite of the fact that I understand it perfectly well.

Seriously, I can do this all day if I have to.

story, I think earlier someone asked you to give a concrete example of why we should double-lynch players toDay specifically. Can you explain why a double-lynch on Day One is the right thing to do for Town to set us up for the rest of the game?

So Story, how do you suggest we mitigate against the risks of scum executing manipulations with their two votes each while keeping our minds open to the possibility of voting to lyse two players?

Vote total:
Spawn 18
peekercpa 7
Scuba_Ben 6
Freudian Slit 2
Zeriel 1
fluiddruid 1
DiggitCamara 1
storyteller0910 1

1: special_ed – peeker (353), Spawn (353)
2: ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies – Spawn (193), Scuba_Ben (549)
3: Drain Bead – Spawn (191), fluiddruid (316)
4: Oredigger77 – Spawn (194), Scuba_Ben (482)
5: storyteller0910
6: Meeko – Spawn (182), [del]fluiddruid[/del] (334-386), [del]peeker[/del] (386-507), Scuba_Ben (507)
7: Mahaloth – Spawn (209), peeker (209)
8: Freudian Slit – Spawn (183-314, 441), peeker (282), [del]sachertorte[/del] (314-441)
9: USCDiver – Spawn (246), peeker (509)
10: Alka Seltzer – [del]Spawn[/del] (249-470), DiggitCamara (419), storyteller (470)
11: peekercpa – Spawn (186), [del]story[/del] (186-229), Zeriel (229)
12: Natlaw – Scuba_Ben (460)
13: Zeriel – Spawn (204-277, 345), peeker (204), [del]sachertorte[/del] (277-345)
14: DiggitCamara – Spawn (285), Freudian (326)
15: amrussell – Spawn (247), Scuba_Ben (428)
16: KellyCriterion – Spawn (374), Scuba_Ben (529)
17: Scuba_Ben – Spawn (225)
18: sachertorte – Spawn (202), Freudian (489)
19: fluiddruid – Spawn (296), peeker (296)
20: TexCat – Spawn (198), peeker (488)
21: Rysto
Not many votes today. Oh, and especially with two players being so close, I’d appreciate it if folks double-checked my count.

I have tried to do this repeatedly. Can I just refer you to my seven thousand, six hundred and twelve other posts on this subject? No? This post is going to set off another twenty responses, none of which will persuade anyone, and on and on into oblivion. OK, in a nutshell: lynching twice allows to eliminate two suspicious players instead of one, thus eliminating the tedious drag on the game that happens when the second-choice for Day One’s lynch hangs on for Days before eventually getting lynched. It generates more information more quickly, something that sach is poo-pooing but that is of value to me.

Most importantly by far, it somewhat increases the chance that we will actually kill Scum. I have found that the biggest pro-Town moment in any game is the first lynch of Scum. Without a lynched Scum, the “storylines,” as it were, aren’t ever particularly clear (no matter how much information has been generated by other means). As soon as one Scum is dead, you can start to see the shape of things much more distinctly, and develop more intelligent hypothesis as to the missing pieces. If there are Scum power roles, then eliminating one of them early is a bonus, but even if there aren’t, I still view lynching at least one Scum as early in the game as possible very critical. I don’t think even my critics will deny that lynching two players instead of one increases our absolute percentage chance of accomplishing this goal toDay, right? As I don’t see the downside of a double-lyse (the persistence of a single Spawn) as a problem worthy of consideration at this point, I am thus in favor of the double-lyse. I would prefer to be extremely aggressive in pursuit of that first Scum lynch. Others would not. I’m OK with this. Let’s just keep going.

I have no interest in mitigating against that risk. If the Scum attempt to execute vote manipulations at this stage of the game, then you know what? That’s awesome! Vote manipulations are (comparatively) easy to spot; the vote record is transparent and can be followed in real time. If the Scum try to use the option to double vote to play games, you don’t think it will eventually show?

storyteller0910 NO VOTES
Rysto NO VOTES

Alka Seltzer – TWO 1-OFF VOTES

Natlaw – Lynch Leader + NO VOTE

Scuba_Ben – Spawn + NO VOTE

Drain Bead – Spawn + 1-Off Vote
peekercpa – Spawn + 1-Off Vote
DiggitCamara – Spawn + 2-Off Vote
sachertorte – Spawn + 2-Off Vote

special_ed – Spawn + Lynch Leader
ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies – Spawn + Lynch Leader
Oredigger77 – Spawn + Lynch Leader
Meeko – Spawn + Lynch Leader
Mahaloth – Spawn + Lynch Leader
Freudian Slit – Spawn + Lynch Leader
USCDiver – Spawn + Lynch Leader
Zeriel – Spawn + Lynch Leader
amrussell – Spawn + Lynch Leader
KellyCriterion – Spawn + Lynch Leader
fluiddruid – Spawn + Lynch Leader
TexCat – Spawn + Lynch Leader

btw, Ed, that’s actually a really helpful outline. I think I will steal it for future games, if you happen to not be playing.

I obviously intend to vote. Today got hectic and I didn’t get to do as much reading as I’d hoped, so I’d expect to vote tomorrow.