Micro 1023 - The Coalition: TBotITGBSMoD [game over]

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Howdy!!!

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I already know this setup fairly well, I'd like you lot who I have not seen play it demonstrate your own understanding of it so I can see your thought processes.

I want to be the first town to successfully get a pure coalition going.

Has there never actually been a coalition victory? I've played the setup once and I think there was a coalition victory in that one but it was partially bc RAS was cheating in that game.

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Mechanics in this game are pretty straightforward and not worth lingering on imo.

Strongly this.

Not a fan of Cheek's posting so far.

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the breaking strategy in this game is that we only have to determine 5 people that are town, whereupon we simply form a coalition of those 5 people and automatically win

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WRT cheek:

27 is pretty pointless of a thing to say early, that two players are reading as unaligned. I'm doubtful that a page-1 "unaligned" read has any meaning that would ever be true beyond random chance. I'm skeptical of an "unaligned" read to begin with, because of the nature of interactions there's no real way to pinpoint an interaction itself as TvS/SvT rather than TvT.

47/52 is putting meaning into something I feel is generally pretty meaningless.

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I somewhat like Vulture and GL so far as town.

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How do you feel about Vulture, implosion?

And FWIW this p-edited me posting that.

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I don't think we have. I've played with Gamma a number of times.

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My logic on VultureTown is basically the earnestness with which they seem interested in reasoning out the bet way to do setup things. In particular the second line of 61 feels like something scum who wants to be in the coalition would be reticent to say. I don't really mind the setup spec for its own sake particularly since they dropped it now.

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Implosion is oldschool and sees scum focus on mech like clockwork and he should be shot on sight.

This is, not true? I generally don't consider almost anything like "focusing on mech" to be alignment-indicative outside of context, and I think the context of the tone in which Vulture did it is townish.

Scum might focus on mechanics sometimes but it was page three and and Vulture had already said they were going to drop it at that point.

Like,

Implosion's read is literally "they seem nice enough talking about mech"

This is a drastic mischaracterization. In fact I pointed out the second line of 61 which is specifically not being like, especially "nice". The "scorched earth" rhetoric is something I think scum would be reticent to say because scum naturally will want to get into the coalition (so as to not automatically lose) and would probably have an instinct to not want to literally burn it down afterward.

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the coalition's read on me is really interesting because I'm not sure if that kind of reasoning is something I'm bad at faking as scum; I'd like to think it isn't, but it might be.

...incredibly once again, I typed this sentence before seeing 135

I think i'm kind of bad at scum tbh. I sort of focus on mimicing town thought in general, or at least my overall approach historically has been to try to do things that I think I'd be doing as town/read people based on the reads I think I'd be getting on them. Since it's most of what I focus on in principle I'm better at it than I am at other aspects of scum play. I don't think I'm an especially good scum player though.

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I suspect Iverson's read on me will flip eventually. I have patience.

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Bonus: Why do you think my read will flip? You have never played with me as town, and I tunneled you both games I was scum across multiple days (Once you were my partner, once you were town)

Well, odds are pretty good that you're town, and if you're town I think odds are good you'll figure out I'm town.

It's partially because you described your play on this account as aggressive and your push on me feels almost hollow, though not in a particularly scummy way.

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yes! now you're getting it.

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I think I tend to be liberal with early townreads as both alignments. Probably the way in which my reads evolve over time is a lot more indicative of my alignment though I wouldn't be able to quantify exactly how.

I have a feeling that all of the alts I don't know are going to lead to some of my reads being mediocre but well that's okay I guess.

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(Technically I should know who Vulture is since they joined a normal and I alt-check accounts before launching games, but I don't remember)

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I quite do not buy GL hard scum right now. The thing koba pointed out (i'm just going to say koba bc it's annoying to say coalition in this game) in 187 is a bit bad but I think his play over the last page or so is pretty town and I generally like his takes on the game. I don't necessarily buy koba as scum (or at least I don't feel strongly that they are); I thought they were townish early on but not for any real substantive reason. I do lean toward Iverson having been town but I don't think they really proved themself to be town either, at least not in like the day they were here. I think Pooky could be scum certainly. I have like

an

idea how to read pooky but it's almost certainly wrong and I'd be curious if others have more of a general sense of how to read them, because I historically (in like 2 games i think) have not been able to see any real way to read them.

Gamma townreading me is probably a good sign in principle.

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I quite do not buy GL hard scum right now. The thing koba pointed out (i'm just going to say koba bc it's annoying to say coalition in this game) in 187 is a bit bad but I think his play over the last page or so is pretty town and I generally like his takes on the game. I don't necessarily buy koba as scum (or at least I don't feel strongly that they are); I thought they were townish early on but not for any real substantive reason. I do lean toward Iverson having been town but I don't think they really proved themself to be town either, at least not in like the day they were here. I think Pooky could be scum certainly. I have like

an

idea how to read pooky but it's almost certainly wrong and I'd be curious if others have more of a general sense of how to read them, because I historically (in like 2 games i think) have not been able to see any real way to read them.

Gamma townreading me is probably a good sign in principle.

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It's okay we have time. Coalition kinda bleeds town to me because their strat of yelling about GL being a wolf isn't going to benefit them as scum and that frustration only makes sense if they're town.
~ C

Why doesn't it benefit them as scum? Isn't like, the #1 thing scum have to do in this setup to stop, y'know, coalitions of townies from forming?

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I definitely wavered a little before GuiltyLion's response. I'll probably waver again later.

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Right now I generally think GL's takes are mostly good or at least fine and like I personally don't want to jump to any conclusions in a setup like this while two slots have contributed 0 and another has contributed very little (tbh shelby's probably posted enough to try to read him off of, i could certainly imagine him being scum w his current iso).

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I like gamma's posting spree a fair amount.

The takes from GuiltyLion that I was referring to were generally not finding any of the active posters scummy outside of possibly koba (and the koba part of the take would be the part I'm least sure of).

I hope Art is scum because I feel like I'll never want to put them in a coalition.

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Uncle Shelby, what are your actual reads right now? You've implied suspicion toward GL and CoG and you've criticized posts from me and Black Ranger (without explicitly implying that they're scummy). As far as I can tell you've not called a single person town, which is something that in my opinion is a useful tool in this setup.

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also a read of two people as "unaligned" in the sense that they're not both scum is going to be correct >96% of the time by random chance so... it's entirely pointless before we have some flips, IMO.

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I like Art

As town? If so, why?

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HEAL: implosion, vulture, Black Ranger, GuiltyLion, The Cheek Of Gamma

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When Black Ranger said "I like Art " I initially thought it was a really townish thing to say if he was implying Art was town, because I can't imagine much impetus for scum to call Art town at that point regardless of Art's alignment. Even though it was just spurring on the mspaint for some reason some of that feeling has lingered and I am somewhat townreading that post as being off-the-cuff.

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i suspect essentially everyone has a problem with your coalition

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Except Art, Art is probably fine with it.

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tbh my pet scumread right now is Uncle Shelby and he's excluded so if I'm right on him then it's perfectly possible that that's all town. I still think it's really bad though!

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dude if you have a problem with my coalition you need to tell me who on my coalition is a baddie and why they're a baddie

There's nothing mandating I do this.

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When Black Ranger said "I like Art " I initially thought it was a really townish thing to say if he was implying Art was town, because I can't imagine much impetus for scum to call Art town at that point regardless of Art's alignment. Even though it was just spurring on the mspaint for some reason some of that feeling has lingered and I am somewhat townreading that post as being off-the-cuff.

This doesn't count.

I mean... it does?

My current coalition vote is extremely provisionary, I just kind of wanted to make one.

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Also I'd like to reiterate the request from earlier: does anyone in this game have a general idea of how one reads Pooky?

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I do and we have like two weeks. Calm down.

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Cheeky you should listen to your hydra partner who's played with me before, rather than you who has not.

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Relevantly @Pooky: I don't especially think you're strongly town right now and you haven't really given me much reason to want to dialogue with you. I'm happy to if you want to but I don't know exactly who is scum, I don't need to name a specific person on your coalition that I think is scum for me to think that it's not a good coalition, even beyond me not being in it.

What's your read on me right now? You've played a game or two with me at this point and I think you might have seen my town game and my scum game. 385 is literally the first time you've addressed me.

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Oh i'm not pleaing to you, I'm pleaing to gamma to overwrite your vote when he's online :p

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I guess I should say "cheek" rather than "cheeky" so as to talk to the Singular Entity of the Hydra.

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Do you consider me hard to read?

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My feelings on the whole right now are something like this...

Vulture: town, with a possibility of the read decaying over time, but for now decently solidly town.
CoG: town unless someone has some good reason to meta-read Cheeky as scum.
GL: town and showing it repeatedly.

Black Ranger: mildly town pending further bureaucratic review.
Koba: probably town. Could sub into my coalition for Black Ranger pretty easily.

Pooky: I do not know how to read them; Iverson was not outside their scumrange afaik though there are a couple of things they did that I mildly liked, but there are, right now, people I'd rather put in a coalition.

Art: I will never have any clue how to read them.

Uncle Shelby: gut says scum. To try to substantiate it... some stuff feels tonally a bit scummy. 308 for instance feels like "I'd like to say this player is scummy but I don't really want to get on their bad side yet". The kind of analysis he's done in his catchup strings is sort of non-complex in the way Koba was describing, i.e. I don't think it really would take much effort to fake as scum. e.g., the string of posts starting at 308 feels extremely surface level, pointing things out but not really with any sort of opinion on them. He described my post as extremely fence-sitty (and lol it was extremely so) but without any real implication beyond that. He said his catchup style wouldn't include listing townreads but like, the catchup style includes a lot of saying things that are very easy to fake as scum whilst catching up. I'm not really sure if I buy the feeling the need to remind himself that two players are unaligned later thing on page 1, I'm just skeptical that's really a thought process town is thinking about on day one of a coalition game. I could rant some more but I'm either right or wrong and I don't really see much reason to rant more because if I'm wrong I'll just be confbiasing myself.

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because implosion could be intentionally masking his scum meta in this game,

My friend, if I was capable of intentionally masking my scum meta at will I would do it every game.

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Also i figured out Iverson= Nexus, only person who is offended by my mere existence. If anyone has meta on them. Still think they're town from a fresh perspective though.

For anyone who missed it in signups, I am publicly Prism.

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GL, why is art in the middle tier of your reads? Purely sheeping Pooky? You realize Pooky's reasoning for Art-town is literally nothing, right?

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I get putting them in a coalition for the sake of having the same coalition but I don't understand why they're there in your reads; you said you don't jive with a scumread on them but you haven't given any reason to see them as town.

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And FWIW I do have reservations on Pooky obviously but at this point I think that coalition with me instead of Art (what you had as your coalition before swapping) is pretty good right now, albeit not really a coalition since Pooky and Vulture seem to have reservations about me.

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I kind of just ask that if that coalition fails we policy Art. I feel like Cheeky is tunneling on me and is just gonna interpret everything I say as scummy, and Pooky is very locked in their ways, so it might be better for me to not be in it if we do broadly want both of them in it so that I'm not policied if it fails.

(author's note/lampshade: perhaps cheeky will interpret this post as "implosion is scum, therefore he must be trying to sabotage the coalition since I know he's scum and now he needs to make it look like it's actually bad"; or perhaps cheeky will interpret this post as "implosion said he doesn't need to be in the coalition, so there must be scum in it already"; only time will tell; yes i am annoyed that i'm being tunneled)

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I just don't understand how 3 people have Art in their coalitions.

One person said they think Art is town for no reason, another person said they're sheeping that person, and another person has now added them to their coalition (though to be fair cheeky has now asked about swapping art with koba).

Where is this coming from? It's entirely possible Art is town but they're seemingly bubbling into coalitions with no actual reason, and I feel like if the coalition fails it's going to lead to a sort of poisoning effect where we can't really resolve anything without eliminating them. I mean maybe that's for the best even, idk. I still just am so skeptical of people claiming they can read strongly into art; I can buy koba's take that it's just unlikely that a townie would have a me/koba team as their take but I don't think it's like, particularly strongly likely to be correct. And none of the people who have included art in their coalition have given a valid reason why they're town afaict.

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I guess I realize now I did say “middle tier” which makes sense but I really don’t understand sheeping pooky which you said you were doing.

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guiltylion can you please post more almost every other person in this game is driving me mad

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Total of 3 slots posted today, I see.

Art decoalitioning uncle shelby is neat I guess.

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I’m willing to buy that post from Art is townish, fairly significantly. Don’t want to lock town them but I don’t object as much to them in a coalition (obvious irony but etc).

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Vulture, you called Uncle Shelby towny earlier - why?

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I'm not sure I'm interpreting 534 correctly but I no longer feel the need to policy you off a failed coalition

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.-.

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Not a single player even

tried

to read into my replacement as far as I can tell, let alone cited it as a towntell. My slot was more widely townread before I placed out than after.

Absolutely pathetic.

Would you not have replaced out as scum? I assumed it was just a blacklisting you didn't know about beforehand and that you'd do that as either alignment.

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Anyway my contribution to this game was uh, ultimately nothing. But at least I now get to say some people can't read me :p

I wasn't really surprised the coalition passed but I definitely wouldn't have been surprised if it had failed. Of course one big reason for that is that my one scumread was out of it, and whoop de doo turns out that my one concrete scumread was not only outside the coalition, they were the only townie other than me outside of the coalition...