open 914: the coalition

[implosion]

May somehow named exactly the first 4 posters?

[implosion]

HEAL: Moros

[implosion]

Is this like the riddle about the barber?

[implosion]

Putting on the serious hat in the discussion for a moment:

If we all nominate ourselves, a coalition cannot be formed, so you need others to make compromises

This seems like a misunderstanding of the setup.

to form a majority, 5 players must vote for the same group of 5 names.

A "typical" coalition in this setup involves 5 players collectively deciding that they are the coalition, and thus all 5 of those players would vote for themselves. In fact it's technically mathematically impossible to form a coalition without at least one player voting for themself: there are 5 people on the coalition, and 5 people voting for the coalition, and in a player list of 9 people that list must overlap at at least one player.

[implosion]

And this compromise lies in not nominating yourself? Coalition-making is a different process from voting on coalitions.

This is also something to highlight in this setup; mechanically speaking, HEAL: s are 100% meaningless unless you heal 5 people. Voting for a coalition of 4 players will never actually mechanically contribute to a coalition forming because the day ends when 5 people have all voted for the same 5 people.

This is not to say we oughtn't vote because it's a good way to telegraph an opinion. But votes don't carry the mechanical weight that they do in a normal game of mafia, where voting for a player is putting them one step closer to being eliminated. Even voting for a full coalition doesn't have the same sort of weight because it own't matter unless 4 other people agree on the

exact

same coalition.

[implosion]

Whoopsie daisy

[implosion]

look at me, thinking that an opening tag without a closing tag would just sit there idly. maybe it worked that way in the last phpbb version lol

[implosion]

cj+may early townreads.

[implosion]

That means I'm forced to suffer nominating people that nominated themselves

That's not true!

You always have the option to just not vote for the coalition that forms

[implosion]

i did very seriously consider doing a Hurt on s 100% meaningless but i did not want to clutter the page :X

[implosion]

and the heal vote on you is because ceejay healed you

[implosion]

I do think you also have pretty good town equity

[implosion]

@Tsawwassen

, do you have previous Mafia experience?

i was somewhat wondering this

[implosion]

Going to take a gamble and say that Umlaut is likely to be town.

Why do you consider this a gamble?

[implosion]

mech is the spice of life

[implosion]

mafiascum is pretty dramatically slow paced a lot of the time, yeah. Depends a lot on the game, the players, etc, but there are definitely plenty of games that use all their time. Also lots of games that peter out and then people drag their feet, so it's good to be vigilant that things are actually still happening. That said, the coalition phase in this setup is very high pressure since a significant amount of the time town wins this setup, it'll be in the coalition phase, and it only ends when 5 people agree on an exact coalition. So it usually lasts most to all of the deadline.

[implosion]

I think it's town indicative for black to pushback skepticism on my slot, considering I hyperposted last game. Hyperposting town read scum is kind of a loss condition even more so than failition

Why is this pertinent? I wouldn't describe you as hyperposting in this game. Just that you think Black-town should have some latent skepticism that you're capable of carrying a game as scum? If so, do you think Black-scum would be less likely to express that skepticism?

[implosion]

Meh, mech talk. I nommed myself because I'm town and I want to nom people who are town.

I won't nominate people who nominate themselves

Weird. (Looks like you backed out of this quickly though)

i will nominate a person if and only if the person doesn't nominate themself

Okay, Bertrand.

Actually

HEAL: Tsawwassen

It's a bit moon-logicky but I find the immediate about-face towny.

@Tsawwassen

, do you have previous Mafia experience?

I'm a little bit tempted to significantly townread this sequence. The fact that there's 3 posts and the spacing of their timing I think points to town who saw something weird, then realized they felt it was not scummy, and then thought a bit more on it and realized that it might depend on previous experience level. I think it's a bit less likely to come from scum since Umlaut would have to manually decide to take both the step to make the second post, and the step to make the third post. Maybe way over-reading into things but curious if anyone sees what I'm seeing.

[implosion]

Will I eventually get lynched for being useless?

Friendly heads-up: we avoid the word "lynch" on this site, most people use "eliminate" or "lim" for short instead.

I guess one piece of advice is to look alive - if you're afraid of being perceived as useless, then be unafraid to throw opinions out there. If you're open about your opinions, you're unlikely to be perceived as useless. If you have trouble coming up with opinions that you feel have a solid foundation, try working with other players to analyze things and see if you can come to some kind of consensus.

from an objective perspective, i think there is a 72% chance that there's scum in the band. from a subjective perspective, i think it's Black.

Why do you think I'm scum?

i think you have felt the most like you want people to townread you.

Do you, Moros, want people to townread you? Or is it more like, you think Black is trying too hard?

[implosion]

Okay. Umlaut is

hard

town. 125 is a townpost. The sort of audacity to call it out as what it would be + wanting to claim that there's absolutely no ambiguity to the townslip, comes from town dramatically more often. Scum kind of need to leave townslips as ambiguous things. But the even bigger thing to me is the statement about Black's self-respect; I feel like that's an angle scum would come up with to argue from extremely rarely.

Black, is probably town, I think. The townslip isn't actually clearing if she thought it was 5:2 rather than 5:4 (for clarity, the reason it would be clearing is because if she's scum, it'd be clear in her mind that there were 2 scum, but that isn't actually what she was mistaken about). I still think it's town-ish because setup mistakes I think are probably baseline more likely to come from town since scum are talking privately with someone. I also like her offhand post annoyed that no one was finding her as town, I think that's an angle she'd take a bit more often as town than as scum.

[implosion]

Moros's play toward Black is very interesting but I don't really feel all that strongly about it at this particular moment, still digesting it. Maybe I'm not a fan of the comment toward Umlaut but that might just because I think Umlaut is incredibly transparent town.

[implosion]

I feel like I have a better grasp on this game than average for page 7 for me.

[implosion]

Actually, question for Moros: what do you think is Black's scum motivation to bring up the dumbtell again? You say you think she has a motivation, but I don't see why she would go out of her way as scum to lie about the setup misunderstanding, given that it isn't actually mechanically clearing for her even if she did have the misunderstanding. I think it's much simpler to think that she did misunderstand the setup (as town or as scum).

[implosion]

Okay. Umlaut is

hard

town. 125 is a townpost. The sort of audacity to call it out as what it would be + wanting to claim that there's absolutely no ambiguity to the townslip, comes from town dramatically more often. Scum kind of need to leave townslips as ambiguous things. But the even bigger thing to me is the statement about Black's self-respect; I feel like that's an angle scum would come up with to argue from extremely rarely.

i don't think this is true at all. scum who sees a town as you say townslip will know it's a townslip with no ambiguity. town who sees a town townslip will be unsure.

I agree with how scum perceive things but disagree about how town perceive things. Yes, scum will know it's a townslip with no ambiguity, but scum also know that that ambiguity will exist for the town; ergo, it's in their interest to muddle things, or (i think probably most commonly) simply not be the first to comment on them for fear of being disagreed with. Basically I think townslips have two interesting properties here: (1) they really test scum's ability to replicate a "typical town" mindset, and therefore would dissuade them from taking an immediate strong stance; and (2) they have potential to put someone firmly in the town category, which serves as disincentive for scum to point them out and advocate for their validity.

[implosion]

I am also sort of inclined to see Moros as town right now, less because the arguments it's making but more because it seems (ironically) pretty disinterested in being seen as town. It's lashing out at Black and Umlaut as being scummy, and is now unhealing me based on presumably my advocating for Umlaut being town. Seems like pretty poor scum play in this setup to be so fast to not want to work with people.

[implosion]

Actually, question for Moros: what do you think is Black's scum motivation to bring up the dumbtell again? You say you think she has a motivation, but I don't see why she would go out of her way as scum to lie about the setup misunderstanding, given that it isn't actually mechanically clearing for her even if she did have the misunderstanding. I think it's much simpler to think that she did misunderstand the setup (as town or as scum).

nobody bit on it the first time, so it didn't work. the second time it looked out of place and pushed to be more obvious for getting responses. it didn't feel like something town would say to me, because it felt unnecessary. i don't know if i think that still but i felt that way at the time.

This isn't really answering the question. What is the scum motivation for wanting someone to bite on it at all? Normally the reason that scum would want people to notice a dumbtell is because, if the dumbtell is real, it implies that the person making the tell is town. But that doesn't apply to Black's case, she can have made this mistake and still be scum (because she was mistaken about the number of town in the setup, not the number of scum).

[implosion]

Doesn't umlaut say it's just a working theory in 128?

Er, sort of? I mean Umlaut says that they think that's what Black meant, and I absolutely believe that Umlaut believes that's what Black meant because IMO it was the obvious interpretation of Black's posting to think that Black thought there were 4 scum. And if Umlaut believed that Black genuinely believed that there were 4 scum, then Umlaut would make the posts that they made; and if Umlaut is scum who thought that Black had townslipped by betraying that she thought there were 4 scum, Umlaut would not have made those posts because in practice scum don't want to give the townslipper hard credit. And Umlaut was hard committing to calling Black town for the slip, in essence; the fact that Black has now clarified that it isn't actually a townslip in that way doesn't change that Umlaut thought it was a slip in that way when they made their post (again, which I am confident of because I think it was the obvious reading of what Black had said).

I hope that paragraph makes sense because it might not, and if it doesn't then there's a good chance I can't explain it any more clearly.

A lot of the theory about town slips and the wifom/risk/reward of calling out something that could be a townslip is generically true in much more platonically ideal cases but it neither costs scumUmlaut a correct coalition slot, nor do I see how scUmlaut would think it was guaranteed to cost a correct coalition slot.

I mean, it's more about psychology than practicality. Practically, if someone did townslip, then a townie might notice it and sing its praises anyway. But psychologically, scum seeing a townie townslip is (i suspect) on average afraid to give the townslip hard credit for the reasons I've outlined.

[implosion]

I both feel like I have no idea how to read Implosion but vaguely feel there was like one game exactly one time where I identified his slot was scum so I feel like I'm supposed to know how. Like when my opponent played super giant into two facedown cards yesterday and I remembered I lost to that 3 times and beat it once but could not remember the details of the difference between those games and then lost and felt terrible as a learner of knowledge on planet earth

Are you a known alt? I don't remember playing with you (apologies if we have!)

I am I think pretty obvious town in theory here; moreso than the towngame I just played at least (which Black was in). My RL circumstances are very peculiar right now so I have a lot of time and energy to devote to this game and the distraction is very welcomed and I suspect I would still be posting a fair amount if I were scum but I would not be enjoying it as much as I am lol.

HEAL: Black, Moros, Tsawwassen, implosion, Umlaut

This is interesting because it's softly a list of you, me and my townreads; and also because it seems quite the politically infeasible coalition at this moment (granted that Moros is being a bit ambiguous about its read on me, but it did unheal me and is scumreading Black and Umlaut)

[implosion]

ceejay was also in that game but ceejay was scum in that game so probably wasn't really trying to read me

[implosion]

alas, i am comically bad at trying to figure out alts.

I want to townread the slot anyway for the multipost and was less worried about mistakenly coalling Umlaut vs. figuring out if you're tmi-ing. I no longer think the reasoning is thin enough to indicate that

Fair.

[implosion]

Is this a roundabout way of saying you don't townread me yet? It's ok I think you will come around though!

I don't really have any material read on you yet.

Looking forward to Aventurine's takes.

[implosion]

alt slip makes sense
z and also zzz

[implosion]

Why Tsawwassen and Cutter B?

[implosion]

words simply cannot express how voraciously i anticipate aventurine's takes. Each passing minute a torture.

ceejay, care to like, justify any of your takes or give us a sense of where you're at broadly?

[implosion]

I feel comfortable placing you and Black as town

Where does this come from? Is it by some comparison of our play with the 9:12 game, or otherwise?

[implosion]

ceejay called Cutter town for earnestness and Moros described her as lost in a towny way. I don't really take issue with townreading her per se, I just don't find myself agreeing with it at least yet. I don't really see why the looking at people by most vs least posts idea can't come from scum, including new scum. The Tsawwassen heal is fine but also like, not really outside of the generic scumrange of a typical new player in my mind. I think she can easily be scum who was using the splitting the player list into most vs least active thing as a way of just settling into the game and is continuing to just, generally interact with the game some. I guess maybe I do take issue with townreading her per se, i certainly think she can be town but I don't really buy that she's done anything particularly town-indicative.

[implosion]

And I do think that if she is town she's certainly capable of doing something more town-indicative, and I don't think what she's done is particularly scum indicative either. I just don't really see any thought process that I think is particularly unlikely to come out of scum looking at the game and analyzing it from the perspective of being scum, yet.

[implosion]

Tsawwassen gives me very mixed vibes. I like their opening, I like some of their vibes in general. I don't really like 189 the more I look at it. I don't really like the hedginess of the black vs may comment, nor the statement that it looked distancey but that they're still fine having one of the two on it? like, what's the thought process there? "I think both these people might be scum distancing from each other so I'm okay having exactly one of them on the coalition"? Kinda looks contrived.


The list itself that they come up with also strikes me as a bit contrived. I mentioned at the time that it was me + my townreads + them and I mostly just said that as an amused throwaway line but there is kind of a Bayesian argument that winding up at that exact list is something that scum might be more likely to do, because it looks like a potentially politically viable coalition that has a scum inserted into it. 198 is also sort of weird, like the way that they list everyone in the game as either someone they trust or someone they don't trust, idk. It doesn't really ring true to me to the way that town approaches sorting.

This is not a strong read, and it's particularly muddled because of tsawwassen being one of those alts who is to some extent playing like an alt.

[implosion]

I think I like Moros more as time goes on, it feels broadly unagenda'd. Possible from scum who thinks they're comfortably going to be on whatever coalition winds up forming but I think the pattern of its play comes more often from town who is just throwing things out there.

[implosion]

I agree with all of that intellectually but I feel better about healing a newbie that looks more natural than not than I want to heal one of the vets who are simulating their town game or playing their town game in similar ways. It's a fallible percentage play
In a way maybe it's a better heal than black even if I have more little things I like for black.

It's like

The absence of a mess in the kitchen is so much more of an indicator that a certain 8 year old didn't cook this evening than a certain 48 year old didn't cook this evening and there's an absence of anything sinister in the way cutter b presented the simple silly partition plan even if it's not very difficult to post about while carrying a scum mindset

Pedit

I can definitely see this angle. I feel like I'm in no rush though.

[implosion]

exciting

[implosion]

Aventurine, it feels like you're taking a very particular approach to interpreting information in this game - i don't want to say that it's to view things as surface-level, because it isn't quite that. But it seems like you're interpreting certain bits of information at face value. You see that Black was asking someone if they thought she was partnered to Umlaut and that she was asking you why you didn't have Umlaut in your coalition, so you interpret this as Black being partnered to Umlaut and scouting things out and trying to advocate for her scumbuddy. You see Umlaut "white-knighting" Black, and interpret this as them being partnered and presumably Umlaut advocating back.

This seems to me like it would be an out of place leap of logic in a normal game, but in this setup it seems entirely inapt. Of course some town members are going to white knight other town members or ask why people don't think that they're town in this setup - it's a setup explicitly about town members finding other town members and coming to a consensus on a group of town members. This kind of discourse is something I'd expect to see from town.

I'm also offput by just how little you seem to trust your own read - you say you're "not quite sure" how to read Black, and that you "don't know if Black is town or not, but think that these posts are weird" - and yet, you say you're more actively concerned about Black than about anyone else. You'd said that your current coalition is more about who you're excluding than who you're including, but the person you feel the worst in the game about, you still think could easily be town? How confident are you that your proposed coalition is actually a good coalition?

[implosion]

Because I couldn't really be bothered to

......? He's the only person you didn't mention

And yeah you talked about implosion but I want to know why you're putting ceejay in over him

Why do you want me to put implosion in my coalition so badly?

This post also fits in with the mindset I mentioned above - you're jumping from someone asking questions about your coalition members, to that person wanting you to change your coalition to something different. Why do you jump to that conclusion rather than e.g. Black wanting to understand your thought process to read you better?

[implosion]

I would also like to be explicit here that I do not have a read on Aventurine right now. I'm not convinced that this line of argumentation is scummy. I understand why Black sees it that way but I don't really see it that way, at least not yet.

My feelings on the game as a whole right now are that I like myself, Umlaut, and then Moros/Black (less confidently than Umlaut) as coalition members; I want to find a fifth. I don't feel confident on anyone else right now; I don't like Tsawwassen at this moment but everyone else I'm sort of not really leaning strongly on at the moment.

Also an open question to people broadly: how do you feel about compromising? I feel like the current state of the game is very, people describing Their Coalition. It feels like there's relatively little working together to build cohesion - there's a bit in that Black came to agree with Tsawwassen but on the whole it feels a bit like in this gamestate people aren't going to compromise a whole lot. Which is totally fine right now given how much time we have until deadline but I just want to throw out there that, eventually, it will become less okay.

[implosion]

Fascinating.

[implosion]

Not really sure that scum makes that sudden of a post here very frequently especially before I made my post clarifying that I don't scumread it.

[implosion]

Okay. Explain to me why my actions are scum-indicative, then. Tell me what I have to gain from these posts

If you are scum with ceejay then one of you has to make the coalition or else you just lose

I don't really see how this is in line with Aventurine's play? It's not like Aventurine has spent the past page waxing nostalgic about ceejay being town and demanding everyone add him to their coalitions. On the contrary Aventurine has staunchly refused to explain why it wanted ceejay in its coalition. And if Aventurine is scum with ceejay and just needs one of them in the coalition, then I don't see why Aventurine would need to shoehorn ceejay into its coalition at all - after all, Aventurine will already be in its own coalition.

[implosion]

HURT: all
HEAL: implosion, umlaut, black, moros, aventurine

[implosion]

i drew scum in this setup twice in a row and i'm just glad to finally get to play it as town

[implosion]

My personal individual confidence level at this moment is pretty high, but I certainly can be wrong and am open to being persuaded if you have reasons to disagree. (I also am looking forward to seeing more reads/analysis by them)

[implosion]

I feel like the baseline opinion that I've come to after many years is that changing opinions is, in most forms, a towntell. I agree that a natural significant opinion change is sort of a priori unlikely, but I think scum deciding to make a post where they abandon their whole-ass worldview and pick a new one is also quite unlikely, and we must be in one of those two universes. I think it's particularly unlikely for scum Aventurine here because I'm not sure what it really gains out of this maneuver, Black was actively scumreading it and I was kind of being coy but I don't think my post sounded exactly thrilled with its play.

[implosion]

this is @me or @black?

[implosion]

today was my first truly busy day in like 2 weeks. Tomorrow also likely to be busy, i'll catch up at some point

[implosion]

Black was vibing with May's RVS self heal in the opening, then I healed May. Then Black suddenly signaled for caution about putting May in the coalition 61. I found this sudden vibe change a little odd, and rationalized it as some sort of distancing play. It's a post with low stakes but high payoff.

I don't understand how you go from rationalizing it as some sort of distancing play, to your statement that you're okay with having one of the two of them in your coalition but not both. Distancing typically describes something scum do toward other scum. If you rationalized it as "Black might be distancing from May", why would your reaction to this not be "we should omit both Black and May from the coalition"?

I don't really see what's the issue with me putting people I trust and townread in the coalition?

I don't really feel viscerally from your posting that the people you put in the coalition are people that you evaluated and came to trust and townread, rather than people that you as scum felt were politically expedient to call town.

[implosion]

It's possible I'm focusing too much on the distancing play comment, I can tend to get caught up on like, what I view as logical missteps. But

Townreading Black somewhat, but not gonna lie I got a gut feeling that Black vs May might have been some sort of distancing play, so I don't want the coalition to have both of them in it, I'm fine with Black being in it though!

I still just don't understand how the thought process here goes from "might have been a distancing play" to "don't want the coalition to have

both

of them in it".

[implosion]

I think I intensely have no idea how to read May.

[implosion]

I think in the abstract I broadly feel like May's posting is more likely to come from town than from scum and I'm sure I could find examples to justify feeling that way but I don't know how confident I feel in it

[implosion]

Really would love to see more significant content from Umlaut. I don't really like having to de facto de-coalition my once- and maybe still-strongest townread for inactivity but I can't really complain.

Tsawwassen's recent slate of posting is very interesting, mulling around in my head right now

[implosion]

I think we are all converging on a coalition

Umlaut, implosion, Black, Moros, Aventurine

^ this one I think

Hmm, ok we are on the precipice of convergence

I originally thought that this sequence was scummy because i thought tas as town should oppose coalitions that don't include him (i know i would). but now i think tas is actually town because it does seem this coalition aligns with his reads and i think he might just be happy to have a coalition that aligns with his reads more or less... but this only makes me want to oppose this coalition even more because if tas and i are town, the chances of this coalition succeeding is very very low. an if he's scum then i was initially right that he is trying to push a coalition with his partner.

If you originally thought that the sequence was scummy, why didn't you mention in thread that you thought it was scummy at the time you were having those thoughts?

[implosion]

tas how do you feel about the following, drastically different coalition?
tired person, black, tas, aventurine, may

Also what the hecking heck is this question? Is this a real serious question? Did you genuinely think there was any possibility that Tsawwassen would answer in the affirmative, if so why given the coalition that they'd just said they thought was good and if not then why ask it?

[implosion]

I can say from recent experience being scum in a coalition game where both scum were on the outs, I think there isn't really an obvious way to play that situation frankly. Every option feels pretty bad in that moment. I wouldn't really expect scum to act in any way in particular, i think it'd depend a lot on the person and the game. I ultimately decided to support an all-town coalition in the hopes that my scumbuddy would get in and that the associatives would pay off later because i thought i was never getting on it.

[implosion]

I also do wish ceejay would show some more consistency in participating, I think I've seen glimpses from him that make me want to at least consider him as a coalition member but certainly nothing to the point where I actually want to include him on it yet


like his most recent post I think maybe comes from town more often than scum, in tone and in content, but like, that's not a super concrete thing

[implosion]

I think at this precise point in time I'd be partial to myself, black, may, moros, aventurine.

[implosion]

Both for seeming political viability and generally it feeling pretty solid. It's excluding ceejay, tired person, umlaut, and tsawwassen. I need to muse some on Tsawwassen's recent posting though.

[implosion]

I think I fundamentally disagree that approaching coalition games with a decreased interest in finding scum is the strongest way to win the setup

That formula is
You don't actually find 5 town because the easiest way to find town is watching townies hunt scum
The coalition fails, even if you don't believe point one, most do
All of your favorite town reads get mercked to the sky by NKs because everyone has gotten very public and confbiased about their strongest town reads
You make the entire setup divide and conquer but worse

I think this is at least partially true, but I don't think you need to worry about townreads getting merked in this setup because, until scum in the coalition is limmed, scum is *pretty much* obligated to shoot outside the coalition. And if we can lim a scum d1 after the coalition fails then we've

roughly

equalized

[implosion]

maybe tsawwassen is just town but i'm not going to ever admit it because i'm prideful

[implosion]

i think this is becoming one of those games where i'm like well there's an easy answer and now i'm just waiting to see what happens after we see that the easy answer is wrong :X

[implosion]

ftr i slightly scumread implosion and umlaut and undecided about moros. i will make my cases later today.

I will note that I think me + Umlaut is like, a *wildly* unviable scum pairing in this game, if that is the implication (which it doesn't have to be). I think I would basically never play this setup in the manner of be scum -> get somewhat townread -> call my scumbuddy super duper hard town out of nowhere and advocate a coalition core including both of us. Having exactly 1 scum on coalition is ideal for scum and in one of my recent coalition games I sort of went out of my way to not have to advocate for including both of us.

[implosion]

deadline creeping up.

replacements blah.

[implosion]

i find i am remarkably bad at actively caring about games that have things like multiple slots absent

HURT: All in the meantime

[implosion]

hey y'all how're we doing?

scum post

[implosion]

hello; i want your slot to be town because it would make me feel smarter, so please do that. thanks.

[implosion]

I do think you also have pretty good town equity

my first impression was kinda the opposite what made you say this?

expecting me to remember anything that i felt on page 3 is a tall ask. Looking back i'd guess something like tone/seeming ease of being in thread but idk for sure.

I think ceejay has made the townies posts of his career in this game

Which ones and why?

[implosion]

implosion is my strongest townread. I kept him in my POE to a fault in a recent game and like, looking at what he's posting here, he makes so much sense within the scope of how I understand implosion's brain

just very audibly groaned after reading this because oy, i do fear being pocketed

[implosion]

If I had to describe implosion this day phase, it would be like a lake that dried up. The contrast is unnerving.

I don't really fault you or anyone who had a townread on me and has had it degrade, i haven't exactly done anything in like, many days. But good god has the thread been boring to be in for a long time.

I think if the worst has a scum agenda in recent posting then that agenda is extremely simple, he wants to get townread and be on the coalition. I think the only real material agendas one could possibly have as scum in this phase are "get on coalition" and "get your scumbuddy on coalition", or slight variations in service of those.

I think they key to many things right now is going to be deciding how I feel about tsawwassen, a task that i have delayed for a very long time and will eventually need to actually settle on.

[implosion]

I think if worst is scum, viscerally it feels like there's a good chance the other scum is near the bottom of their reads list. They're trying to take the thread by storm to an extent and I think the way they're talking about the people high up on their list doesn't really strike me as scum->scum except possibly for like Moros, but I don't think Moros is scum. Or maaayybe black. But I don't think worst would often be scum with May or tsaw here.

I really want to hear from experience because I still want that slot to be viably a coalition member. Honestly Umlaut's flaming out is probably a big part of my getting demotivated - I had a pet townread for the first half of the day, the kind that made me feel like "you know, i feel like i want to hard townread this person off of like 5 early posts and keep that for the whole game, but let's just see how they continue posting, i'm sure they'll keep it up" and then whoops.

I'm mulling over worst's Aventurine postings but idk.

yeah tend to agree. I know it's not like super intuitive to pivot your reads as scum, but Aventurine has been coasting and posting spicy reads, couldn't explain said spicy reads, posted over-explaining uninteresting reads nobody had asked about, proved a lack of conviction in any of the original interesting reads, all while citing real life reasons for not playing the game DESPITE apparently being engaged enough to have fairly convoluted thoughts on fairly straightforward aspects of the game

the fallout from that conversation for me is that Ave doesn't have reads but is fairly happy to be whatever implo & Black pressured Ave to be

I feel bad for this but I just think Ave kind of got pressured past the point Ave expected to get pressured and floundered and that's what we're seeing

I do get that this is a straightforward reading, and that there's stock to be put in that. I guess it is possible for scum to see that they would find something convincing and feel the need to pivot for that reason. I think it's tricky because Aventurine has been sort of obliquely opaque about its thought processes and so I'm kind of substituting one in. I guess I'm interested to see what he says to this.

[implosion]

HURT: Tsawwassen
HEAL: May

i think that if the worst is scum then they were more likely to be trying to appeal to a town May than push their partner May into the coalition.

oh hey, a mindmeld

[implosion]

I think if worst is scum, viscerally it feels like there's a good chance the other scum is near the bottom of their reads list. They're trying to take the thread by storm to an extent and I think the way they're talking about the people high up on their list doesn't really strike me as scum->scum except possibly for like Moros, but I don't think Moros is scum. Or maaayybe black. But I don't think worst would often be scum with May or tsaw here.

do you think worst/aventurine scumteam is plausible? because i have a nagging feeling it might be ever since the worst convinced me that aventurine is scum.

Yeah i think it's plausible

[implosion]

maybe this is paranoid but I feel like implosion is finding too much comfort zone in a vanity town read on umlautslot.
At a certain point it's more organic to be relieved that maybe you got more info about something that was maybe a mistake on a low volume positive content slot (this is kind of how I feel about cutter B becomes tired person).
A mafia!implosion knows that the side project has become classified as an earnest thing and all focus becomes good focus

I don't really see how I've gotten "maybe more info" about anything. I've gotten no info on that slot since I declared it hard town on like page four because I don't really consider lurking to be alignment-indicative. I consider it to be an annoying information vacuum. Most games I play, I play through PoE, and it's pretty normal for me to get annoyed at slots that I feel aren't doing anything to allow me to possibly take them out of the PoE. The fact that I hard townread the slot earlier is just icing on that.

I have more to say on the game and stuff but in a meeting atm

[implosion]

I mean if there is large paranoia of me then i'm okay not being on the coalition but i do think i can assuage the paranoia in principle. i'm just sort of having trouble getting back into the game since the lull tbh.

I don't think black is scum, i do agree that her posting fell off in some way but i remember feeling like there were consistent townpings at the right time that i don't think that falling off is particularly likely to be meaningful

[implosion]

You made a post specifically hoping that in the future, Umlaut's replacement comes in and posts in a townish way. I would expect you to equally hope the new player open wolfs if you're town.
Do you see how at least on the surface this would look like a lack of curiosity to me? Like yes it's null but it's not "gee I wonder why he dropped of the earth was I right?" it's " gee I hope I get some stuff I can use to maintain my platform of my hard umlaut townread [so I can look like I'm doing things again]"

I might just not be understanding the point but like, my feeling on that Umlaut read at the time I acquired it was "this is something I want to be obstinate on". Like, I don't remember exactly when but I think some recent game I was thinking about the idea of reading people off of single posts/things and relying on a particularly impactful single thing to rely on for the rest of the game, but like, it isn't *literally* that, obviously. So I felt pretty obstinate about it for a long time and then I guess that obstinance turned into my feelings toward the slot aggravatingly fizzling out. I don't really know why i would have wanted the new player to open wolf, i'm not sure what you mean by that, like, the comment i made about wanting experience to be town was sort of a mostly-joke about protecting my own ego, and i think that me believing someone to be open wolfing is something i can think of like twice off the top of my head i've ever felt that way in my history on this site and one of them was wrong

[implosion]

The point is that you should be equally interested in positive and negative info about the slot
Did you genuinely misunderstand that the open wolf hyperbole was shorthand/rhetorical device

I was very hungry when i wrote that post and having a lot of trouble parsing anything (i have now eaten)

I don't know if I would have understood it as hyperbole even if not for that though. But regardless. I think this is just like, untrue about the human psyche lol. I wanted to be right, I invested emotionally somewhat in my umlaut townread early on and i wanted to be right. Of course I'd be interested in negative info if it showed up but I

wanted

positive info to show up

[implosion]

"
I really want to hear from experience because I still want that slot to be viably a coalition member. "

How is this "mostly joking"

it wasn't, that was referring to 538 which is what i thought you were referring to, i forgot i made the post you're quoting here

[implosion]

Like, do you think that there has been active negative information about umlaut/experience since early game? maybe that's the misunderstanding because i still don't really think there has been other than lurking/inactivity which i view as sufficient for me to relent that yeah we're not putting that slot on the coalition, but i don't see it as like, so significantly >rand scum that i would overwrite my earlier read

[implosion]

Going to take a gamble and say that Umlaut is likely to be town.

I don't really think this post is very common from an aventurine+umlaut team. (Yes i know people are saying they don't think this is actually specifically the scumteam, and also i agree we shouldn't primarily be thinking about this in terms of teams, but)

[implosion]

HEAL: Aventurine, ceejayvinoya, Cutter B, May, Tsawwassen

Can you explain your choices

It's less about who I'm including, but rather who I'm excluding.

Also just realized for the first time that this came after Aventurine made that comment about thinking Umlaut is town, which, uhhhhh..... is i guess just straightforwardly scummy? I get that the list was supposedly coming from a place of excluding people but I don't really see why you'd fail to include the singular person you had explicitly townread. I guess it's later explained that Aventurine implies it didn't like Umlaut's posting on page 6 which is between these two things but gosh if Aventurine could be transparent about any thought process at any point in this game it'd really go a long way lol

[implosion]

(This is not to say I want Aventurine on coalition, I just had a brief desire to skim its ISO and see if there was anything there about like, obvious team tells, since I still don't particularly think experience is scum (could be but etc) and worst's list made me go hm i should think a little about what coalitions explicitly exclude some viable teams or something)

[implosion]

I hate all of you

[implosion]

furthermore i'm pretty sure that if implosion is scum then they are spewing umlaut town anyhow.

This is not to say I want Aventurine on coalition

who

do

u want on the coalition?

I've kind of been waiting to get asked this because i realize i haven't said a concrete answer to this in a long time, i've like, almost typed up part of an answer a couple of times but i feel pretty blah about the coalition right now. I wanted to say me/moros/black/may + 1 but reading duck's reads list made me feel weird about that for some reason which is why i launched in to the brief tangent of thinking about aventurine's theoretical scumbuddy.

It might still be that though.

[implosion]

I don't have time to read. I'm okay if I'm not in coalition, I trust your (plural) judgement.

Having not read, have the opinions you've most recently expressed evolved over time at all?

[implosion]

Not sure if 759 is supposed to power wash 746 as insignificant or if you were too hungry when you read 746 or whatever

i mean i'm now triply confused given that you just healed experience based seemingly either on the argument i made on page 4, or based on 766 and 767 >_>

i think i have trouble following exactly how strongly you are saying things sometimes and 746 i don't think i even really read as you saying you thought umlaut had been actively scummy. I actually think i also might have misread the sentence as being about the reason that umlaut replaced out rather than the reason i didn't find umlaut's later posting scummy

[implosion]

i think putting me and tired person together in the coalition is a recipe for danger lol.

i'm not necessarily against it in principle, but i still haven't really come to see the tired person town arguments. i definitely haven't put as much energy into reading the slot as the slot deserves yet though

[implosion]

yeah i think i would actually support that coalition, in that at this moment i think i'm willing to support any coalition with me/moros/black/may. I don't actually specifically want experience on coalition right now in spite of all the everything

[implosion]

anyone who isn't a coward will rank all 126 coalitions in their next post

[implosion]

Hello; i am somewhat busy until later today but i think this is actually not bad, this feels like a path for the end of the day that we can squeeze a lot of info out of

[implosion]

Could have been nice to have a scramble though, I think scrambles are even more valuable. Yeah deadline was pending but this playerlist was active enough. But that's the past.

Assuming this fails, I think it's exciting that we will presumably start getting some actual honest-to-god opinions from experience and Aventurine now that we're playing regular-ass mafia. My first priority is going to be close reading tired person

[implosion]

duck, i'm lazy; remind me your best reasons for thinking tired person town

[implosion]

I kind of imagine the natural flow of the game fmpov being for it to turn into a 1v1 between me and tired person while apparently (at least some) other people are more interested in looking elsewhere on the coalition. it's sort of an interesting potential dynamic

[implosion]

Theoretically I want to stay open to Black's 25%+ chance of being scum but I resonated with a bunch of her feelings late day 1 and I don't think I'll ever escape this plastic bag if she's scum

It would have to be a drag me up the hill thing like eubie curse I think

I vibe with this post at least to an extent

[implosion]

I think Black and May are town right now. I kind of felt it earlier today but I think Black's posting right now is cementing her as town to me, the tinfoil comment and the way she's flitting about, etc. I do also partially see where she's coming from with tinfoiling me/may, I think our interactions this game have been kind of peculiar in a way that makes sense to me but that I can understand looking weird to others.

I also do sort of see what May is saying about me, I've been a bit picky and choosy about what I feel like actually interacting with this game. I don't really know what the exact reason for that is.

I'm going to try to ISO tired person again but every time i start to my eyes glaze over

[implosion]

I skimmed the whole thing and my eyes have indeed glazed over. There's not a whole lot there that I feel very strongly about. Honestly I struggle to glean much of anything that looks strongly alignment indicative from it to me.

[implosion]

There's like, some posts that ping me but I don't feel confident actually saying that I find them meaningfully scum indicative. 725 is maybe slightly performative. The way that they talk about their read on me in response to May talking about her read on me feels vaguely off-ish. I think i'm just having a moment of i don't know how to play this game and i'll get over it eventually

[implosion]

I also have thoughts and I'm going to say them.

I actually honestly think that it's not a bad theory based on what you see, and it just happens to be wrong in this game. I will point you to this game which is highly relevant meta; it's me as scum in a recent coalition game where I had a lot of sway/was broadly townread in the coalition phase and I did make explicit attempts to get my scumbuddy (Datisi, who got replaced by Save The Dragons) off the coalition. For instance this post I give an ordered reads list with Datisi 3rd scummiest. But especially this post I think is really important for understanding how I approach this setup as scum; my usual scumgame is to primarily just try to do whatever I think I'd do in that situation as town, but that post was me very explicitly trying to get my scumbuddy off the coalition with me (because it's mechanically advantageous) while hedging my bets (hence saying I wanted to swap my scumbuddy or maybe someone else for my pet townread).

[implosion]

Okay. new pet scumteam: duck/moros?

I'm going over my reasons for townreading Moros and they're not bad, I think, but they're certainly not ironclad. It's broadly that Moros looked unagenda'd and like it was broadly just giving takes and speaking its mind but I think this can also be interpreted in a negative light as scum who is riding an early townread and is content to not be the driving force behind where the coalition goes. And I mentioned earlier that there was some post from duck that would make sense if Moros is scum with him. This would make me incredibly sad because it's the two people who were hard townreading me most of the game lol

(I don't actually think this is specifically likely to be the scumteam and I think I'm more interested in limming tired person over Moros at this moment but while we're putting out pet scumteams)

[implosion]

okay
i guess i'm not ousting implosion from the list
HEAL: black, may, moros, implosion, tsawwassen

This is a super peculiar post. tired person, when you made this post, did you think that Black had just changed her coalition to match May's? Because here you heal May's proposed coalition in a resigned way but the only thing you could seemingly be reacting to is Black's unheal and heal a couple posts earlier but Black actually unhealed someone she had already unhealed previously.

I sort of assume this is what happened and if so this is highly relevant because it's tired person

thinking

that they were putting a coalition that is the coalition that passed, minus tired person plus Tsawwassen, at c-2. I.e., if tired person is scum, then either (1) tired person is not the only scum on the coalition or (2) tired person is scum with Tsawwassen, or (3) tired person was willing to gambit a correct coalition to c-2. All of these are possible but still worth pointing out, maybe someone else has already mentioned this

[implosion]

I'm wondering if the advantage you get from splitting is large enough to make you do the same thing every time you play. I'm bad at mechanics so I'm not sure, but to me it seems like it's only an advantage in the short term. There's a larger chance that one of you gets faded in the first few Days but after one of you is gone it's fair game. Scum could be in either group at that point

I also think it would be advantageous for you to do something different this game, so you can make the exact argument you're making now. I'm not really sure if that was the plan here though. I think if I'm right then coalition!May gained so much momentum that you couldn't stop it

The advantage from splitting is generally that it's optimal for town to lim on coalition first, and that if scum are split then on-coalition is 1/5 vs 2/5 if they're not. Honestly I think that the strict play-to-win part of my brain might be outclassed in this regard by the dopamine-seeking part of my brain that wanted a split coalition in that game lol. I don't think I would play strictly for a split coalition in 100% of games, and that's not what I'm trying to say by pointing to the meta - I guess strictly I don't really know how I'd play if put in this situation again as I'm town in this game and in the scum coalition game I played between that one and this one I was on the outskirts all coalition phase.

I'm not pointing to that meta to try to paint myself as town really, I'm pointing to it because I think it's highly relevant and might help out reading me, though I'm not 100% sure how. Frankly part of the reason I said I think the theory of me+may is sensible from an outside perspective is because I think a surface level reading of my meta from that game paints me+may as possible because I could see an interpretation of my play in this game as dancing around the idea of calling May town all phase because of a fear of double scum coalition or something like that.

Basically the reason the theory is wrong isn't because it's a bad theory based on associatives i think, it's because i happen to be town. Compare when I thought someone might be calling me + umlaut scum earlier and i was like lmao no

[implosion]

VOTE: tired person

[implosion]

I don't think I'm buying implosion's "I probably wouldn't do this as scum" argument,

okay first off you're very seriously misinterpreting my posting

i am not arguing that i wouldn't do something as scum. I explicitly said I don't know how I'd be playing this setup as scum in this game! I think there's a good chance that form a purely partner-play perspective, my play toward may could be exactly what i'd have done as scum in this game. Where are you getting this idea that I'm making a "I probably wouldn't do this as scum" argument from?

[implosion]

For the sake of doing the math.

If both scum are on coalition, EV is:

2/5: goto 1:6 mountainous, which is 0.543 EV.
3/5: mislim. scum shoot outside coalition. From here,

1/2: goto 1:4 mountainous, which is 0.467 EV.
1/2: mislim. scum shoot outside coalition. From here,

2/3: goto 1:2 mountainous, which is 0.333 EV.
1/3: scum win, 0 EV.

Overall EV: ((2 / 5) * (0.543)) + ((3 / 5) * ((1 / 2) * (0.467) + (1 / 2) * ((2 / 3) * (0.333))))
= 0.4239

---

If scum are split, EV is:

1/5: goto 1:6 mountainous, which is 0.543 EV.
4/5: mislim. scum shoot outside coalition. From here,

1/4: goto 1:4 mountainous, which is 0.467 EV.
3/4: mislim. scum shoot outside coalition. From here,

1/3: goto 1:2 mountainous, which is 0.333 EV.
2/3: scum win, 0 EV.

Overall EV: ((1 / 5) * (0.543)) + ((4 / 5) * ((1 / 4) * (0.467) + (3 / 4) * ((1 / 3) * (0.333))))
= 0.2686

This is actually a bigger difference than I'd have expected. Town is, overall, over 1 and a half times likelier to win the game if scum are together in the coalition compared to them being split, based solely on EV.

This is *NOT AN ARGUMENT FOR HOW I'D PLAY IN THIS GAME*, just doing it for its own sake and i might want to reference this in the future anyway

[implosion]

I'm sorry if I'm misunderstanding you! I promise it's not intentional. I just don't see any other reason for you to bring up the meta. You said you were hoping it would help us read you but you didn't know how, and I don't really know how either. If you've shunned your teammates as scum but you're saying you wouldn't always do that then it should be NAI for you

I think the reason I'm bringing it up is twofold: on the one hand, I am town, and in principle it's possible to distinguish my play this game from my scum game, and in principle it's your job to do that if you are town, so by giving you highly relevant meta I feel like I'm giving you a tool that you can potentially use to do that. Hence "i don't know exactly how this will be useful but I think it will be", because, well, I feel like if I was the kind of person who used meta much (and i sort of am and sort of am not, and idk if you are) and I was trying to read someone and there was such an intensely relevant game then I'd want to know about it.

But on the other hand, I just kind of think it's really neat that I'm in such a similar situation to a situation that I was recently in as scum and kind of wanted to point it out, I guess?

[implosion]

It's hardly a dump, it's tired person listing the 4 choose 2 possible lists of 2 people out of the 4 they think might be scum. My reads are actually very similar to tired person's except for my read on tired person.

[implosion]

And also that I still have some paranoia around Tsawwassen, I don't necessarily buy that their behavior around the coalition is as clearing as people think it is, but that's not important right now.

[implosion]

This is a super peculiar post. tired person, when you made this post, did you think that Black had just changed her coalition to match May's? Because here you heal May's proposed coalition in a resigned way but the only thing you could seemingly be reacting to is Black's unheal and heal a couple posts earlier but Black actually unhealed someone she had already unhealed previously.

i thought she just changed her coalition to match moros, and i decided that if the choice was between moros's and may's, i preferred may's.

makes sense. and also makes it a lot less relevant since a 2nd vote and a 3rd vote are pretty different i think

[implosion]

i think i've been pretty clear about that? moros.

[implosion]

i almost dropped a vote on moros instead of you just to see how it'd go down in the thread, but opted for this instead.

[implosion]

i'm reading up rn.
(i promise this isn't a prodge)

Exciting! What did you find?

[implosion]

because it was my top 4 townreads, i didn't have any particularly confident scumreads, and it seemed like a perfectly good level of compromise at that point.

like as down as I've been on tired person it's not like i've actually felt confident the slot is scum at any point

[implosion]

i did ignore it apparently!

I've felt more solid about Black and May lately, in short. I think the trajectory of Black's reads has been very haphazard in a townish way; like I said the me+may thing is something I think town can very reasonably come up with (which doesn't necessarily make it a significantly +town thing for Black but I think it is a little +town). I think the way that she's been seemingly becoming more stuck in that worldview while having been generally fairly fluid with her reads is townish. I thought her flat-out taking the lead and saying "this is the coalition, do we have the 5 people?" and reaching out to a bunch of individual people in that situation was quite townish, I think she was pretty likely to be on coalition at that point and she's definitely not the kind of player who would try to railroad a specific coalition for the sake of e.g. making sure scum are split on/off so I think her scum incentive to be so politically active at coalition phase end is sort of not there so much.

May has just townpinged me a lot since ~1/2 way through the game. I don't really have a problem with the way she's been paranoid of me. She's been even more all over the place with her reads to some extent iirc. gun to my head i'd say i don't actually have any

real

confidence in this read inasmuch as I don't really have confidence in my own ability to read May. But I think at some point I have to just accept the read if I keep getting pinged that way. e.g. 949 feels like a town post, just the way she's talked about her reads in general i think i could cite specific examples if you want but you also appear to townread her so. if i go and look for examples it won't actually necessarily be the same posts that made me feel she's town over time it'd just be the ones i notice now

[implosion]

And I haven't really felt bolstered in my townread of Moros as of late; 1012 for whatever reason screams town to my gut but it feels like Moros has been sort of just existing in the thread to an extent and there hasn't been a lot to grapple with in my read there lately. Basically voting you over moros out of lingering early townread.

[implosion]

(And I don't trust my gut on 1012, it just does gut ping me but i don't think it's actually materially much more likely to be a town post. I do actually think may's 949 is maybe materially more likely to be a town post, the tone of like, contrition and annoyance in it I think is probably tricky to fake)

[implosion]

actually fuck it.

VOTE: Moros


Maybe the pattern of early lingering townread is actually something that's really scum indicative. 965 rubs me the wrong way. It feels very waters testing, it reads as a really 1 dimensional view of the game, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. tired person's posting is generally not bad right now.

[implosion]

Didn't realize my vote on Moros was consolidatory.

Looks at the moment like May likely wields the hammer in the current trajectory of the day, given experience said they didn't want me or Black and Moros presumably votes me. I don't really love that the theoretical wagon on Moros is me, duck, and two people who have not really given any reasons for any reads they have yet... that's not to say I think experience is scum (I do not) but it's just kind of bleh

I would appreciate if duck could come in swinging defending me because if duck is town then I think he has spotted something real in my play; I do genuinely think that of town games I've played in a long time, this one would have been enormously difficult for me to fake as scum, particularly the early game but also somewhat throughout. In contrast to my most recent game w duck and black where I was probably more-or-less inside my scumrange as town.

Right now if I do wind up limmed it sort of feels doomed if moros/tired person are both town.

It seems like a foregone conclusion that if we mislim anyone today either tsawwassen or duck will die since the other two off-coalition people aren't exactly leading or being forthcoming (it's not guaranteed obviously but seems likely) so i think it behooves both of them to be as transparent as they can be with their thought processes right now

[implosion]

i don't really understand how everyone else was able to reorient their view of the game so quickly but i still think you're all town and i don't know how to fix that.

Can you walk through your current logic on everyone on coalition being town?

[implosion]

obviously they are not. but im not sure how to tell where i was wrong.

Well yes i understand this, but presumably you have reasons for each individual in the coalition for why you think that they are town, even knowing that one or more of those reasons are wrong. I'd like to know what those chief reasons are in the current state of where your head is at, without you having reread it. It doesn't have to be in depth, just like, a sentence or two on each person.

[implosion]

you can doubt it but it is true! i placed it then saw duck was voting there when isoing and had long forgotten aventurine was voting there because why would i have remembered that

[implosion]

it's also the kind of thing i would probably never actually lie about as scum

[implosion]

Black, where's the current strength of your Moros townread coming from? You mentioned that it was reinforced by the sequence around the coalition being hammered, what about that do you find strong town? And what is your current stance on tired person, you said you'd consider arguments about them but where are you at in general there?

[implosion]

@Black:

Black, where's the current strength of your Moros townread coming from? You mentioned that it was reinforced by the sequence around the coalition being hammered, what about that do you find strong town? And what is your current stance on tired person, you said you'd consider arguments about them but where are you at in general there?

[implosion]

actually fuck it.

VOTE: Moros

Maybe the pattern of early lingering townread is actually something that's really scum indicative. 965 rubs me the wrong way. It feels very waters testing, it reads as a really 1 dimensional view of the game, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. tired person's posting is generally not bad right now.

i'm not of one mind regarding this vote. on the one hand i think as scum, implosion would know that there seems to be a lot of resistance to voting me (and that black and may seem to be hard to fade) so might just be taking the most "politically viable" (to use his own words) fade here. on the other hand, if implosion is town then the scum in the coalition is almost certainly moros. what i really want to know is:

why do u suddenly townread me? i thought u had me quite low all game and objected to having me in the coalition.

There are some aspects of your recent play that have upped my evaluation of you to a degree; I like the lines of questions you've been presenting me, I think you as scum have not

that

much incentive to appeal to me specifically because we're at odds and gamestate makes it look like I get faded before you most of the time. There's also just the fact that your reads are very similar to mine apart from our reads on each other.

I wanted to start this paragraph by saying I don't

really

townread you but maybe I actually do because it sure feels like you're the only person making an effort to solve the game right now >_>

[implosion]

it was an exaggeration out of frustration

you've felt very tunneled on a specific worldview for several pages; it's not that you're not trying to solve but you feel very hard to work with. DArby is doing stuff of course but hasn't really engaged with the important part of the game, i.e. the coalition, yet. And May is doing stuff.

Moros has not actually done any solving since the coalition formed. experience keeps saying they're going to give stuff and hasn't really yet. Tsawwassen hasn't really done anything other than vote me and say the rest of the coalition looks townier to them. Like surely you can see why this is frustrating to me

[implosion]

and worst is by his own admission not doing stuff

[implosion]

I guess maybe "making an effort to solve the game" is the wrong thing to say; a more precise thing is "making a real effort to engage with and sort me". Like, I think (not going to go back and check) tired person has asked me 100% of the questions i've been asked in the past maybe 10 pages.

You've been interacting with me but it's felt like I can do no right by you in this game recently. Particularly in the context of the game we just played together where we (very oversimplifiedly) misread each other, I feel like I've found you as town in this game and am frustrated that you're refusing to find me as town. You said you think it's me+May and you feel very tunneled on that. I went on my tangent about my meta and you misconstrued it as me arguing i'm not in my scum meta and attacked that argument (I don't really blame you for this, i was being sort of obtuse but still), and you sniped at 1074. Apart from those you haven't really engaged with me outside of me actively forcing you to. You haven't asked me any questions, I had to ask you twice about Moros. You don't really feel like you're actively trying to sort me - you feel like you have already sorted me as scum, which like, fair enough but i think it's also fair enough for me to feel annoyed by trying to work with you, who i think is town who has already sorted me as scum and isn't seeing the light.

Half the game (Moros, Tsawwassen, experience, duck) has not posted real analytical content in... well, Tsawwassen made 1072 36 hours ago which counts but is pretty minimal. Beyond that there's been nothing since Thursday which, maybe it's just a slow weekend.

[implosion]

I have opinions on everyone except Exp, but I can’t tell if that’s a me thing or not.

My opinion on experience is 100% lingering read from their predecessor + statistics of them being off coalition; i have no idea how to read their play so far.

[implosion]

it sure feels like you're the only person making an effort to solve the game right now

???

I do appreciate this reaction though, i think the way i'm playing right now you'd probably not really feel this strongly about this statement as scum who knows i'm town possibly. so more reason to think you're town which is nice.

[implosion]

I'm not sure if you've addressed this but what happened between the first two posts and the third that made you feel comfortable enough with your May read to put her in?

I'm not certain, probably nothing specific; a combination of time passing meaning that I need to make up my mind on stuff more, time passing meaning I felt increasingly more like I couldn't advocate for Umlaut, time passing meaning it was more important to look at political viability (which is basically the same as the previous point), various things May had done bouncing around in my head but I couldn't really tell you what they were. Also I mentioned in the next post that the coalition was excluding ceejay, tired person, umlaut and tsawwassen and at the time that probably felt like the right group of people to exclude. It probably wasn't specifically new posts May made in the interval.

[implosion]

coalition failing makes me think i was on the wrong path. i am worried about implosion because i think that he had the least drive to secure a winning coalition, or care about the details of it. it feels more like he didn't want things to be disrupted. i think he makes sense as a partner to aventurine, who also didn't want things to be disrupted.

This is the only time since coalition that Moros has given a concrete opinion on any player, and it has since said it doesn't know if it agrees with this anymore. So in effect Moros has given 0 information about the current state of its reads.

Rereading with a fresh mind today is all well and good if it happens. There's a point at which there needs to be something concrete. I have at many times not found anyone on the coalition, or even in the whole game, actively scummy - but I can still weigh the different reasons I have for townreading people. It's a new phase of the game, and there's new opportunities to read people off of new content and to commit to new stances in light of new information. Committing to stances is pro-town, even if you have low confidence in those stances, which you can always be explicit about, because it will give us more stuff to analyze come late game.

[implosion]

It is nice that Black is a seeming universal strong townread on coalition; at least me, darby and tired person are all expressing this in the moment. Having that is really, really valuable in this setup (unless we're wrong and we just lose lol) because scum will very much not want to shoot her until we lim scum on coalition.

[implosion]

"no one is solving, this is the one game where I'm obviously town, interacting with me doesn't count as solving unless you conclude I'm town or undecided"

This is pretty dang uncharitable. Me talking about my being out of my scumrange, and me complaining about people not solving, are two disconnected things that i talked about at different times. This is only even remotely accurate to how I've been talking about Black, and I've been extremely clear that I think Black is strongly town, so it's not like I'm chiding her alignment for "not solving", it's not like I'm chiding her for not doing anything either, because I've said she is. I'm just frustrated that she's town and wrong about me.

Who do you think I'm trying to create a villain out of? Black? You? Moros?

Also what do you mean "without needing to scumcase a slot"? I'm pretty openly explaining reasons why I think Moros might be Scum, Actually. Yeah they're not like, deep but as you just said, what the heck else am i supposed to do right now

[implosion]

And to be clear, "this is pretty dang uncharitable" is me trying to couch anger.

[implosion]

I wrote a bunch of paragraphs after this but decided not to say them because they're rambling.

May, has anything in particular made you go from "we don't need to hammer implosion with 8 days left" to "i kinda want a flip" when we still have basically 7 days left, and there are several slots who haven't contributed content including one on-coalition who you describe as afk this phase?

Isn't it like. Good to not let people on coalition be afk this phase???

[implosion]

fyi for all my bluster i am going to be pretty absent tomorrow in all likelihood, i'm flying tomorrow and am not going to get enough sleep and also have shit i need to work on and will most likely not have energy for this game until Tuesday

[implosion]

I've been somewhat following but haven't really caught up. i do also like that post from DArby

[implosion]

Catching up from page 46.

This is like one of the most analytically heavy games I've ever played so a complaint that open 914 isn't very analytical makes me think someone counts a lot of stuff floated in the game as not analytical because they're informed it's wrong

I don't think this fits with my experience of the game, and especially not with the time between coalition failing and me making that post. There were lots of voices that were essentially absent. But also this game hasn't felt like, specifically ultra analytical to me. Maybe I'm just an analytical player and so games I'm in tend to become analytically bent

Duck deciding to vote and push me is very out of left field to me given the way that he'd described his townread on me. Duck's trajectory on me is "i will throw a tantrum if implosion is not on coalition" -> "implosion is in my 7 top choices for coalition" -> coalition fails -> "I don't feel like it's tired person or implosion" -> "implosion feels like a misyeet" -> votes me, says that his read on me doesn't survive the failed coalition, and puts me at the bottom of his reads list. Which like, the fuck. I don't know what specifically the scum motivation is for 180ing on me with literally 0 justification but I just don't understand how duck as town can possibly be comfortable wholesale abandoning his read on me, a read that I got the sense was steeped in a fairly deep reading of the way I was playing this game compared to the previous game we were both town in, like it's certainly possible for duck town to change his mind on a read like that but i don't understand how it can come out of literally nowhere. Like ctrl+f'ing my name in duck's ISO just looks like someone spliced two different ISOs together.

[implosion]

ooohhh moros is town

pedit: ooohhh moros is town

why now?

i think i've kind of waffled on you for a bit because you have lots of thoughts but they're often structured in ways that i don't naturally find ways to structure thoughts but the more i think back on it the more it sorta feels like we're seeing the same thing and drawing conclusions based on our experience. i'm also very washed up & trust my ability to cognitively process fairly closely to how much i value anyone else here's ability to cognitively process so it's probably fairly goofy of me to assume that because we're reaching different conclusions, we must be different alignments.

in a less wordy way maybe i just like that you say things and they seem like they're you and like you're consistently thinking about the game and idk if i vibe with the reasons i didn't commit to this read previously

This feels very LAMIST. I don't know if I buy the story that duck is sitting their deeply doubting all his opinions on everything and desperately looking for people to guide him and then he has this epiphany that actually Moros is town because Moros having different opinions from him doesn't make him scum. It just feels fake :\

I don't want to lim off coalition but I do agree with darby that duck is very scummy

[implosion]

I'm pretty happy with the Moros thaw it seems like the same player from day zero now

Part of me agrees with this and part of me is concerned that the kind of posting Moros made on day zero does not measure up to my current standard of calling people town.

i think that he was the first to reverse course which is the most significant one to me, because scum would be less eager to take me back off the table and they May wait for others to do it first.

I think in principle in this setup, scum off the coalition is not overly concerned with things like who in the coalition is on the table. That's what the scum on coalition is worried about, scum off coalition has to be the carry ultimately and so they need long term viability, which involves playing toward the coalition in a way that makes them look like town after their scumbuddy dies.

so i can actually see the scumteam being implosion/may, especially cuz neither voted for the coalition (which as implosion said, it's dangerous to have both scum inside).

I think may also mentioned this but, both of us had effectively committed our votes to the coalition that passed, we just happened to be afk at the moment the votes went through. obviously a commitment to vote is not a vote but etc

[implosion]

i can see moros's page 51 being pretty townie, it's a pretty in the moment way of like, moving thread momentum that might be dangerous for scum to want to do

When I mentioned liking that post from DArby i meant both that i agreed with it and that i thought it was townish for DArby. Reading it again i might not fully get the point about ceejay tbh but it kind of feels like there is something there. I don't like put a ton of stock in it per se but i think the slot is scummy obviously since i just said that twice

i literally do not value any of my reads rn

i value ur implosion scumread.

do you value it for any reason other than it being a read you also have because worst has very literally said a negative amount to explain why he scumreads me

[implosion]

i am caught up.

I feel a little self aware that me pivoting on moros is an auspicious thing to do while the wagons are at 3-3 me-tiredperson. And I feel conflicted on moros right now, I don't agree with the strength of townread that the thread seems to have on it right now but I'm kind of okay with going for tired person. tired person's thread activity has become very bursty in a way that i don't love, i think the stuff that they posted that has felt town to me is sort of the way they were talking to/sorting me but it's a lot easier to fake that sort of thing in bursts. like they made 7 posts in a row, before they made like 10 posts in a row, etc with not much in between spurts. I think at this point I'm happy with them being the lim (which it seems like is the likely outcome at this exact moment possibly even without my vote. though obviously if this is the choice i'm picking them regardless of how happy i am

I think that may is probably the person that i'm actually in practice supposed to be reading through PoE after getting more confident reads on the other people and i think if at this exact moment tired person flipped town and it was d2 i would vote for may but i also really don't feel fantastic about my reads in general so etc.

[implosion]

How do you think it feels being inside my brain????!!!

What would you say your playstyle is with regards to reads as scum? I.e. when I'm scum 99% of the time I try to give the reads that I think I would have as town. Do you generally try to do that or do you pick and choose reads that you think will be useful in the situation or something else/in between?

[implosion]

Today was busy basically from morning until now and i need to sleep >_>

I'm obviously probably hammering tired person soon but will wait until at least some point tomorrow

[implosion]

experience is frankly the person i presently least think is scum out of the uncoalitioned. If I had to shoot names right now i'd shoot may/worst but my confidence in either of those is pretty minimal. I still think Moros can be scum but I think this page makes me think it isn't.

I'll have more to say tomorrow because me being awake this late is a mistake. I do feel a little bit doomed if we lim not-me and miss today particularly if tsaw is town. at this exact moment i feel like may's scum equity is really high but i reserve the right to feel very different in the morning

[implosion]

Why does 1414 use the word frankly? Is it to rebut a presumption you would lie about your opinion of experience or to condescend to people who disagree with you

honestly, because it is how i feel but i am also self-aware that it's the convenient stance for me to have at this moment. like, i'm very self-aware that some of my stances (i.e. that tired person was a good lim late yesterday when i had been thinking they were town a bit earlier) have tracked what is convenient for me to think. Probably the reason for this in practice is just that i'm really persuadable in this game because i haven't really felt that good about any of my stances except black since like, umlaut era. also i was kind of contrite because i felt like i should have posted earlier yesterday but got distracted

I still think Moros can be scum but I think this page makes me think it isn't.

Want to elaborate on this?

Maybe you can convince me!

what exactly can i convince you of? my position that moros might be but is probably not scum? because that doesn't sound like something i particularly care about anyone believing or not believing at this juncture

[implosion]

So I think experience is town. Or at least I think experience's play is like, somewhat unlikely to be actively indicative of scum. i wouldn't think that they were town in the absence of Umlaut's posting. I might think they were scummy even but I think a big part of me still just doesn't really think worst or tsawwassen are all that townish which i guess fmpov is like saying that the coalition wasn't a bad coalition because it at least forces me to re-evaluate on them. I don't really know how people at large feel about worst right now but I talked a lot about them yesterday and like, idk why exactly they'd be faking this wack ass lack of any sustained thought process or opinion in this game as scum but it just does not read as town to me. i do think tsawwassen is town largely because i think duck is scummier so no real need to litigate there.

experience's play is a nothingburger.

i don't think experience is town because he was able to find reads easily and quickly when he needed to form a coalition but has lost that now. i think when he needed to push a coalition with his partner, he did that, but now he doesn't know what to do.

I'd maybe need to actually meta them to be confident on this but experience's play reads to me like someone who is just not used to playing this kind of mafia where there is no hard info. Like, experience as scum does not have a particular reason to not form reads right now. Even if experience was scum and genuinely did not know what to do, they would have a scumbuddy that could coach them. They would know that as scum in their position they're supposed to give stances. There's no way that experience is like, deciding to give 0 stances because they think it's optimal play as scum or something like that, they're doing it, i can only guess because they're not exactly explaining themself, because they feel out of their depth (as either alignment) or they are genuinely having trouble picking up reads in the absence of hard info (as town) or something like that.

[implosion]

i also do think moros is right that i'd kill tsawwassen over darby here as scum. like tsawwassen has shown 0 interest in changing their mind on me since like mid coalition phase whenever they started souring on me.

Anyway. Moros's arc on me is like, kind of very impressive if it is scum. It's not that it would be bad play, it would be really good scum play to like, hard defend me and then if/when I get limmed they get an easy pivot to may and if/when may gets limmed (assuming may is town) then they still don't necessarily look bad. The associative stuff is like, not necessarily the kind of argument i'd expect scum to make in the situation? not for any particularly strong reason.

[implosion]

oh I voted implosion because I think his scum wincon is to embrace absurdity and hope this fairly volatile town implodes around him

duck's stance evolution now just feels to me like scum who is now acknowledging that ultimately they might have to step in and be the wincon

like if it were duck + may then duck really can't afford to just hard push me today because that would wind up looking really bad later. but duck would definitely have been able to do what they did to me yesterday when there was more room in the coalition. even if it's duck + moros or black, then this also makes sense as scum play because this sort of aloofness has a lot of utility in that duck can suss out tomorrow if they're supposed to go for the win that day or if they're supposed to pivot into a bus

basically the tenor of duck's play has just a massive amount of utility for scum in his position

[implosion]

A component of this is also that worst is absolutely a competent enough scum player to go that angle and to long-term fake being so uncommitted to stances. i think a lot of players would have trouble with that maybe (if experience *is* scum then i guess this is what's happening lmao) and it is like, possible for worst to have this trajectory as town maybe, i'm sure it's possible but it seems very clear to me that this

is

what worsts play would look like here if worst is scum or at the very least it is a very very good candidate for what it would look like

[implosion]

@Tsawwassen: you say you think it's me + experience. How do you feel about the arguments that that specifically is not the scumteam? I've mentioned earlier in thread that I think they're fairly compelling, in particular that it's dramatically unlikely that I specifically would play my read toward my scumbuddy in this setup the way that I played my read toward Umlaut early on.

Is your read of me + experience based on (1) thinking both of us are scummy individually, (2) perceived associations between us, or (3) PoE off townreading everyone else? Obviously it can be more than one but i'd like to know which and in what proportion if multiple.

If you are wrong on us being the scumteam, which of us do you think you'd more likely be wrong on/what would your next worldview be?

[implosion]

Lastly, turning my attention toward May. This is lastly because I would, I think, still be townreading may if not for the setup we're in. So it's a lot harder to analyze content. But now that I am being dragged through this by the setup and being forced to see the actions of someone on coalition as scummy, there is stuff I can see there.


Her play is all like, technically competent, whether she's town or scum. Her reads have evolved, yada yada. Honestly her content on page 57 like, I can make arguments as to why it's scum indicative but i can't really make them in good faith because I do think that they're posts she makes as town sometimes. Like 1406 is a good rhetorical tactic as scum because it's taking a perceived flaw with the argument and hammering at it while avoiding having to talk about like, substantive reasons why may might be town or scum. But also it's believable that May got annoyed at that post and made this response. Her diatribe against my 1414 is maybe something that I do genuinely think she does less often as town than as scum, the scum utility is obvious in that she wants to convince people I'm scum and also maybe that she wants to look invested in the read so that she doesn't look like she's scum looking at the future or w/e. But as town I sort of doubt she'd feel so strongly about that post. I think there's a good chance she'd at least have second thoughts of like, if that post reads as openly me trying to suss out where i'm supposed to place my vote as scum, that why would i as scum be so blatant about that. Maybe i'm biased because i do think i wouldn't be so blatant about it if i were scum. But it's like, as a line of posts, i think a very solid reading of 1415-1421 is that May is scum who sees me as the right place for her to park and that she doesn't really see any value in making her read of me nuanced anymore.

VOTE: May