Civilization Mafia - Town Wins!

[Thok]

Wow, EmpTyger. I was going to random vote you based on probability (you've been scum in every game I'm in), but I figure I might as well actually go

vote EmpTyger

. The random FOS is a nice touch.

I suggest everybody read newbie 128.

Puzzle, I think it's worthwhile to upgrade a little once you have one or two useful units.

Bamboomancer-we might also have civilizations from some of the expansion packs-don't forget to include those.

Is it worthwhile to provide some background link? It provides scum info on role claims and unit information, but I'd expect scum to already start doing it's research.

[Thok]

EmpTyger: What about wonders? What about barbarians developing stuff (they almost certainly will have a faster tech tree than us, or get better units than us at each stage). What about a possible time limit? I can imagine no-lynch + building units being disasterous if we're not careful.

I'm also metagaming a little-I was in Sinister Overlord's last game, which got broken fairly easily. I'm assuming that he's spent more time polishing up this game.

Finally, fundamentally all protown players are roughly the same as far as I can tell. Discussing suspicions only hurts when it reveals power roles, but as far as I can tell, everybody and nobody is a power role. (That is, everybody has powers, but nobody is that much more valuable than anybody).

No-lynch might be the right play for today, but I still think discussion is useful.

Keeping my vote on for now.

[Thok]

25 pages to check? Culd you just give me a recap?

A role was killed that on death revealled all of the roles in the game. People are now arguing over a mass role claim, given that info.

For newbie 128, you probably only need to read the first couple pages of day one and then his day two discussion of no-lynch-the point is that EmpTyger is basically making the same arguments now that he was making when he was scum. I think he would make the same arguments as pro-town, but I'm not sure.

[Thok]

unvote EmpTyger

since nobody seems to want to support me, but IGMEOY EmpTyger.

(IGMEOY=I've got my eye on you, for future reference).

vote no lynch

for the time being.

[Thok]

The basic game of Civ3 had 16 civilizations. But I am concerned that assuming 16 civilizations = 16 townspeople with 4 barbarian antitowns is a mistake. For one thing, a 4:1 ratio seems too high for the town. For another, massclaims Day 1 or ever pretty much automatically breaks the game *too* easily to be plausible. If the setup were 16 civilizations + n barbarians, I would have thought that the game would have had more players to allow a larger barbarian horde, setting aside the problem of massclaims. But I can’t see only 4 antitowns as plausible, at least not without them having safer claims. And if there are more than 4 antitowns, there must be less than 16 protowns.

I will repeat, there are expansion packs: Play the World and Conquests. That gives more then enough roles for this game. Moreover, I've mentioned that fact in the thread once already; there's no reason to bring it up again. I'm seriously tempted to vote you again for essentially fishing to see if expansion roles are in the game.

EmpTyger, we do learn something from random votes because we see who tries to follow the bandwagons, and what bandwagons don't take off. Go read Hospital mafia in normal. Because nearly everybody in that game is a doctor, a no-lynch strategy is useful. However, most of the scum in that game were caught because of discussion arising from random voting.

[Thok]

VisMaior-You haven't made an error, EmpTyger is just trying to flood you with numbers. His point is that we shouldn't fear the worst case scenario, and the average case scenario seems to be quite beneficial for town.

EmpTyger-I'm not sure whether cops or docs are better to build early-there's something to be said about try to shut down night kills.

[Thok]

EmpTyger-one way around bombard is to build docs first and have people doc protect themselves once and also doc protect others semirandomly. That forces scum to waste bombards on their kill targets (to get through the doc protection) and also to try to guess in the dark on who else they'd need to bombard.

Heck, the threat of doc protection should be enough to force scum to waste bombards.

[Thok]

EmpTyger, you're confusing my laziness with scuminess. I actually haven't been spending too much time worrying about the numbers-either a simple approximation will give us roughly the right answer, or there will be too many details for us to deal with.

If you didn't want me to jump on you for a random FOS, perhaps you should have included a smiley or a [/sarcasm] comment? It seemed extremely weird, especially coming in a post where you specifically tried to kill off all discussion of suspicions, except for a no lynch strategy.

My point about hospital mafia is that we can learn information about who to lynch by seeing how people react to bandwagons and voting trends. The single biggest event that caught a bunch of scum in that game was when Pooky started a bandwagon on BJ; a bunch of scum jumped on the wagon and were promptly lynched. Similarly, nobody tried to support me when I voted you; I'm trying to figure out what that means.

Finally, I've said this before, but I'm not that useful of a day 1 player, especially protown. I need information to catch people, and right now there isn't that much to go on.

[Thok]

I played with you in the Poker mini. I *know* you are more than capable of analyzing and exploring unusual mechanics and setups on Day 1.

I'll point out that I was scum there, which means I had a decent amount of information to start the game, more so than I do now.

EmpTyger, my bandwagon has taken way too long to develop, so either I'm scum and my partners are trying to avoid voting me or our scum consists of some hard-core lurkers. Since I know I'm innocent (I haven't gotten any support from anybody), I'm going to spend some time looking for lurkers. Let's try

unvote, vote swinkee

FOS MOS, coporate claw

, with possibly some others to be added to the lurker list.

(Note: There is an additional benefit to hunting lurkers, as they are more likely to miss night actions, which is clearly bad for town if they are townie.)

[Thok]

Any reason for choosing swinkee rather than the other lurkers, inhim? I had already voted him and he did make a post, even if it was short and contentless. While I'd like to see swinkee post more, your choice bothers me.

[Thok]

Thok:

Any reason for choosing swinkee rather than the other lurkers, inhim? I had already voted him and he did make a post, even if it was short and contentless. While I'd like to see swinkee post more, your choice bothers me.

So a lone prod from should be incentive enough to prod out a lurker?

The fact that you’re defending swinkee is almost ipso facto a point in his favor. I feel that you’re playing like you don’t expect to survive until the end of the game; and, being expecting to be lynched soon, are desperately trying to muddle a postmortem. Although your post is cleverly ambiguous enough to interpret this for either swinkee or inHim.

EmpTyger, I'm was trying to get Inhim to explain why he's going after swinkee rather than the other large number of lurkers we have. I find it much more likely that there is scum on swinkee's bandwagon than I magically guess the correct lurker. (Note if you think I'm scum, then it's even less likely that swinkee is scum, although I will admit that's a WIFOM argument.) Incidentally, the only reason I haven't unvoted swinkee yet was to see if I can get more scum to jump on the bandwagon.

On reading the thread, my best guess is

unvote swinkee, vote hezlucky

Also, Puzzle, can I suggest that you slightly alter the order of cop investigations to split up some of the people currently on swinkee's bandwagon? For example, does anybody like the idea of me investigating inhim tonight? I know I don't.

[Thok]

I'm happy with EmpTyger or VisMaior suggesting/making alterations to the list (to suggest names, others can volunteer also). I'm obviously a bad choice to do this at the moment, and I won't argue with any proposed changes to the list.

[Thok]

Thok:

You clearly can't read me. Please see my other games. Esp Gambit Mafia where everyone was sure I was scum and I turned up cop at the end.

Looking over your posts, you're possibly right.

unvote, vote inhim

People preparing to vote for MOS for generic lurking should just stop. While I

really, really, really, really

(more really's surpressed to save post space) dislike his current playing style, it doesn't give any indication at all on whether he is scum or not. (To see that I know what I'm talking about see Newbie 128 or Mini 205 for games where MOS was pro-town but barely posted at all). Lynching MOS would be like lynching IS or BJ day 1, and it's incredibly stupid in a game where we can get 20 or more cop investigations a day.

[Thok]

Oh, oh, I know! Why don't I vote all 6 of the people on the swinkee bandwagon in order, and stop when somebody says "Yep, you got me, I'm scum".

[Thok]

I'd been thinking that random action is better than directed action for a while-the redundant investigations aren't so bad, since some of our "investigations" will be scum lying about results. This also makes it harder for barbarians to roleblock us.

(Also, if we announce results each day, we will cut down some on the redundancy issue).

I agree with MOS that responding to a vote immeidately isn't that much more scummy than not posting in the first place. However, swinkee hasn't posted in a week, while being bandwagoned. So, time to flop back and

unvote inhim, vote swinkee

. Maybe you should defend yourself a little, or show you are participating in the game?

FOS coporate claw, Bamboomancer, mlaker

(I sort of wonder how the game would be different if I had chosen one of them to lurker vote instead of swinkee), and I'd like to see Iammars, roland, and Astronaut post a bit more also.

[Thok]

Actually (and apologies for the double post, I should have checked this earlier), I've noticed that swinkee hasn't posted anywhere on scum since the 20th. So I'll

unvote swinkee, vote mlaker

(who has posted on the site recently) and ask the mod to

prod Bamboomancer, prod/replace corporate claw

.

[Thok]

Swinkee, could you post more about any thoughts you have on the game so far?

Anybody want to join me in lurker voting mlaker?

Welcome Versuvan! Got anything to say?

[Thok]

And I thinking chasing people with bad or no reasons for jumping on bandwagons is our best bet.

unvote mlaker, vote d_rouge

Any reason for voting swinkee over mlaker?

[Thok]

What were your reason for voting mlaker anyway? The same for my vote on swinkee I guess. You sound a bit hypocritical, don't you?

FOS: Thok

I actually had reasons for voting mlaker over swinkee-swinkee's is having trouble keeping up with several games upon the site, which means his inability to post doesn't tell me anything about him being scum. Mlaker has posted in several games upon this site, which means that he might actually be trying to avoid this game.

Feh, I'll just start asking for mass prods.

Mod, could you prod mlaker, roland, Iammars and bamboomancer

I'll also point out that Astronaut suddenly reappeared when Versuvan mentioned him as likely scum.

[Thok]

Not that more evidence is needed, but Thok is the only one who has rushed to attack Puzzle or Astronaut without any elaboration from Vesuvan. Haven’t had time to really do more analysis, still been very busy.

Doesn't this overstates my behavior just a little? Am I not allowed to make factual obesrvations about Astronaut any more because you think I'm scummy? I haven't even said anything about Puzzle, and I'm not planning to until after Versuvan makes his long post (which I support him doing).

Also, the "Not that any more evidence is needed" line is sort fo cute; if you don't need more evidence, why do I only have 2 votes on me? That comment is disingenuous, and I think you're reaching for reasons to have me lynched.

[Thok]

1. everyone is equal (this suggests that he is a plain townie, if protown)
2. Noone has any special units yet (might be so)
3. the game might be easyly broken. Actually, thats not unheard of, so its not really an unreasonable assumption.

1. Or that I don't care about my Unique Unit : I explained why.
2. Nope. Post #3 is clear that all of us have one.
3. I don't think it can be completely 100% broken, like Final Fantasy for example, but there is a certain edge the town can take based on the setup.

Does Puzzle's response to 2 strike anybody as a little weird? VisMaior's point is that people might need to advance before getting a unique unit, not that some people might not have them.

[Thok]

Puzzle's most recent post convinces me to

unvote, vote Puzzle

. Partially the fact that he ignored my previous comment about him, and partially since it feels like his most recent comments about unit development are an attempt to change discussion. If Puzzle really thought that nondirect advancement of unit was an issue, why didn't he bring it up earlier?

[Thok]

Shouldn't we be thinking about whether Puzzle should claim a civilization at this close to lynch?

Also, EmpTyger, don't try to convince everybody to investigate me tonight; I don't mind 1-3 people investigating me tonight, but 7 or more investigations of me is a little redundant.

(Also I'll note that I've skimmed EmpTyger's magnum opus about me, but that I'll comment more on it by tomorrow. I'd prefer day doesn't end before we get a chance to talk more.)

[Thok]

Does that make more sense? Also,

FOS: Thok

for trying to discourage more investigations on him... with the failure rate, and the possibility of sanity issues, how can we really go wrong with multiple investigations on anybody?

15 investigations on any one person would clearly be redundant, even if only 4 of them succeeded. Is that not blatantly obvious?

As a practical matter, I'd suggest using random.org to decide who you should investigate. Perhaps give yourself a 1/10 chance of investigating somebody suspicious, and a 9/10 chance of just investigating purely randomly. (Fiddle your numbers to what you think are appropriate). We have a lot investigations-we should use them to attempt to investigate a lot of people.

[Thok]

Note for everybody: my most important comment to a vast majority of the people in the game in this post is the stuff before the Metacomments. Feel free to read the other stuff also, which is a bunch of comments to EmpTyger.

Unvote

Vote Thok

Puzzle checks out with my PM, and asking not to be investigated???

Have you even read what I'm saying? I don't mind being investigated a small number of times-I've even said so in post 297, but I shouldn't be the only person investigated tonight.

unvote Puzzle

whose pm (and unit info) does check out with me also, and

FOS armlx

for blatantly misinterpreting the point of my comments.

And so I don't put this off any longer: a long discussion for EmpTyger.

Metacomment 1: Discussing successful cop investigation percentages is boring. Moreover, your way of doing it by mindlessly computing binomial coefficients is stupidly inefficient; just say something about the Central Limit Theorem and approximate everything by the appropriate Gaussian. Doing computations for computation sake makes it look you are doing something when you are just wasting time and annoying half of town.

Metacomment 2: The other danger of doing mindless computation is that you forget to do things like check to see that your assumptions are valid and causes you to forget other factors. All of your effort at computing numbers didn't help you break the game; your no-lynch plan fell apart (according to you) because you forgot to take into account roleblockers. DON'T START COMPUTING UNTIL YOU'VE GOT THE RIGHT MODEL!!!

I still stand by my laziness comment. I was originally worried that you hadn't thought of the possible consequence of the no-lynch plan. I realized that my comments weren't going to convince anybody and you seemed sure of it's ability to work, so I decided it wasn't worth trying to point out possible flaws. When you suddenly stopped supporting it, I wasn't convinced that the problems with role blockers were as big a flaw as you thought they were; hence my comment. Again, if I had been paying more attention, I would have mentioned something about role blockers.

My comment about Newbie 128 was to point out that in a similar situation, as scum, you specifically encouraged town to stop discussing suspicions while discussing no-lynch. Moreover, you know that we have differing opinions on this. I thought then that you might be scum, attempting to control town in a similar manner to what happened in Newbie 128, and that you expected me to notice and put in the random FOS as a bit of a joke towards me, preemptively recognizing the connection to Newbie 128; something like you saying "I'm scum, but you can't catch me Thok". Please note that such a joke is perfectly consistent with your scum playstyle, Mr. "It's a JOKE!" (And to retroactively preempt you asking about why I'm bringing that up, I'll explain that as scum you do tend to periodically do oddish things like tell jokes that get you into trouble).

If you had random FOSed anybody else at the start, or simply random voted me, I would not have reacted so violently. Similarly, if you hadn't tried to discourage other discussion in that post (which can only help scum-we aren't in any danger of mislynching a valuable power role or revealling a valuable role to scum, given that everybody is roughly the same power).

My day 1 comment was a misstatement-I should have said that I'm not that useful of an "early" day 1 player-I'm more useful once something happens that gives me information. (At this point of the game, I actually have a decent amount of info). I did have a decent amount of info in the Holdem Mini-I knew that we had a failed kill the previous night and hence likely we had to worry about a doc (which was true but turned out to be not the reason for the failed kill), and that there was likely an SK on the loose, and that something was causing players to be roleblocked. Moreover being scum, I also knew the alignment of all of the other players (well, except for the SK, but that didn't really matter from my point of view). I still managed to partially misanalyze everything! In this game I don't have anywhere near the type of info at the beginning of this game, especially given that I'm protown in this game (of course, you can't make the last assumption).

<snip> Also, EmpTyger, don't try to convince everybody to investigate me tonight; I don't mind 1-3 people investigating me tonight, but 7 or more investigations of me is a little redundant.<snip>

Adorable. Though for the record, if it were up to me to convince others, I wouldn’t have investigations wasted on you. I’ll let Vesuvan have fun with your two “tells”: trying to orchestrate nightactions and also putting words in my mouth.

I probably was a little too harsh with my comments there. However, my point does stand; even if it's not your intention, repeatedly accusing me of being scum has the possibility of drawing more investigations to me than should be warranted, and I thought the danger of having 10 or 15 investigations of me (which would waste some of towns resources) was enough to point out the possibility. I should have been less sarcastic.

I haven't made any comments about the interpretation of me not being bandwagoned early, and I don't want to yet (this post is already long enough). I'll add some comments about that later. Also, let me know if there's any details I've missed; I'm sure you want me to counter every single detail possible.

[Thok]

MOD, You seemed to have missed it in my really long post 311, but I'll repeat

unvote Puzzle

.

[Thok]

I'm almost tempted to vote BJ for the novelty factor. Almost. But I realize it's not helpful.

I'm going to wait until we get replacements (which should hopefully be fairly quickly) for bamboomancer and roland (and see how they act) until I place a vote.

I'm also trying to decide if it is in town's interest for me to claim-I probably have the most information about the set-up right now of any player in the game, but I don't want to reveal information to scum.

I'll let EmpTyger decide if he has any other concerns about me (hopefully after he gets a good night's sleep) before answering his quesitons.

[Thok]

im beginning to think that a mass-claim could prove fruitful here. We dont have to fear outing special roles as even if they exist, we are pretty powerful on ourself. Any toughts on this?

Almost all info that would be gotten out of a mass claim would be gotten from me claiming. At the very least, I want to be the first person to go in a mass claim.

[Thok]

Almost all info that would be gotten out of a mass claim would be gotten from me claiming.

You're saying you're a pro-town expantion pack civ, right?

Since somebody has come out and said this, I'll name claim since there's no use protecting the info anymore.

I am Hannibal, of Carthage (to be precise, the Carthaginians) from the PTW expansion. My unique unit is the Numidian Mercenary-it's stats are consistent with what Puzzle suggested for his unique unit, in the sense that I can visual a reasonable algorithm to guess the stats of a unique unit from his data, mine, and the current level of tech.

I'll claim more if necessary (or desired), but I think this is enough data to determine whether a continued role claim is a good idea. Notice that I've been consistently complaining about people who ignored the possibility of expansions. I do not know whether or not we have Conquests Civ's in the game, but I wouldn't be surprised if we did.

[Thok]

I believe that's 8. I'm not going to put EmpTyger at -1 from lynch yet (although I'm sorely tempted too, based on our earlier arguement), but I believe he should claim.

Vote count please?

[Thok]

Vesuvan-it wouldn't have helped EmpTyger's claim-if he claimed an expansion pack civ I'd have immediately voted him based on his previous statements.

Emptyger-however, such a process does help scum by giving them a feel for whether they'd be better off claiming a basic Civ or an expansion pack Civ.

Also, Puzzle hinted at having some flavor to his roleclaim (and I'm certain that I, as well as most of the other Civ's have simiilar flavor). Do you want to say anything about that?

[Thok]

Thok's reponse to that, however, was rather telling.

FOS: Thok

Explain, please? EmpTyger made certain posts that strongly suggested that if he was a Civ (rather than a barbarian group) then he was a main game Civ; for example, his post asking why this was a 20 person game. Or do you have some other reason for giving me the FOS?

[Thok]

As for my claim: one bit of flavor is that I am particularly good at 2 types of tasks.

It's ironic what two people can have in common.

[Thok]

I am at lynch - 1, and Thok has *nothing* to lose by lynching me. Someone unvote, at the very least so that the question of coordinated vs. uncoordinated nightactions is clarified.

But I have everything to gain by letting the day last longer.

If you really think I'm scum, then you clearly totally missed the point of 394, and are therefore either unwilling to do two minutes worth of research, or are scum.

Any pro-town player can (by doing four minutes worth of research) figure out the point of 394.

[Thok]

Well, I think with those two posts, there's no reason for me to prolong the day any longer.

Vote EmpTyger

[Thok]

Before we start voting, shouldn't we decide what to do with last night's cop investigation?

[Thok]

Puzzle, I don't see your point of view at all. The only reaction Raj will have to your vote is "Do you have an investigation of me?"

Heck, I'll just

FOS Puzzle

.

Suggestion to the mod: Ask the previously killed people (EmpTyger, Versuvan) to replace back in, since they've already participated in most of the game.

If we are revealing cop investigations, I feel like we should reveal all possible cop investigations. In particular, we should choose some order for people to say either

"I investigated blah and found him guilty/innocent last night".
or
"I did not successfully investigate everybody last night".

Probably the best order is the standard each person choose the next person to go. I would be willing to start this.

Since everybody is potentially a cop, I see no reason not to reveal all results. We don't want results to be lost in death.

[Thok]

As a preemptive comment-Do not claim whether or not you forgot to do choices last night. That basically tells scum that they'd be better off letting you live, since you have less units. Similarly, do not say anything about whether you do or don't have cops.

If you do not have a result, simply say "I did not have a successful investigation last night"; do not reveal any more info.

[Thok]

Much as I hate to break order, shall we assume Bamboo forgot to send in choices and go to d_rouge next?

[Thok]

Updated order?

Bamboomancer-waiting for replacement
Tyfo-next up
Hezlucky
darquiel
Puzzle
Iammars
VisMaior

I believe I am next, since inHim went out of order-I do not have a result from last night.

(Incidentally, do we have enough votes to lynch "no result" yet?)

[Thok]

Boringly no result.

I'm actually extremely surprised by the lack of results. 40% chance to get a result for each cop and we got only one. That defies statistics, even if some of us didn't build cops/horsemen.

So either we are extremely unlucky, or someone's lying.

Or some pro-town people didn't build cops night 1. If only 10 people are investigating last night (which isn't unreasonable) we'd only expect 4 results.

[Thok]

Notes.

1. With Iammars confirmed pro-town in death, I'm either a godfather or innocent, and we've seen no evidence for a godfather civ.

2. The night scene seem to reflect the game mechanics. I suspect that scum simply buy units with the gold they've plundered.

[Thok]

Take your time, we're right now in the middle of today's cop claim, and you won't have to go for a while.

Inhim, got anything for us?

[Thok]

arkonas and darquiel need to go also; armlx went out of turn.

List update:

arkonas
darquiel
Astronaut
VisMaior
Thok
dybeck

[Thok]

The grandpa thing is a weird sort of mistranslation from my point of view, which is enough for me to

vote Vismaior

for the moment. However, there are probably better leads.

[Thok]

Good posting. I'll now preemptively ask the mod to prod darquiel (and more generically to prod players who still need to post results for us).

While we are waiting, does anybody want to discuss the comment I made earlier about scum possibly buying units with the money they get in the morning scene?

Incidentally, if that is the case, than scum want to kill people who have advanced ages (they will have more money generally), and we should

FOS Puzzle

for the earlier post where he tried to ask for what ages people build their unique unit in.

[Thok]

That post also sparked some type of feeling in me. See this now - I'm getting to the point that I'm very confident Thok and Puzzle have opposite alignments.

I'd feel better about this post if Flay hadn't made a similar comment earlier about me and Emptyger (post 103) that turned out to be false. Flay then turned up scum.

[Thok]

No result for me.

[Thok]

I'll be a sheep,

vote Vismaior

[Thok]

I think that's a scum claim.

confirm vote Vismaior

. 2 down, and hopefully 2 to go.

[Thok]

Go town, although I'll admit we did play badly.

What was up with Puzzle's innocent investigation on Yosarian2?