/Invitational 11: Pick your Poison 5 (Game Over)

[SpyreX]

This needs to end.

No to hiders, No to massclaim. Yes to starting.

[VasudeVa]

That said though, no to Janitor for no claim shenanigans if there is no massclaim(which is looking to be the case anyhow.). Assassin/RB it is with PR lynches.

Vote: Assassin
Vote: RB

[ekiM]

Was pretty sure over half supported it.

Nah, a vocal minority supported it. Not the same thing.

Zorb's point was that scum, if they assumed getting Roleblocker was a pretty safe bet, might have done it, and that if they haven't it's extremely low risk.

They

might

have decided to gamble with the possibility of giving a huge advantage to town. I just find that scenario

massively

less likely than one where they didn't. If they didn't we either find there are no hiders, which is a small benefit, or we out one hider, which is fairly bad (either we're pushed away from RB or we go with RB anyway and they're neutralized).

Hider claim?
Yes - 2 (Plumegranate, mith)
No - 7 (ekiM, Amished, PZ, Rhinox, Vas, Hoopla, Spyrex)

Massclaim?
Yes - 1 (Hoopla)
No - 7 (ekiM, Plumegranate, Amished, PZ, Rhinox, Vas, SpyreX)

[Kmd4390]

Vote no to claims.

[Rhinox]

Assassin/RB it is with PR lynches.

No. In case anyone missed it last time, we don't have to lynch PRs. If we want to avoid 3 kills after a PR claim (lynch plus 2 scum kills), it is better to no lynch and force the assassin to use an attempt. The same 2 players die (the claimed PR + the regular nk choice) whether we lynch the PR or the assassin kills him after a no lynch, with the benefit that we've forced the assassin to use a kill. There is also the chance of the kill on the claimed PR being blockable. The other option being that we can still try to lynch scum accepting that there very well might be 2 town deaths at night.

to put it very clearly, there is no need to lynch all PR claims with an assassin in the game - the better options are to still lynch scum and accept 2 scum kills, or to no lynch so the same 2 players die but it sucks up an assassin attempt. I think everyone who is against giving an assassin because "lynching claimed PRs is a bad idea" should reconsider with this new strategy in mind

Unrevealed Hiders can possibly confirm an innocent or two, but at the risk of dying...

I'm ok with that risk. Assuming a minimum of 5 targets a hider could make that would kill them, and a maximum of 7, they should be able to confirm at least 1 extra innocent with a <50% chance of dying, and maybe as many as 5 under optimum conditions. Also, once a hider finds 1 innocent, their risk of dying goes down a lot because they can always choose to hide behind a safe target rather than try to clear more townies if they feel the risk is too high.

and not only does that risk of an extra scum kill cancel the benefit of scum possibly missing a kill trying to hit the Hider

While these may negate each other, it is not an either/or situation - the more probable (IMO) scenario is that the hider neither dies (early) nor prevents a kill, but lives long enough to clear a townie or 2. Just like a cop, a hider with claimed innocents will have to decide when it is better to claim results and when it is better to remain hidden.

the latter is actually not that much of a benefit (because if scum miss a kill in a game which they know contains 2 Hiders, they are probably going to be able to assume that they've tried to kill a Hider, and can then Roleblock and kill the Hider).

I would argue that if a hider is RB-killed after preventing a kill, thats still a positive. Scum still have to make the decision based on what they know of the setup whether it was a likely hider that prevented the kill, or if the kill was prevented by a JK or WD, so its not as simple as a missed kill = RB+dead hider. In the case of a JK or WD prevented kill, if the scum assume wrong and think they targetted a hider, it may even lead to a 2nd prevented kill.

[Papa Zito]

Okay it's pretty obvious that most of the crowd wants nothing to do with this claim business. No more claim talking.

It's also pretty obvious that people have accepted Roleblocker as one of the power options. Let's please hammer this and move on (dammit).

After that we can slug it out over Janitor vs. Assassin, and really at this point I don't care. But do the above stuff first so I can at least pretend we're making progress.

[Patrick]

Votecount

Janitor (5) -- SpyreX, Kmd4390, DrippingGoofball, Ellibereth, Papa Zito
Rolecop (1) -- ooba
Roleblocker (8) -- Kmd4390, Papa Zito, ooba, SpyreX, Rhinox, Amished, mith, VasudeVa
Assassin (4) -- VasudeVa, Rhinox, Amished, Slicey

20 alive, 11 votes to choose.


Deadlines

Number one (3) -- Rhinox, VasudeVa, Slicey
Number two (9) -- Hoopla, SpyreX, Papa Zito, ooba, Elmo, ekiM, zoraster, Amished, My Milked Eek

Deadline hits on the 11th and 11 am GMT. Anything not chosen by then is assigned randomly. I'll be away from early the 11th to sometime on the 19th at the Caffwagon meet; will have some access but Mr Flay will probably also keep an eye.

[mith]

Rhinox: It's not that the "prevent kill" and "extra kill" possibilities negate; the chances of the latter are significantly higher (though I think you get that).

As you correctly point out, the benefit of the Hider is the potential for confirmed innocents. But how good is that, really? If the Hider survives N1, revealing the confirmed innocent immediately isn't any good (especially with Assassin/Roleblocker), so either he can chill there in the safe hiding place (and still risk dying to scum targetting someone who probably isn't getting a lot of heat, without revealing any information to the town) or go elsewhere. If he risks hiding with a different player the next night, we're now at >40% chances for the Hider dying before D3, with the potential benefit of two confirmed innocents early in the game - which isn't that useful.

The suggestion that a Hider might confirm up to

five

innocents is ridiculous. The chances are far too high that they will die.

The Hider isn't a net negative, but it's not much of a positive.

In the 2 Hider case, the scum can act on a missed kill based on their knowledge of the setup - but even if they gave us a Jailkeeper or a Weak Doctor, of course they would try to block/kill their missed target. Letting 2 Hiders live another night to potentially break the game the next day is suicide.

Papa Zito: I'll stop when we hit a majority against, and not before; I've only just convinced myself, so I'm not going to rule out the possibility that some others might read the arguments and be swayed, even if you are ignoring everything I say.

[ekiM]

Can people hammer the second deadline option? Might as well get it out of the way.

[Kmd4390]

vote option 2

. Thought id done that already.

[mith]

Vote: Option 2

[Herodotus]

I've been without home internet access since my last post. I expect to have access again before Monday. Apologies.

[mith]

Post 207, the sentence just before "Papa Zito:", I should rephrase: Letting 2 Hiders live to potentially break the game in the future (if the Roleblocker dies) is extremely risky for the scum.

Rhinox: Some numbers for you to think about.

EV in a 4:16 Vanilla game is ~18%.

Consider a hypothetical game which is 4:16, has 2 Hiders, a scum Roleblocker, and other power roles play no part). Consider an ideal start for such a game - the 2 Hiders hide successfully with different innocents the first two nights, scum are lynched the first two days, and the scum even miss a kill the second night before the Hiders come out day 3 and reveal their confirmed innocents. Scum can now take out all six confirmed innocents, but they're in a tough spot, right? Well, yes, compared to the Vanilla EV, but it's not as overwhleming a town advantage as you might guess. EV: 55%.

It's pretty good, and certainly good compared to the Vanilla EV. We would expect to do a bit better still in an actual game that played out that way, because of the information gained from the lynches... Of course, that's not the actual EV of a 2 unclaimed Hider game - it's absurdly optimistic. In reality, the chances of us lynching two scum to start the game are quite low (we'll be beating the odds just to lynch one), the Hiders probably wouldn't both do so well (and odds are in favor of one getting killed if they both try to confirm innocents the first two nights)... really, the only thing that isn't "best case" about that scenario is the pesky Roleblocker.

Now consider a game where the 2 Hiders are known from the start, and the scum don't have a Roleblocker. EV: 66%. No assumptions or optimism necessary here; and in this game, the EV would be a bit higher still, because we would have two more power roles. Such a situation isn't "won" for the town by any means, but this is the sort of EV that leads to setups being declared "broken" (see: Original Newbie).

Have I at least gotten the point across that we're not just talking about "2 different approaches to a strategy"? Having two unkillable roles is better for our win probability than even an "ideal" scenario involving two unclaimed Hiders.

[Elmo]

Just checking in because it's been a while.

My problem with a hider claim (assuming there's one hider) is it doesn't work with giving out the RB - let's say one hider claims, we give out janitor & assassin. Consensus seems to be that RB is clearly the weakest. The hider can generate a confirmed innocent per night, or trade for a single scum. That's pretty good, but I'm not sure it outweighs the problems posed. After a 1:1 trade, I'm not that happy. If you think janitor is not strong, then it might actually be best, I guess; I'm pretty negative about the janitor, though. I think it's playable, but not best. I can't really think

I can't really find a good plan with massclaim. I'm not in favour unless someone can point out something I missed.

Time's up, byee.

[Zorblag]

Troll no has been feeling well (Troll spent all of yesterday in bed for example; standing made Troll dizzy) so Troll no has been posting much. Troll apologizes for that.

Clearly Troll supports a hider claim. Troll probably doesn't support a mass claim.

Hider claim?
Yes - 3 (Plumegranate, mith, Troll)
No - 8 (ekiM, Amished, PZ, Rhinox, Vas, Hoopla, Spyrex, KMD4390)

Massclaim?
Yes - 1 (Hoopla)
No - 8 (ekiM, Plumegranate, Amished, PZ, Rhinox, Vas, SpyreX, KMD4390)

@Papa Zito, Troll realizes that you no particularly like to try to get into the game mechanics at the start. You have demonstrated that on multiple occasions in games that Troll has played with you. That no means that what we do here in terms of claims be useless as you be saying. Whether we claim various things or not and what roles we give the scum based on that actually does much to effect the shape of the game and making the best choice about that now after thinking about it should improve our chances of winning. The fact that we have a Day 0 and have these choices in the game means that we should be approaching this game differently than we do most games; we explicitly have a time when setup speculation be helpful and taking advantage of that helps us.

How much would a hider claim hurt us do you think? Troll thinks that you be objecting to it just because it no be the normal thing to do to start a game? Troll thinks that you should at this point trust Troll's instincts to some degree when it comes to what claims might make sense.

Troll also wonders why you be voting for the janitor given what Troll knows you think of non-reveals.

@Elmo, why wouldn't we be able to give the scum a roleblocker if we had one hider claim? If the role acts in a way that seems like it be town and we have any protective roles (which no be unlikely) then scum have to decide to use both the roleblocker and the kill to take out a player who might be protected and might get killed anyhow (by scum or vig kills) if them do neither. Troll thinks that even an outed hider with a roleblocker in the game has enough things going for them to get by well enough for Troll.

@ekiM, Troll thinks that you be overstating how bad a single hider claim would be for the town but at least you be thinking about this so far as Troll can tell.

@ooba and Zoraster, Troll thinks that the two of you explicitly support hider claims. Troll wonders if you would be willing to give your best arguments for why this be the case.

@those other than Papa Zito who be opposed to the hider claims, Troll wants you to confirm that you've actually thought through what would happen if we went with the hider claim plan. Troll knows that claiming early be different from normal play and there be resistance based solely on that. This group of players should be able to get past that initial resistence and actually consider the merits of a claim. Some of those who oppose the claim seem to have done that; we appear to disagree which Troll can live with even if it be somewhat irritating. For those who haven't Troll would appreciate it if you really did take some time to think. Day Zero in this game no decides who we think is scummy, it decides the game we will play. Troll would like to play the game that gives the town the best chance even if that means going with an unusual first set of moves.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[mith]

Elmo: If we can get a 1:1 trade out of any of our power roles, we should happily take it. [morenumbers]The EV for a game this size goes from 18% to 28% if we remove the Hider and a scum. To get the same EV bump from confirmed innocents at the start of the game, we'd need 8.[/morenumbers] Confirmed innocents aren't that valuable until late in the game (and dead scum are almost always more valuable, unless it's the confirmed innocent that takes us to the "auto-win" threshold).

With a single claimed Hider and no Roleblocker, we could get "full investigations" two ways: if we think we have a Jailkeeper, the Hider can announce the hiding target, and the Jailkeeper can block/protect that target (if they're scum, the Hider dies, but we know that's why, and if they're town the scum can't get the double kill); if we think we have a Tracker, the Hider doesn't announce a target and the Tracker tracks the Hider (the Hider can provide a "safe target" for a potential Vigilante - someone high on the Hider/Town's suspect list), and if the Hider dies the Tracker can deduce the alignment of the target from the nightkills.

With the Roleblocker, it's more about protection initially. I'm still not entirely sure what the best plan is here, but I think if there's a Weak Doctor they should protect the claimed Hider (if a Weak Doctor dies night 1, we lynch the Hider; if we have a Weak Doctor and no Hider, that should be enough to keep scum from claiming Hider, and if they do it anyway we get the 1:1 trade - there's some fiddly things involved to cover the "legit Hider, Weak Doctor gets killed by normal scum nightkill or Vigilante kill" possibility, but that's workable), and if there's a Jailkeeper they should block/protect the Hider with some probability (not sure what's ideal).

Troll is pretty firmly on the "so we give them a Roleblocker, so what?" side of this, while I am a little less decided (I don't like any of the non-Roleblocker combinations we could give the scum, but there are some definite benefits to having a claimed Hider and no Roleblocker). The thrust of the "Hider-claim" argument, though, is that a single Hider unclaimed isn't all that strong, while a claimed Hider gives us some options for getting our power roles to work together; that may not be enough to make the EVs line up completely, but I think it is enough to make Hider-claim better overall (taking into account the likelihood of 0 claims, 2 claims, or a scum fake claim).

[Papa Zito]

I'll answer Troll's post when it's less midnight.

[Rhinox]

I think I've been convinced to change my mind on the hider claim. I think troll be right that my resistance to the idea is mostly because claims are not usually the way games are started.

unvote: roleblocker

If we get no hider claims, RB gets my revote, and we get some setup information.

If we get 1 hider claim, its a tough choice. There could be protection roles available to protect the hider, but if the hider is RBed he won't be able to clear any townies. The scum already know what our PR's are so they will know whether its safe to attempt to kill the hider or if they have to hunt down other roles first, but either way the hider will still be RBed, at least until the RB runs out of shots. I feel we would get more/better information without a RB, but I don't like any of the other role combinations. Janitor + assassin would probably have to be my preferred role allotment, and we'd have to deal with the uncertainties the janitor role would bring. I guess I would like to know the EV's for unclaimed single hider vs claimed hider with RB vs claimed hider with no RB but janitor hijinks, if they can be calculated or even estimated.

I still doubt we have 2 hiders but if we do, then no RB. I didn't realize the EV would jump to 66% right from the get go - didn't realize 2 confirmed unk roles were really that powerful.

Hider claim?
Yes - 4 (Plumegranate, mith, Troll, Rhinox)
No - 7 (ekiM, Amished, PZ, Vas, Hoopla, Spyrex, KMD4390)

Massclaim?
Yes - 1 (Hoopla)
No - 8 (ekiM, Plumegranate, Amished, PZ, Rhinox, Vas, SpyreX, KMD4390)

[Amished]

Essentially the only reason I oppose a hider claim is the ease of which the scum could manipulate it. I do believe they didn't think that we'd massclaim; but it's still easy for scum to come up with a way to mess with us. I think that trusting our PR's to do the right thing instead of outing themselves and being open to scum manipulation is the way to go.

[zoraster]

@ooba and Zoraster, Troll thinks that the two of you explicitly support hider claims. Troll wonders if you would be willing to give your best arguments for why this be the case.

Gladly.
1. It seems to me there is a chance, albeit it somewhat small, that we would gain quite a lot from a hider claim if we get two hiders claiming. It seems to me that the only reason this would be particularly bad for mafia to give to us is if the two hiders work together in some manner, preferably to keep two cleared players alive the whole game. But if the mafia either (a) didn't realize this [perfectly possible] or (b) realized this but figured town would not have the hiders claim BEFORE town gives them the roleblocker, they would not have a particular downside. I don't think it's unreasonable to believe that scum can think that far ahead.

2. The minus of a single hider claim is pretty low. This is especially true if we don't give them a roleblocker as the hider will still be able to hide at people's houses until he targets a mafia member.

3. If we get zero hider claims, we know a lot more about our setup with little downside and can make better choices with our selections. The mafia already know how many hiders there are. If there aren't any, it's much better for us to know that. It narrows the field for future fake claims as well as hider is a particularly GOOD role for mafia to fake claim if there aren't any other hiders.

[Zorblag]

@Amished, by scum manipulating it you mean that you be worried that scum would fake claim and try to get by with the hider claim? If so we probably have tools to protect against that. If them did try then them would have one member out there that Troll be fairly certain would get caught in the long run (or depending on how things go down the short run) and in some ways Troll hopes that them would try that. Troll no expects them too though.

The reason that Troll be looking at the hider claim in particular be that there be wonderful benefits if scum did give us two of them, them no be hugely powerful on their own if we have one and them would still be able largely to act as them would normally. If we get a single hider claim it lets our other power roles make a slightly more informed decision about their actions and we will be trusting them to do the right thing.

Or did you have some other idea in mind about scum manipulation?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[ooba]

@ooba and Zoraster, Troll thinks that the two of you explicitly support hider claims. Troll wonders if you would be willing to give your best arguments for why this be the case.

- I think two Hiders are unlikely
- If scum gave us a single Hider
-- They will not counterclaim as it is very easy to ask the two hiders to hide with each other and confirm themselves - If one hider dies (and there isn't another NK), then we know for sure that the other hider is scum
-- We might start the game out with a confirmed town role which cannot be killed easily (This is obv. assuming we dont give them RB)

On the flip side if we have no Hider claims, we start out with info that we did not get Hiders and reduce later fakeclaiming options for scum.

[Zorblag]

Here be Troll's current count. If Troll has any listed incorrectly Troll invites them to correct Troll.

Hider claim?
Yes - 6 (Plumegranate, mith, Troll, Rhinox, Zoraster, ooba)
No - 7 (ekiM, Amished, PZ, Vas, Hoopla, Spyrex, KMD4390)

Massclaim?
Yes - 1 (Hoopla)
No - 8 (ekiM, Plumegranate, Amished, PZ, Rhinox, Vas, SpyreX, KMD4390)

@Papa Zito, Troll no be trying to challenge your way to play the game. Troll thinks that you might take what Troll has said as such and if that happens then it be likely to undermine your view on Troll's suggestions. Troll be trying to get us set up in a position in which your approach (of simply finding scum) be most likely to lead to a town win. Once Day Zero be over we will be doing the finding scum that you be advocating; if we follow Troll's plan here we will simply be doing it with more information than we would otherwise.

If you have reasons that Troll no be seeing to object the the hider claim then Troll would love to hear there but for now Troll thinks that the hider claim sets up the sort of game that you want to play in a way that gives town the best chance of winning.

@Hoopla, what is it exactly that you object to about the hider claim? Troll sees that you clearly be opposed to it but Troll no be sure what you think it would do to harm town. Clearly you see some advantages to claiming on the whole. Why would a hider claim on it's own be bad for town?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Hoopla]

@Hoopla, what is it exactly that you object to about the hider claim? Troll sees that you clearly be opposed to it but Troll no be sure what you think it would do to harm town. Clearly you see some advantages to claiming on the whole. Why would a hider claim on it's own be bad for town?

I feel like the chances of scum giving us a Hider seems slim, giving us two is even more slim. There is seriously almost no way a scumteam would have given town two Hiders.

I'm worried about the very real possibility of there being no Hiders, and scum knowing this, deciding to claim it. Can you link me to someone's post that addresses this issue? Because I don't think this is a very good scenario for town. How are we supposed to verify a Hider claim?

[VasudeVa]

Reading back, I'm having trouble understanding the Assassin role PM. What does 'to perform two extra nightkills, on top of the normal mafia kill. ' mean, exactly? Does it mean that the assassin targets 2 people per night, + Mafia kill? Or is it a fancy-schmancy way of saying 2-shot?