Mini 456: Ultimatum Mafia - Game Over!

[Battle Mage]

Heh...it's funny, BM, but I would say my actions on the day you were lynched were just about exactally what they would have been in I was town. There were some points of the game where I did act scummy, but I don't think that was one of them.

thats sorta what i mean. You played like the PERFECT townie i.e. defending those who were town and attacking those who were scum. However when it was certain that i was going to get lynched, and you appeared to defend me, it seemed pretty likely that you had inside knowledge that i was town. Dont get me wrong, it was good play, but had i survived, you would have been my top suspect on the next day (not that that would have got me anywhere most probably)

[The Fonz]

Heh...it's funny, BM, but I would say my actions on the day you were lynched were just about exactally what they would have been in I was town. There were some points of the game where I did act scummy, but I don't think that was one of them.

Likewise, I think. I was waiting for the kind of act from BM that would normally convince me of scummitude had I been town.

[Yosarian2]

Heh...it's funny, BM, but I would say my actions on the day you were lynched were just about exactally what they would have been in I was town. There were some points of the game where I did act scummy, but I don't think that was one of them.

thats sorta what i mean. You played like the PERFECT townie i.e. defending those who were town and attacking those who were scum. However when it was certain that i was going to get lynched, and you appeared to defend me, it seemed pretty likely that you had inside knowledge that i was town. Dont get me wrong, it was good play, but had i survived, you would have been my top suspect on the next day (not that that would have got me anywhere most probably)

Well, perhaps, but I do that when town too. I'm often pretty good at smelling a bad bandwagon and defending against it.

It's pretty funny that Stoofer had left orders to challange me. For the last couple of game days, my plan had always been to challange Stoofer during the last lynch-or-lose day.

[mneme]

Very good game, and props to the Cons!

Getting lynched in absentia sucked, though.

Though...when two people attack each other and you think they're both town -- -always- lynch the attacker. Always. The act of attacking someone who is (probably) town drops your likelyhood of being town -- there's a reason I'd have challenged Fonz, but Albert challenged me.

Also, a bit of post mortem on my analysis in 522: If you only count primary attacks (which I didn't; I kept in, but degraded, the fonz->albert secondary attack), it was entirely accurate. Discounting that attack as a blind (because it was made as a FOS-style attack while voting someone else), the pairings you get are: albert, fonz, (stoofer or yosarian), and stewie, fonz, (stoofer or yosarian).

-despite- Yosarianscum's doubt of this analysis, and Stoofer ending up lynching me because of it (huh?), it was very valid with this game. The scum never did a first-order bus of other scum.

I'd love to try this setup out again -- be interesting to see whether we had the day 1 + 2 wrangles with a game worth of history to look back on.

[The Fonz]

That's an overly simplistic analysis though. I attacked Albert whilst actually voting for Albert, at a point where he was still in danger of lynch (I began writing my

vote:mneme

post before Yosarian voted Albert- the only time ANYONE voted against a conservative who was actually in any danger). The fact that I subsequently attacked him whilst primarily attacking Stoofer isn't that relevant, since the Stoofer lynch won us the game.

Yes, Stoofer coming up town would have looked bad- but it wasn't an issue. Had we lynched Albert, the Stoofer lynch would have pushed itself.

[mneme]

Fonz: You did -- but a key technique in network vote analysis is to put very low weight on late plays and very, very early plays -- because the potential risk/cost is much lower for those plays. (ie, discount random votes and most attacks past the second or third day except when especially significant). At the time I posted the analysis, you had never attacked Albert except as "express suspision of albert while voting someone else". (which I didn't ignore, but did note, especially given that my first conclusions (ie, stewie as mafia) was less than fully believable).

If stoof and VD had lynched albert, we'd have had a very different game -- lynching you next would have been an obvious step, which would give us a bit of clearance to figure out which of Yos/Stoof to lynch.

[The Fonz]

I disagree that I would have been remotely the obvious lynch had you prevailed over Albert. Had Stoofer not gone for the

actually very scummy

tactic of switching to 'Hard Lynches' then Albert would have been the one player I'd gone after hardest in the game. And it wouldn't have been a 'late bus' either.

[Battle Mage]

i agree with Mneme that we definitely need a sequel to this. If only to regain some pride in our townsmanship

[Albert B. Rampage]

i agree with Mneme that we definitely need a sequel to this. If only to regain some pride in our townsmanship

LOL

[Yosarian2]

Though...when two people attack each other and you think they're both town -- -always- lynch the attacker. Always. The act of attacking someone who is (probably) town drops your likelyhood of being town -- there's a reason I'd have challenged Fonz, but Albert challenged me.

Huh? Always lynch the attacker? I completly disagree. I would actually consider challanging someone to be a pro-town action; that is, scum would rather not challange anyone and hope that two townies challange each other or that a townie challanges someone in the other scum group. I mean, scum don't really even want to WIN a challange against a townie, as that would make them look bad. (And, in fact, it did make albert look bad; no one distrusted albert at all before your lynch, but afterwards, everyone distrusted Albert). So I'd say when in doubt, vote to SAVE the attacker, most of the time. In theory, anyway.

[mneme]

Yosarian2: In the specific case (and as I'd have pointed out had I logged in any time between Wednesday and Sunday), this isn't the case.

It's true that the scum never want to get into a challenge -- but in this case, Albert had been -forced- onto a bandwagon--and chose to have it be between himself and someone most players thought (correctly) was town.

Moreover, pre-deadline challenges are often anti-town, even when they are most often perpetuatied by townies -- I still think the policy lynches on days 1 and 2 were correct play, though regrettable (well, except in Sparks' case).

In that kind of situation, you vote the person creating the situation -- because forcing the situation is itself an anti-town act. If you think two players are equally town and one does a deadline challenge on the other, you save the defender.

A non-deadline challenge is stickier, as above -- challenging is pro town in theory (more risk == scum don't want to do it), but often anti-town in practice.

[Yosarian2]

Yosarian2: In the specific case (and as I'd have pointed out had I logged in any time between Wednesday and Sunday), this isn't the case.

It's true that the scum never want to get into a challenge -- but in this case, Albert had been -forced- onto a bandwagon--and chose to have it be between himself and someone most players thought (correctly) was town.

Well, that is true, he was forced into a challange, but again I don't see how that makes him any less likely to be town. I mean, everyone already knew he was attacking you, and they still thought he was town; not sure why him choosing to challange you would autmatically change that. I mean, look at MAD mafia; everyone who launced either a nuke or a fake-nuke was town, and everyone who was a target was town, bizzarly enough.

In that kind of situation, you vote the person creating the situation -- because forcing the situation is itself an anti-town act. If you think two players are equally town and one does a deadline challenge on the other, you save the defender.

That really dosn't make any sense to me; I often think that X is a townie but disagree with his suspicions in a mafia game. Again, if we didn't think his suspicions on you were suspicious before, it dosn't make any logical sense to punish him for acting in a way consistant with them.

[Battle Mage]

ah Yos-MAD was the exception to the rule. With me on the side of the scum, the town never stood a chance.

[Mr Stoofer]

Just got back. I had left instructions that I would challenge Yosarian2, so I would not have been modkilled.

Well played scum, and thanks to our mods for a fun and interesting game. I had you

so

caught, Yosarian, but I guess you would have still won the vote against me even if I had challenged you.

More comments later...

[pablito]

I suppose I won't run the sequel immediately as planned. Although if anyone in the future wants to run this again, I suggest the following changes:

The only absolutely necessary change is how to deal with an even number of voters to resolve ties. Time-based tie resolutions were not the best way to handle it. I think instead a tie should favour the attacker. Thus with six voters, it would require 4 votes to save the defender/opponent to get rid of the attacker.

If the game is auto-deadlined (and I think it should be), it should be 15 days to 30 days per gameday. 8 was way too few. Randomized deadlines did prevent last minute spamming to avoid having to challenge, but it did not prevent strategic posting times. I think at one point Yos was on deck but managed to post in time and the deadline fell to dylan instead. I think strategic lurking would not be as much of a problem as I anticipated. And the town would likely deal with lurking on their own terms and didn't need a rule to help prevent it. Deadlines ended up harming the town more than the challenge system hurt mafia.

The cannot challenge consecutively and cannot challenge for the third time unless all have challenged rules were to prevent one uber-townie from challenging every single person and winning every single challenge. I thought it was the breaking strategy for the game. ie: let's lynch everyone except for A and B.

Any nightless vanilla setup 4:8, 3:3:6, etc. works. I think a day and night cycle could work as well. I was starting to devise one (big brother themed actually) but realized I don't have the time or motivation to play or mod another game in the future.

Thanks for the game guys, and I really appreciate how much effort you put in the game and how much process discussion was used as well.

[mneme]

Um. Both deadlines and the challenge system hurt the town. What hurt the mafia was not having a kill, but they've got all the advantages aside from this (better relative numbers, deadlines, challenge system).

Pablito, I hope you appreciated our attempts to "break" your game (by moldingit somewhat closer to a traditional game).

[Battle Mage]

just to clarify, Mneme, this makes no sense. In theory it is flawed, because the scum are going to be reluctant to make such challenges anyway. A better policy would be to do the exact OPPOSITE of what you are saying, and kill the guy who got challenged. In practice, this game has proven how bad such logic is. What you are saying is pretty evasive. I mean, the situation you describe didnt happen. On the day i was lynched, it wasnt a conflict between 2 equally town players. It was a conflict between a CONFIRMED scumbag, and an eager townie. Not that it made a difference to the end result, it would have been significantly better to have at least been successful in eliminating 1 scumgroup. Instead 'policy lynches' and then an incredibly powerful Conservative group, cost the town the game. I'd have thought you'd have realised this by now.

BM

Yosarian2: In the specific case (and as I'd have pointed out had I logged in any time between Wednesday and Sunday), this isn't the case.

It's true that the scum never want to get into a challenge -- but in this case, Albert had been -forced- onto a bandwagon--and chose to have it be between himself and someone most players thought (correctly) was town.

Moreover, pre-deadline challenges are often anti-town, even when they are most often perpetuatied by townies -- I still think the policy lynches on days 1 and 2 were correct play, though regrettable (well, except in Sparks' case).

In that kind of situation, you vote the person creating the situation -- because forcing the situation is itself an anti-town act. If you think two players are equally town and one does a deadline challenge on the other, you save the defender.

A non-deadline challenge is stickier, as above -- challenging is pro town in theory (more risk == scum don't want to do it), but often anti-town in practice.

[mneme]

BM: You were one of the reasons we lost. Really -- you forced us to lynch you by playing the "maverick" card, making us choose between a low-priority scum and a potential high-prioirty scum.

The fallacy of "scum will never challenge" was pretty well proven by the gameplay -- half the challenges were made by scum (admitedly, nearly all the challenges were deadline challenges).

The question of how to vote between challenger and challengee is much more complicated than presented -- precisely because the "natural" state of the game is to rapidly devolve into an orgy of chaos from which some random group (likely a scumgroup) emerges victorious.

That state isn't good for the town, which is -why- we spent so much time discussing strategy.

[Mr Stoofer]

I think it only fair to tell all you guys that

Sparks is an alt of ShadowLurker

. I have only just found this out.

ShadowLurker is not a bad player, so I can only conclude that as "Sparks" he was deliberately screwing with this game and the players. For the record, I believe that his behaviour was totally unacceptable.

[Battle Mage]

dude, you are reading way too much into this. This game is a prime example to me of how, in games with complicated setups, or significant differences, you have to bear in mind the basic idea of the game, which is STILL, to kill the scum. Now the problem we had here, was that some people (yourself included) read far too much into the flavour and differences, and lost the actual purpose. In ANY OTHER GAME, you would be totally stupid not to have lynched the confirmed scum in that situation. The same was true here, but your mind was clouded. The fact was (and i stated this at the time) even if you felt i was 'potential high-priority scum', why not lynch me the next day?
And you are of course missing 1 vital point here. VanDamien wasn't confirmed Liberal Scum. He was still as much potential Conservative scum, as anyone else. As it happened, he wasn't, but then neither was i. Your logic falls flat at the fact that his claim left open the option of him being conservative scum. Had he been Conservative scum, we would have almost certainly lost the game, even if we succeeded in killing all his buddies.

BM

@Stoofer- yeh i heard something about that in another game. Apparently Jathan is also an alt of SL.
is that even allowed?

BM: You were one of the reasons we lost. Really -- you forced us to lynch you by playing the "maverick" card, making us choose between a low-priority scum and a potential high-prioirty scum.

The fallacy of "scum will never challenge" was pretty well proven by the gameplay -- half the challenges were made by scum (admitedly, nearly all the challenges were deadline challenges).

The question of how to vote between challenger and challengee is much more complicated than presented -- precisely because the "natural" state of the game is to rapidly devolve into an orgy of chaos from which some random group (likely a scumgroup) emerges victorious.

That state isn't good for the town, which is -why- we spent so much time discussing strategy.

[Mr Stoofer]

Battle Mage, menme is absolutely correct in what he says. You need to listen more to experienced players who are saying things only because they want to help.

[Battle Mage]

Battle Mage, menme is absolutely correct in what he says. You need to listen more to experienced players who are saying things only because they want to help.

its nice of you to offer your opinion Stoofer, but if its all the same, could you please explain your view?
Its human nature not to trust something that sounds completely stupid, even if somebody intelligent says it.
Oh and as a note, experienced people aren't always right. just 95% of the time. lol

[The Fonz]

I really think you're overstating the scum-friendliness of this game, mneme. After all, the only person ever forced to challenge was scum. And we did, as a group, lynch five non-cons in a row. You may have a point about the deadlines, but I can't see how the challenge system in itself favoured scum- it really wasn't that big a modification anyway. Most towns find themselves deciding between a very limited number of candidates as the days go on anyway. Also, having multiple scumgroups ought to help the town- as, in fact, it did here, in buying the town an extra day to find con scum.

In any case, everyone knew this was to be speed mafia when they signed up. It's rather churlish to complain about the fact.

[Yosarian2]

BM: You were one of the reasons we lost. Really -- you forced us to lynch you by playing the "maverick" card, making us choose between a low-priority scum and a potential high-prioirty scum.

Eh. On the one hand, when the town makes a plan in any game like this, it's usually best if some townie dosn't go agaisnt it, even if their reasons seem good to them at the time it rarely seems to go well in any of these games. On the other hand, lynching BM that day was a mistake on the part of the town, no two ways about it. Like in most bad lynches, both sides share some fault.

[Guardian]

By the way, I hate you all for not writing your congressmen to give NGR more funding. Not one person wrote their congressman. You

can

could have

made a difference .