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United States2186 Posts
I'm sorry for how obscenely late this is. I was far too occupied in the 2 weeks following the game ending and kinda halted doing this until people pestered me to get it finished. I hope that this can be of some use, as I tried to give everyone some thoughts on how to improve for the future. If you do find this useful and want to see it in future games, please let me know (or yell at me for giving you a bad rating hehe). If you want me to elaborate on your play at all, just ask as I probably shortchanged some people if I covered them later on.
Ratings:
Keep in mind I consider an acceptable performance to be somewhere around 5-7. Anything over that is special, while anything under needs some work. Players who die earlier naturally have lower ratings simply because they could do less. For reference, a 0/10 would be someone who actively sabotages their team, while a 10/10 would be reserved for a player who completely dominates the game like Chaoser in mafia 39 or Ace in Sleeper Cell. Picks will influence your rating, except for mafia, whose picks I will analyze elsewhere.
I am also giving negative points to anyone who saw Incognito's post condemning Ace and didn't immediately start gunning for Ace because that is the best case on anyone I have ever seen.
Lastly, ratings are somewhat correlated to your general play level overall. i.e if I lived all game as town and didn't get a mafia lynched the entire time, I'd probably give myself a 1 or 2.
1. Flamewheel [3][3] Chuiu Jack: 6.5/10
Subtly confirmed himself innocent right from the very start, which sadly nobody picked up on. By essentially claiming that he wouldn't pick Inventor he didn't screw over scamp or caller, but was prioritizing that there would be no role overlap. A mafia player in this situation would 100% indicate he was picking Inventor, pick Chuiu Jack, and let a teammate grab Inventor (like deconduo in pyp3 saying he would pick cpr, then not doing so, letting a teammate grab it, or haplopaithan taking parity cop when eiii a townie, below him, said he would take it, and not saying a word).
Wasn't too involved in the rest of the game before his death, but correctly chose veteran night 1 to survive, and realized that Incognito was innocent from the start. Had he lived longer his sober judgment would certainly have helped the town resolve messy scenarios, though I would have liked to see some real analysis. In what little analysis you did, you didn't focus closely enough and spread your radar too wide to really figure out anything important. Also you needed to be more vocal on incognito's innocence to help restore a more positive town atmosphere.
2. Scamp [7][11] Inventor 3/10
Your invention, a votecheck, was very solid and hard to argue with, and you correctly gave it to an innocent (Barundar). Your death was not your fault really, but you could have tried to hide your pick a little better to give the mafia some doubt. Roleclaiming was definitely an absolute nono.
You needed to contribute some genuine ideas of your own early on rather than simply commentating on others, because your early posts rightfully deserved a lot of scrutiny, which put yourself in the unenviable position of feeling the necessity of roleclaiming, sealing your fate.
3. Caller [10][4] NRA Member 8/10
A rare and impeccable display from grandpa caller early on. If you were just a little bit more active and kept up your presence in later days, you could have led the town along on your finger the entire game.
Getting on the votelist was quite unlucky and definitely prematurely sealed your fate. However, had you been more active and contributing in the middle and end you could have effectively been able to convince the town that your list was simply framed because your day 1 posting was simply that good. A very impressive job of pushing mafia objectives while looking completely innocent doing it. Along with Ace you formed a very effective tag team for the mafia.
4. Barundar [13][1] Caller Godfather -> Appears as Medic 5/10
Caller GF was definitely the right pick here. You also did a good job of showing your innocence early on I felt with honest and open contributions. However, your 'scumteam lists' and similar posts were pretty much a waste and part of a general trend that got the town sidetracked too easily. In the future, avoid those, and just focus on as many mafia as you can kill that cycle.
You correctly identified Incognito as town much later but didn't have enough conviction to help seriously stop the huge doubt train being thrown at him.
Overall I feel that you did a solid job as a townie. The lynch train on you was definitely unwarranted, and in general you put forth reasonable ideas and helped convey your innocence well. If you want to go to the next level, then you really need to sharpen your analysis, in particular your starting points. All of your initial suspects were town and you didn't really look too closely at more than a couple people. Therefore I suggest you make an overhaul with what criteria and heuristics you are using to identify probable mafia.
You definitely should have changed what you appeared as though. A medic in spot 4 is mafia food, but if you appeared as bulletproof, rock star, veteran, meth man, etc, you would have given a mafia team that checked you serious doubts about shooting you and not hurt the town at all.
One last point is that you should have used the votecheck kit during day 2 so you could've gotten the results back in time to post them in night in case you were shot, which at spot 4 is highly likely.
5. Radfield [15][2] Bullet Proof 7.5/10 or 8/10
As always, Radfield did a good job of being very open and contributing his ideas from the start, establishing his innocence very well. Nobody should have been doubting that he was a legit green beyond the first day despite ace's machinations.
Bulletproof is actually a really smart choice in a slot this high up as it prevents the mafia from firing into the upper ranks with impunity. When they hit you, they have no idea if it was medic or which of the various defensive roles that act differently.
However, the no pick list was a very bad idea as it basically gave mafia the freedom to pick whatever they want without any fear of it being taken. This led to the CPR doctor, one of the best roles in the game, going down at the unacceptably low spot 22, and could have been far more damaging had the mafia been more audacious in their picks.
You've already talked about your mistake in not supporting incog/pushing ace harder, so I won't go into that further. Your case against gmarshal at the end of the game was very compelling and sealed an otherwise obnoxious endgame for the town where nobody was trustworthy. I felt the main reason why it was so hard for you to push it was because it was simply very hard for the town get over the hump of thinking 'gmarshal was so helpful for us earlier and he didn't lie upon being made the mole.'
6. GMarshal [17][2] Mafia 2 DT (Mole) 6.5/10
Excellent role pick, by far the best possible at your spot. I felt you did a fine job of establishing your innocence early, though it wasn't as obvious as you normally are and people questioned it more than usual. Posting the list day 2 and being exceedingly transparent was definitely a fine move, as that one list alone could help save the town.
Not lying about the list day 3, though I imagine very tempting, was a huge success for you because you avoided bum's trap with the police radio.
Ultimately it's pretty hard to rate you, because mole is simply exceedingly tough to play. Having to change thought processes and relook at the game in the middle is so difficult that even though you left so many signs of being the mole (which radfield picked up most of), it's hard to condemn it at all.
7. Deconduo [18][2] Bulletproof -> Vanilla 4/10
As with Radfield, I'm not sure why neither of you took rock star instead, which is overall a stronger role up until the very endgame because roleblocker is a pretty obvious mafia choice and bulletproof doesn't block many types of kills.
I liked your early efforts in trying to draw suspicion on yourself in order to divide mafia from townies and try to trap any overzealous mafia. It didn't work out as you had planned, but it was certainly a worthwhile effort and I hope you can learn from how this game went to refine it for the future.
I think you need to set traps like what you did in a more forceful way, because most of the mafia simply ignored you and it was just townies who ended up doubting you. Hence you had no way of reliably sifting between the two and the end result was you just confused the town more. Still, a valiant effort and points for it!
I have no idea why you announced you were vanilla, especially when you said it helps the mafia more than the town. Simply refuse to give the role because it gives mafia too much info. That is the pro town move there, it's not like knowing you are vanilla tells them anything about your alignment.
8. Foolishness [1][1] Mafia 2 DT -> Vanilla 2/10
A very lacklustre performance from one of the best town players overall. The mafia thought you were the traitor the entire game (as did I!) which says a lot about how interested you were in the game. You allowed your personal feelings to completely mislead you in the Ace/Incog situation; in particular not reading Incognito's case on Ace was a really poor move.
I'd give you a 1 because of the discrepancy with your normal ability, but you managed to avoid having too much suspicion on you for most of the game and did correctly help push for gmarshal at the end.
9. bumatlarge [1][17] Bad Santa 3/10 or 5/10
Bad Santa is an ok role, though quite weak for your exalted slot. I'm confused about what to put here, because for the first 3 days of the game you were essentially on the mafia payroll unknowingly, though you did do a very good job of establishing your innocence. The no-pick list, along with Radfield, ended up hurting the town and could have been far worse. Defending Ace the entire game, particularly after Incognito's beast post, also really confounded matters.
At the end, is results all that matters for this, even if the logic was terrible? You defended Ace the entire game and almost ended up shooting Kitaman over him, which could have cost the town the game. However, in the end you shot Ace, because you thought he was the mole!? This does not make sense, because while Ace had a noticeable behavior shift between days 2 and 3, there is no way he would out himself like that if he actually was the mole. In fact, it should have told you that Ace was not the mole if anything.
10. Kavdragon [2][1] Mafia 2 DT -> Vanilla 3/10
First day play was totally fine. The lynch on you was absolutely nonsensical, though cleverly mafia fueled. Did leave some holes in your arguments but overall your play did not deserve a lynch whatsoever. Some of your actions were pretty out there though, in particular mocking the mafia 2 dt/vote rigger plan which was definitely the town's best asset.
I think for future games you should take a step back in day 1 and analyze things more coolheadedly, only making fewer calculated moves, instead of jumping in headfirst into the fray and becoming embroiled both emotionally and in outlook at complications. You made a valiant effort to create useful information but as you discovered, it is very very hard and can easily backfire on you as it has twice now.
Realized at the very end Ace was mafia, but by then it was too late and your last analysis didn't fully implicate him because you weren't confident enough.
11. Chaoser [2][2] Modern DT 2/10
A far cry from your impeccable performance in the previous game, I was left scratching my head wondering if you were even the same person even taking into account busyness etc. Not sending in a check night 2 also hurt considerably, and poo-pooing the voterigger/mafia 2 dt plan is definitely not good. In addition, you downplayed dreamflower's case vs Ace and were part of the group sided with Ace over Incognito which severely crippled the town days 1 and 2.
Revealing your role and being completely transparent later on in the game when you were under a lot of fire was definitely the right move and helped the town avoid a disastrous mislynch. On the whole I felt you lacked the time to properly analyze and think things through because you had a lot of evidence right in front of you that you even acknowledged in your posts but reached the wrong conclusions with it.
12. Fishball [5][3] Kingmaker 6/10
Kingmaker, a true Fishball pick. Who cares what the town says, this man does what he wants. And I support him. Kingmaker in mafia hands is quite powerful with politician or just powerful in general, while in town hands if you can figure out innocents you can effectively get a double lynch. As the town had effectively no KP once Incognito died, kingmaker was easily one of the best rolepicks for the town. As someone who had a double motive of setting up a sweet position as mole, this was definitely the best role to pick here.
Overall it's hard to rate you, because you were essentially playing a double game until day 3, and then you died to the unfortunate admiral ackbar before you could really get rolling. Still up until that point you showed your innocence quite nicely.
13. KillerSOS [5][11] PYP Tracker 1/10
This role pick makes absolutely no sense. At the midway point in the draft you had loads of succulent roles to choose from with a high probability. PYP Tracker is one of the worst roles in the game, certainly in the bottom 5. Outside of role picks, was understandibly inactive due to irl problems, but did nothing to help his team or prove his innocence and somewhat justifyably got lynched early.
14. Eiii [6][7] Role Cop 1/10
I kind of like role cop, but at 14th, you had far better options. It's maybe a 25th slot pick at best (especially considering capitalist is straight up better).
From what I can tell you seem to belive internally that you don't have much/anything to say, thus you don't say anything, and everyone thinks you are suspicious. Lose that thought! Even if you are wrong, it is very important to simply post your thoughts in detail on important subjects just so other people can judge if you are innocent or not. If you can just do that, you are doing an above average job and are really helping the town on the way to victory.
As is, you simply lurk too much and don't post enough genuine content that nobody has any idea what you really are.
15. Infinitestory [6][10] Parity Cop 4/10
You did a solid job of proving your innocence, as people really didn't doubt you almost at all. I do think that you could have done a more concise job of it though, posting less one liner spam and focusing on fewer but more solid and coherent posts to keep things flowing better.
I think the main thing for you to work on is to ignore the small little details . You were one of the most active posters in the thread, but much of what you wrote was on small things that really didn't matter much. In short you were distracted by the minutinae and that took away from your time to focus on the big picture, which led to you looking in all the wrong directions almost the entire game. Still, the rapid and firm lynch of Chezinu was good and helped push the town onwards.
The check on yourself was a big ????, though it did inadvertently bait kurumi into bombing you and crippling his team. Parity cop is a role that partially relies on your ability to analyze people, so if you wanted to check eii's alignment, it would have made more sense to check someone you thought was town as well. Spending 2 days to know the "certainty" of 1 person simply isn't a worthwhile use of your abilities, especially as once a single person dies or publically checked all of your checks get revealed.
16. Dreamflower [4][1] Meth Man 8/10[blue]
Meth Man is an absolutely fantastic role and I heartily approve. One of the smartest picks at your slot and for your style. Caught on to both Ace and Chezinu day 2 as well as realizing how innocent Incognito was, but unfortunately had to go right before you could start hammering away unrecoverable blows, and the foolish town forgot your contributions. Had you not had to be subbed out early, you would've crippled the mafia singlehandedly.
Also amusingly enough, you got the clue 100% right very quickly. I was shocked. Overall if you can act more confidently (even if you don't feel it) you can easily become one of the most dangerous townies.
16v2.0. Meapak_ziphh Meth Man 5/10
Given your role and with Dreamflower's information, you basically needed to be much louder and forceful in the thread. By doing so, you could have bankrupted the mafia far quicker because they'd be forced to shoot you. Your views for the most part were good, what you said was sensible, and you helped the town a fair bit, but with just a little bit more oomph you could have really dominated the game.
17. Mr.Wiggles [4][2] NKVD Agent -> Appears as Meth Man 6/10
Role pick was certainly quite solid. You did a very good job of establishing your innocence early on by actively contributing your ideas, clearly showing that you cared about the town, and not withholding anything. Your invention idea of a bomb being passed around that explodes on mafia was also really cool, though I'm not sure if I would've allowed it. Still, it should have told people that you were innocent as no mafia would suggest that.
Your check of tnkted really helped unravel the mafia as it came at a crucial moment and was one of the big turning points in the game. However, the lynch of originalname was a huge ???? move that could have turned out disastrous had the mafia starting throwing mroe doubt on you. Doing that kind of stuff out of the blue is just going to get townies suspicious and give mafia easy ammunition to fire at you.
If you want to lynch someone who nobody else is really paying attention to, you need to lead up to it in the thread reasonably in order to a) warn the town b) give some accountability so people dont' react like 'what the where did that come from scum' c) give people a chance to react to the proposed kill so you can learn more information. C in particular is important, as it's an easy way to learn a lot more for free.
18. Original Name [4][7] village Idiot ? / ? or 10/10
Hard to really say anything here. Did what had to be done in a reasonably efficient manner, though the earlyness of your death was pretty lucky and had you lived til later you might've been killed by mafia in a hunt for detective roles.
19. tnkted [4][12] Bus Driver 2.5/10
You needed to be more active, because there was such a noticeable disparity between your activity and contributions in this game vs previous ones that you could've been picked out very easily early. Some people did pick up on this, as well as your lack of decisiveness and real opinions on anything important, and it led to your downfall in the form of wiggle's check.
Defending incognito the way you did was fine, but it felt like you didn't have an overall plan to maintain and the incongruencies showed on the whole. You didn't really further mafia objectives much, which is ok, but if you aren't going to do that, you better be completely off the radar of everyone. As mafia, you should approach the game with a plan and post to further that plan instead of kinda just posting aimlessly on whatever you fancy.
Lastly, not trying to work out the 2nd bus on chezinu at the start of day 3 with me and then not showing up in time was a really huge blow to the mafia.
20. Chezinu [9][6] CPR Doctor ? / ?
I have no idea what to put here. How am I supposed to rate someone who deliberately tries to look as scummy as possible and see how long he can live to because "it's more fun that way?" You figured out Radfield's role just from reading the thread (probably the most important role to figure out), came up with the bus driver plan to save yourself twice, and had a few other nifty ideas, but for one of the best players out there (that nobody knows), it was just a small part of your real capability.
21. Ace [9][11] Capitalist 8/10
On one hand, you repeatedly trashed the thread and got away with it early on, almost singlehanedly instilling a very pro-mafia atmosphere for the first two days. If you ever wonder what I mean when I talk about 'pushing mafia objectives,' just look at Ace's play this game. He did it exceedingly well, and by the end of day 2, no more than a couple townies had any clue what was going on and most were completely mired in fog.
On the other hand, I don't think you adjusted properly for the level of players in the game. You did get caught by Dreamflower and Incognito red handed day 2 with ironclad cases that could convince a blind man. His level of play, which essentially won his team the game in Sleeper Cell and Insane mafia 1, was too flagrant this time around to escape the watchful eyes of some of the players and you really only lived as long as you did because of colossal ineptness. Yes, you helped fuel that ineptness, but if people like bum, foolishness, and chaoser were more interested/active and playing at their usual level, they would have instantly agreed with incognito and dreamflower's cases and sent you to the grave day 2.
However, with the town being so poor you could have stayed alive and done some major damage had you kept enthusiastic and contributing day 3, instead of acting all bored and letting the town get too comfy with their detective results. This was a major reason you died actually, because bum though you were a townie and almost shot kitaman. He only changed it to you at the last moment because he thought you were the mole (given the gross disparity between your post-day 3 posting)!
22. Kurumi [9][13] admiral ackbar 4/10
Slid under the radar of pretty much everyone for most of the game while mucking up the thread a bit. I think your english definitely helped you considerably, for as far as I can tell, people just kinda glanced over your posts or dismissed them out of hand lol.
However, bombing when you did was a disastrous move. To some degree it is sensible if the parity cop hadn't checked themself. However, there were too many problems with it even taking that into account. At that point in the game you were one of many 'unknowns' and nobody had any real leads on you nor real suspicions. You were sitting on top of a 1/7~ vote list and you dying confirmed a lot of people (thankfully nobody noticed this, but it was still a huge blow). Furthermore by bombing at that point you 100% gave away gmarshal (who clearly would have been the mafia bomb target if he was innocent), who was the mafia trump card and must have been prioritized. Again, people's heads were in the clouds and didn't realize it, but that still doesn't change the magnitude of the error.
23. Incognito [9][1] America 8/10
I totally support the America choice purely for awesomeness, though it is a very strong role for an analyst as well and a useful pro-town role overall. You triggered a lot of noobguards early; I felt you jumped the gun on pushing your agendas and didn't coordinate your day 1 ploys well enough. This backfired on you considerably and you had to devote far too much effort into keeping yourself alive. You did a good job avoiding 2 lynches considering the trench you dug yourself initially, but you should never have been in that position in the first place.
Your analysis on Kavdragon was poorly done for several reasons. First of all, you heavily used past game examples, which is a-okay, but when you cross reference other games you have to make sure the analysis is accurate. What you did was cross reference games which should have told you that Kav was townie in this game (his play was literally the exact same as in 38 as green), but instead you somehow reached the opposite conclusion.
What mistakes you made early on were remedied when you cleared your mind and reread everything with a fresh start (learn from this example folks!). Nuking Chezinu was a huge blow to the mafia even if it did lead to flamewheel's death, and your analysis on Ace was, like citizen said, the best I've ever seen in a game. However, your past history came back to bite you as Ace was able to shoot you that night and get off relatively scot free.
If you want to play aggressively day 1 that is totally fine, but you need to have a more clearcut plan instead of bullying people while still trying to wing it, and your attempts at prying out information need to be much more subtle. The directness of your approach simply triggered backlash and didn't produce real information.
24. Node [9][1] Copycat (Inventor) 7/10
Rating is almost solely due to the Police Radio, which was absolutely brilliant and a really creative use of the Inventor. Definitely the turning point of the game. Outside of that you were too lurky and didn't help convey your own innocence better. A copycat Inventor hidden all the way at the bottom of the draft list is the mafia's worst nightmare, but you were 'forced' (probably shouldn't have claimed anyway, but it is understandable) to claim to avoid a lynch, which signifies how dangerous your position was. As soon as you received inventor you should have went out of your way to establish a reasonable town presence so that you could merrily keep on inventing things without having too much suspicion thrown your way.
[blue]25. kitaman27 [9][1] Doctor (Normal) 2.5/10
Doctor was a fabulous pick, particularly at your position. However, your protections were not. Day 1 protection should have been 100% on Scamp, as Inventor is such a high priority and obvious target. It's also natural for the mafia to assume that there are no medics/doctors in this setup given all the other juicier roles. Protecting gmarshal in the days aftward was reasonable, but you definitely should have realized that he was the mole or mafia after kurumi blew up infinitestory.
Coming clean at the end and gunning for gmarshal was certainly a help though. Overall I felt like you needed to put some more effort into your posts via freely giving your thoughts about various things as you were on too many radars for virtually the entire game and nearly got lynched over gmarshal. In future games you should prioritize establishing your innocence first so you can get out of that nasty position where people are focusing on you and nobody trusts what you say and focus on more important things.
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United States2186 Posts
On Format/Balancing
Before the game I had little idea how to balance this properly. Even now I'm still not sure what would be the best way. One thing I definitely messed up on was the mole. It was pretty ironic that Gmarshal ended up being the strongest town role, but the mafia should be able to wake up the mole whenever they want at the start of any cycle, losing the moles 'naiveness' and ability to show up as green to checks in exchange for being able to coordinate with the mafia. This would give mafia more freedom and avoid the disastrous situation they had this game where their mole was unknowingly murdering their team.
Overall the game still ended up very close. I'm pretty sure mafia had the game won if tnkted had bussed chezinu with radfield at the start of day 3 according to plan, Ace and Caller stayed active, and kurumi hadn't bombed. However, tnkted couldn't get online in time and hadn't talked to me about this, so the mafia missed this golden chance and their team just crumbled apart. It's especially ironic onsidering Radfield was the one who ended up getting gmarshal killed.
As Qatol said the game was balanced around someone picking traitor, so when that didn't happen things got pretty dicey. I do feel it was reasonably balanced though if you ignore the mole problem, because considering the above really should have happened and mafia got severely outpicked. A 5/2 setup was also definitely possible and might well have been better, because so much of the mafia's success relies upon the cpr doctor which I don't like at all (or some other way of everyday killing i,e assassin). I'd definitely appreciate some ideas on this.
I'm open to suggestions here. I don't know if roles should be attempted to be made more balanced and to what degree (notably mafia 2 dt, probably the best role in the game) or should be kept as close to their original as possible for flavor.
Overall I was pretty happy with the number of posts, which more resembled an older game and hopefully the players appreciated it too. 25 players does seem like a very good amount in such a format and I think I'll keep the heavyhanded rules for the future. If anyone has more feedback here, please suggest it.
On Planning:
There are two ways for the town to play. Organize roles according to a certain system that targets certain roles at certain spots and leaves the rest to freely grab, or don't organize them at all and let people pick whatever. I found it pretty hilarious that Jimbosilver's plan (aka mine) from PYP 3 was brought up once by Chaoser, shot down asap, and otherwise ignored. It would have done the town quite a lot of good. Essentially it consisted of:
-top 6-7 picks take the best town roles and defensive roles.
-picks 8-11ish take the 'accountable' roles (caller GF, thief, inventor, cpr doc mainly)
-rest pick whatever
This approach is taken because the mafia cannot guarantee more than 1 member in the top 6+ picks, while they can guarantee any number of members in the middle or bottom picks.
But that's not the only approach. Letting everyone do whatever they want is fine too with a few guidelines (a few defensive roles in the top picks is really important so mafia can't fire there with impunity, and medics/doctors being heavily considered at the end of the list). However, when you stray away from these two kinds of approaches, you run into serious issues.
The no-pick list was absolutely atrocious because it gave the mafia a free hand in whatever they wanted to indulge themselves. The toughest part about PYP games is judging the risk factor in taking certain roles at your position versus the reward. There were a number of extremely good roles that were never picked because of that. If you label a bunch of roles as no pick, there is no risk for mafia and they can pick whatever they want. CPR Doctor at #20? Ludicrous!
I know Ace mentioned something about the abundant DT roles being able to spot anyone who had ventured into the 'no pick list', but there were two problems with this reasoning. First of all, there are two godfathers, one of whom can also cover another player. Caller could have picked his own Godfather and another mafia could've picked the mafia 12 GF, covering an obvious pro mafia role like a roleblocker and making him appear as a really pro town role like meth man. Then you could pick a role like veteran which makes the town cry even if they inspect you, making DT results somewhat meaningless. Lastly, there were many roles on the no pick list you could easily make a case for picking and get away with it unless you used it in a blatantly anti-town manner (i,e America, definitely a very good town role or NRA Member, a very nifty safety device that works out great if you are innocent enough to avoid checks).
Caller wrote:
Radfield is anti-American. I propose we lynch him for patriotic purposes.
Here was my take on the role strength:
Tier 1
Caller Godfather
Mafia 2 DT
Inventor
Thief
These roles should be pretty self explanatory. The first two have such massive power that they can change the game around in one night. Inventor is the most flexible role in the game, though a little weaker in power than most people realize, and thief is the ticket for one side to secure one of the top 3 roles (they are just that good).
Tier 2
CPR Doctor
Priest
Chuiu Jack
Vote Rigger
Rock Star
Mafia 12 GF
NRA Member
None of these roles are gamebreaking alone but are very strong. Surprisingly, only 3 of them were chosen.
Aside from not taking several of the various tier 2 roles, the town did an overall solid job of picking. Some picks could have been a lot better (pyp tracker, role cop in particular), while others were absolutely great steals (copycat@24, America@23, Kingmaker, Meth man@16). Other roles outside of the above ones that should have been heavily considered for the town:
-Puppeteer
-Vigilante (the town needs KP, particularly with inventors and mafia 2 dt's roaming around)
-Medic!!!
-Assassin
-Hider
-PYP Vet
-Mason/Recruiting mason (pm's are very handy if you can use them)
-Bullet Bill
However, the mafia did a very poor job in picks. For reference:
Caller 3rd NRA Member
Tnkted 19th Bus Driver
Chezinu 20th CPR Doctor
Ace 21st Capitalist
Kurumi 22nd Admiral Ackbar
CPR Doctor is unquestionably great, Bus Driver is decent, and NRA member is quite good particularly at that spot. However, there was no synergy and the other 2 roles were very weak.
Leaving aside the monster roles in the first two tiers, here would be some of my 'dream mafia picks:'
-Mafia 12 GF
-Medic
-Roleblocker
-Veteran/hero
-Politician + Kingmaker
-Role Reverser
-Puppeteer
-Janitor
-Assassin
-puppeteer
In a game like this the mafia must be proactive. Whatever they do, they cannot give the town the time to sit back, use their roles, get information, and piece things together. The mafia picks were overall reactive and weak. They had limited flexibility (for example a roleblocker to stop gmarshal night 2) and perhaps most importantly, simply did not bother to take into account any of the tier 1 or 2 roles. There was no mafia 12 GF pick or roleblocker to blunt the mafia 2 dt, there was no consideration of a thief to steal the Inventor (just imagine what a mafia inventor could do. Maybe a police radio type item that gives out false information?), no picking of the Caller GF, attempt at kingmaker/politician, etc. It seems the role picks were pretty uncoordinated, and it really showed.
Think of how dangerous a mafia assassin could be. Anyone that roleclaims a strong town role would instantly die. For example, FW and Scamp both had very obvious roles and could have been knocked out instantly early on without them getting off an invention. This would force townies to either not claim at all, or even induce them to lie in their claims to bait the assassin (which could really end up hurting the town). What would happen if the mafia used the janitor ability when Incognito was shot? So many great possibilities here..
Given the mafia's position, I probably would have picked something like this depending on who was on my team, how we wanted to play the game, and how much risk to take:
-Caller GF
-Mafia 12 GF
-CPR Doctor
-NRA Member/Assassin
-Thief/Roleblocker/Hero/Veteran/Puppeteer
General Observations:
Some of these thoughts were said already in the postgame but they need repeating.
1) Try to establish Your innocence first! You can't get anywhere if people suspect you and don't listen to what you say. For a good example, Incognito had his amazing case on Ace ignored because half the town thought he was mafia. You can't just play reactively and post whatever you feel like, you also have to keep an eye out to how other people are viewing you and make sure there's enough evidence out there to show that you are a good guy.
2) When a townie gets lynched, go back and reread the game. Every single time a townie gets lynched. Go look at Incongito's posts day 1. Look at how dang wrong he was on almost everything. Effectively a daytime vigilante working for the mafia. Now look at his posts and actions on day 2. Nuking Chezinu, putting the noose all but around Ace, you'd think he's a different person! What happened here? Quite simply, after the day 1 disaster, Incognito realized he was looking in the wrong places and approaching the game from an incorrect viewpoint. So he shed all his former beliefs and took a fresh, objective look at the game without letting his emotions get in the way. Lo and behold, he suddenly had great insights and really put the mafia in a nasty position.
3) If you are mafia, have a clear objective in mind and post with that purpose always. Look at Ace's posting days 1/2 and see how there's a constant theme of miring the town in doubt, spreading confusion, and making townies appear guilty without sticking his neck too far out, all while staying on a consistent theme/angle that a townie could conceivably come from. Or look at Caller and see how he approaches the game from a misguided townie angle and sticks with it. Mafia have to swing between the two extremes of pushing mafia objectives and making themselves look innocent; Ace veered way towards the former, while Caller was more in the latter.
Furthermore, once you create your persona, you have to maintain it. Both Ace and Caller got themselves dead because they got lazy and quit bothering to maintain their personas with the effort that was necessary.
4) Do not do a post by post analysis EVER. I have no idea who came up with this but it's seriously silly and doesn't do anyone any good. All it does is clog up the thread with fluff, not help your case at all because it's not like mafia give themselves away with every post at all (it's the key, defining slipups, incongruities, or general patterns you are looking for, not minor quibbles), and distract your analysis severely because you are approaching someone with a verdict in hand and trying to 'prove it' or you are simply not analyzing the important things. If you find one thing that makes someone mafia, that is it, they are mafia. It doesn't matter if you find 30 things that have a chance they might be mafia, it doesn't say anything.
5) Do not post innocent lists. The problem with an innocent list is that it doesn't help anything. So what if someone is innocent, it doesn't mean he's right. Don't get me wrong, it's important to know and inform people if someone up for lynch is innocent, but if you say 'person xyz is innocent' and all of them are just in the background, big whoop. You might be wrong, you might be right, but either way nothing happens. All this does is create more clutter for the town to wallow about in.
6) Do not post scum lists unless you know there is enough KP to take care of it. Again, this creates unnecessary clutter. Focus on one scum at a time and don't move on until they are dead. Otherwise you just distract yourself and lower the quality of your analysis in search of useless quantity.
7) On day 1, work on establishing your innocence and go from there. This ties into point 1 but deserves special mention. Multiple people this game (kav, deco, and inc in particular) went crazy day 1 with various schemes to try to create useful information. On the whole, this is commendable and great. But the execution was poor because none of them took into account how others would perceive them. Their behavior got a lot of flak, not only stopping them from working effectively but also each person ended up either dead or under such ridiculous suspicion that their effectiveness was severely blunted. While day 1's where everyone twiddles their thumbs and says 'sup, there's nothing to talk about lets lynch an inactive' are really bad for the town, it's also problematic to try too hard day 1 as well.
8) Even if you think someone is mafia, read their posts objectively!!! The most flagrant example of this was when Foolishness completely quit reading Incognito's posts when he started shaping up in day 2, completely missing the gamebreaking case on Ace. Many people also downplayed Dreamflower's major accusation on Ace because they were suspicious of her behavior from early on.
9) You must have confidence in yourself first. Several players suffered from this problem, most notably Dreamflower and Eii. In Dreamflower's case, her sense is amazing but she doesn't push her analysis forcefully enough and it gets lost in the clutter. If you can't convince yourself first, then you can't convince anyone else. Confidence is an absolutely necessary trait to become a top player who can dominate a game. In Eii's case, he simply was too afraid to post his thoughts on pretty much anything, which led to him actively lurking and looking really suspicious.
10) Look for general trends in a person's posting and try to determine why they posted what they did. If you took any of Ace's posts individually, there'd be little reason to think he was mafia. However, if you look at his posts as a whole, a pattern very quickly emerges. Namely, he is sowing doubt amongst the town while making sure he isn't the one who looks accountable for it. Bad mafia don't always have such patterns, but this is the best way to catch top mafia players who play actively.
11) If you find yourself generally gunning for the wrong people, consider how you determine your targets in the first place. The average townie player tends to go astray because they focus on the obvious suspects, because well, it's right in front of them! The obvious suspicious guy is almost always innocent, because mafia never want to be that obvious suspicious guy! If you find yourself with this history, why not approach this from a different angle? Take your top suspects, and consider them innocent! Then work from there. Doing the same thing again isn't going to help anything, so why not try an oblique approach.
12) Put some effort into analyzing the thread atmosphere. In the first days, a proper analysis of the atmosphere would have told you that nobody know anything for certain, many people were suspicious, and nobody really had a clue what was going on; almost as if the town was enveloped in a huge fog. This crucial information would have given you a lead on where to look for suspects, i,e the people sowing that atmosphere, because such a state has to be deliberately implanted.
13) Focus on the big picture and ignore the trivialities. One of the worst kinds of traits (yet sadly perhaps the most common) in a townie is to stay so focused in the present moment that you end up spending all your time reacting to every new development. Inevitably, you end up just caring about things that don't really matter in the end. This road eventually leads you to looking at the wrong things (focusing on townies doing whatever they want instead of mafia trying to look innocent is the most common example). Good players have to transcend the current moment of the game to not only calculate for the future but also use the past history of the game to form accurate conclusions. If you want to be a top player, you have to be able to withdraw yourself emotionally and also detach your viewpoint from the present. Otherwise, something like Incognito's huge day 2 turnaround simply isn't possible.
Original Message From Qatol: While I agree with most of this analysis (I would have done the scores a little differently), I think there is one big thing that is mostly missing from this: a more thorough discussion of the Mafia 2 Detective + Voterigger plan. Here is how it is supposed to work: On day 1, the vote rigger rigs the vote so 6 players vote for each of A, B, and C while 7 players vote for D. D can be either a player which the vote rigger thinks is inherently scummy, or a player which the town agrees to lynch. D is forced to vote for A (can't vote for D to make the lists all even). The vote rigger can force players to vote together based upon how scummy the rigger perceives them to be, based upon their position on the list, or really based upon any criteria the vote rigger chooses to use. Obviously this plan is slightly stronger if the vote rigger is a decent analyst, but it is not necessary. On night 1, the M2DT checks list A (a 5 player list). The reason to check a 5 player list first is because smaller lists help the town more. The town wants to weed all of the players who appear as scum from these lists as quickly as possible and then focus on looking for potential godfathers. On nights 2 and 3, the M2DT checks the lists of players which have been reduced due to lynches or night kills. By day 4, if the mafia have left the M2DT alone, they are all on a votecheck list or a list of players not on any votecheck list. The town should first assume that there are no godfathers and look for mafia in the final list after the others are clear. After that, they can go hunting for godfathers. The point of this plan is the mafia are all forced onto a list. There is absolutely nothing they can do about it. Additionally, all of these lists are decently small. The town isn't trying to muddle through something ridiculous like a 1/7 or 2/7 list. They can focus on the lists where the odds are good of them finding scum. And worst case, the mafia have to focus on killing the M2DT early or continue to be backed into a corner. Also, if the vote rigger is lucky/ a good analyst, there could be a 0/6 or something like a 3/6 list out there, which is obviously a huge boon to the town. Finally, the mafia have to worry about shooting into lists containing mafia members too heavily. It is always a good idea to give the mafia reasons to think twice about hitting targets they would otherwise hit.
The fact that Incognito posted this plan should have immediately established his innocence. Nobody else brought up this combination at all and it is way too powerful for the mafia to try and bring up to establish townieness. Even if they do, they have to pick a godfather role to avoid getting placed onto a list and then their team is still in trouble. I think Incognito's big mistake was he didn't explain this plan thoroughly enough. In fact, people spoke against it! For example: Show nested quote +On May 15 2011 09:01 Kavdragon wrote:
Incognito suggested that Vote Rigger could be used in conjunction with the Mafia 2 det in order to build ideal lists.
This wouldn't work because the vote rigger is a 1 shot power, and over all is more dangerous to the town than helpful. The lists from a default vote will be useful enough that I think the advantage gained by the vote rigger is not worth the risk. My guess is this happened because people did not realize 2 things: 1. The vote rigger gets to control all votes, not just who is lynched for the day 2. The M2DT can check vote lists from previous days, not just from the lynch which just happened. There were also concerns about this not working because of traitor + godfather + mole. However, let's assume the absolute worst case: the mafia selected both godfather roles and both the mole and the traitor were on lists checked before they switched to the mafia team. There are still 3 mafia (half the team!) who can be busted via these lists and the mafia were forced to take the godfather roles instead of other roles. Additionally, the mafia who can be seen by the list (other than the mole whose rolepick the mafia couldn't control anyways) have the most important roles for the mafia! Godfathers lack kill power. The mafia need more kill power in a game with this many players or the town will organize and they are going to get cornered eventually. In conclusion, this could have been a huge part of the town strategy if they had realized its value during the game. Merely suggesting a plan like this should have established Incognito as an innocent, which causes problems for the mafia when he is posting high quality analysis. But sadly it was overlooked and the mafia had a better chance to win than they should have.
If you are interested in this setup again (properly modified of course) please say so, as there was not enough feedback initially.
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Yay! Aw I give you a story and I get a lousy 3?! (jk <3)
I have played too many games with Ace that I would feel bad if I wrongly accused him. May sound silly, but he foole me this game  That's my problem, and I'll have to read into it better X_X
Do you have a role ranking list? Or does it really depend on the picking positions?
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lol bum, I used to have that mentality, but I have decided its more fun to go out of your way to kill people you know.
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United States2186 Posts
On June 21 2011 16:53 bumatlarge wrote:Yay! Aw I give you a story and I get a lousy 3?! (jk <3) I have played too many games with Ace that I would feel bad if I wrongly accused him. May sound silly, but he foole me this game That's my problem, and I'll have to read into it better X_X Do you have a role ranking list? Or does it really depend on the picking positions?
Nah I can understand. Unfortunately that means you're approaching this game with an inherent bias which can (and did) cost you severely. I feel like there are a lot of roles that are similar in strength but depend on how you want to play something so 'tiers' are more appropriate (i,e puppeteer and assassin, going for the same goal with the same means in different ways). I guess i could add in the lower tiers but that's a little messy and this is enough work lol.
edit: how to my posts end up so long -_-
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Thanks for the analysis Ver, it's really appreciated. I learned a lot from this game and would definitely be interested in playing a similar setup in the future. Seeing my sole invention getting praise really brought a smile to my face.
25ish players definitely seems like the sweet spot for a setup like this. I think part of the problem with Pick Their Power was that it went a ways above that amount.
I'm not sure I like the mole. As-is, it's an interesting idea but I don't know if it's fun for the players involved. Maybe take a cue from Sleeper Cell and have the mole realize who he is but not actually put him in touch with the mafia until later on?
Balance-wise, I'm okay with most roles staying as they are. I believe that imbalance offsets imbalance in this case, and if the mafia had picked better roles they could've really screwed town over. I also like the possibility of crazy role combinations that haven't been thought of yet -- if you introduce new roles, it'd be really cool if they were designed to work in really interesting ways with the roles already out there, especially those most likely to be called "OP".
It would be nice if you could introduce a mechanic that compensates for the cases when traitor / conversion roles are or aren't taken. Perhaps messing with the mole could beget a solution for this.
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That 10/10 next to my name looks suspiciously like an 8.
We couldn't pick roles like GF because they rely on getting checked. Better off to try and get rid of the high amount of information roles. Only thing I would have wanted was Roleblocker AND Capitalist but I can't go around forcing everyone to pick what I want all the time. Should have stuck with my Roleblocker pick but got impatient and went with Capitalist.
Even with the town getting their miracle picks we almost pulled out the win. Really it was just one night of a ton of checks going through that won the town the game. Ah well shit happens
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Well I guess the points in this postgame clearly emphasizes a theme I was going to put in the town guide, so I'll post it here.
As a townie, you know your goal is to lynch all the mafia. But its easy to try to jump into the fray without knowing having a clear plan of action of how you are going to get to your goal. As has been stated before, the key is maintaining a positive town atmosphere. So how is this done? In order of descending importance:
1. Establish your innocence
2. Support the right townies
3. Vote properly
4. Shut down any attempts to lynch other obvious townies
5. Shut down attempts to spread doubt or chaos in the thread
Remember that these aren't necessarily steps that occur in sequence. In particular, following points 2-5 will likely do an adequate job in establishing your innocence.
The number 1 priority of any townie should be to establish your innocence. This priority is often overlooked by townies who feel the need to be useful in an active and eyepopping way. The truth is that simply being an obvious innocent can be worth a lot more than being an active but confused poster. Too much information and a lack of focus will derail the town and allow mafia to take advantage of the chaotic situation. On the other hand, even if you aren't an active poster, simply establishing your innocence goes a long way toward strangling the mafia. As Foolishness said in the XXX thread, sometimes the best way to find the mafia is by finding out who isn't mafia. Every player who establishes their innocence gives the mafia less room to hide. The more people acting in obviously innocent ways, the less room mafia has to push its own agenda, and the more exposed they become. Furthermore, being obviously innocent means you won't be lynched, which increases the chances of town lynching correctly and makes sure town doesn't lose time and focus running around in circles on witch hunts and.
You don't have to be an amazing analyst. You don't need to be the everything man. As long as you establish your innocence, you pave the way for others to come to the right conclusions. A lot of times people skip establishing their influence and jump right into the political aspect of the game while ignoring clear plans on how they will achieve their goals. Failure to establish your innocence will lead to potential mislynches, confusion, wasted DT checks and Vig hits, and makes it harder for any town analysts to come to clear conclusions. The town analysts are not gods, they need people to cooperate in finding the mafia, which is difficult to do if everyone is acting shady and is just instinctively reacting to the thread. The best way to help town is to step aside and clear yourself from the pool of potential mafia, which restricts the mafia's options and enables town to think clearly. Lastly, establishing your innocence increases your influence and allows you force the mafia to play the game according to your terms.
Supporting the right townies. This is where Ace’s commonly quoted saying “Its not what you know, its what you can convince others to believe” falls apart and ends up being misused. While it is true that persuasion is necessary for town analysts to produce material results, this statement fails to account for the fact that in most games, there are leaders and there are followers. There is no mistake that when you are a town leader, the political scene and your ability to persuade people are extremely important. However, when you're not in control of the game, you don't really need to worry about the politics, and you don’t have to worry about persuasion. All you have to do is be right. You don’t have to be original. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. The mafia are already in trouble if you are voting with the right people.
It seems like in most games, people are afraid to be labeled as a follower, and this oftentimes leads to people rehashing the same points in their own words, which clutters the thread, breaks the linearity of the game, and makes it harder for townies to see the big picture. It is actually good for town organization when people blatantly support other people’s positions, as this makes it easier for townies to follow who is responsible for lynches and forces mafia to pick sides. The question then, is how to support the right townies. Unfortunately there is no clear cut method. Only experience and the right logic can tell you whether someone is on the right track or if they are just stirring the pot.
Points 3-5 are pretty self explanatory and relate to point 2. When voting, you must ensure that your vote holds weight. For example, so called “pressure voting” often fails because the vote fails to hold weight. As a townie, your vote is your weapon. When you pressure vote and then switch votes half an hour later when the suspect shows up, you are basically turning your weapon into a bookmark/beacon that calls attention to something that is likely not very important. Doubt and chaos run abundant in threads. Unfortunately, many times, both townies and mafia cause this. A townie should always act toward the view of maintaining clarity and focus. Of course, this does not mean that you should come to a hasty conclusion when there is not enough information on the table. It merely means knowing what to do in a chaotic situation and devising a plan to clear the waters.
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That pressure voting part is on point. Thats why when Kavdragon claimed he was "putting pressure on me" I laughed - I knew it wasn't a vote with confidence and with no support I knew I'd live.
Establish innocence may need to be switched with "Dont be mislynched". Being innocent is important but you can do that by not being lynch bait first. While Townies shouldn't be scared to die (via NK) they SHOULD be trying their best to not get lynched by being reasonable aka paying attention when someone makes a case.
The entire Kavdragon lynch and Incognito's post after it, and DFs post before his were concrete "hey guys, this is exactly what the hell happened in the last 48 hours so pay attention" posts but got ignored lol.
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The format and balancing was fine. Mafia just ended up losing due to a combination of mediocre picks by the mafia, strong picks by the town, getting unlucky with the failed bus, and a defeatist mentality at the end of the game. I would say that this game is much like PYP3 in that mafia prematurely threw away the win. Yes, there were plenty of investigative roles, but town didn't have enough KP to kill them all and mafia could have benefited from more misdirection. It seemed clear that once I was offed on night 2, town didn't really have any real strong convictions on anyone and was just following the investigations. This would have been a great opportunity for Ace to continue leading town around in circles, yet the whole mafia team seemed to have just dropped off the cliff on day 3. With Ace and Caller basically giving up on the game and Kurumi prematurely suiciding (he wasn't really strongly on anyone's radars and should've waited to suicide until he was about to be lynched), mafia got half their team eliminated within 48 hours, something that could have been avoided.
Overall the setup is fine. Although there are a lot of investigative roles, it seems that the mafia didn't make any effort to counter investigation roles, even though they knew that the town plan was to hog them. In such a setup like this, its hard to predict how things will unfold and what roles will be picked. If this same exact setup were played a few more times, I'm pretty sure the role composition would be significantly different each time. The key then is to minimize the luck factors and remove any unnecessary volatility. I like your proposed change to the mole, as it adds flexibility and an unknown factor for the town. I also feel like traitor should just be eliminated as a role as it adds volatility and doesn't add too much to the gameplay. The number of posts this game was great. There were few enough posts that I didn't have to stress out to read the thread, but enough posts that you could figure stuff out.
Also, JimboSilvers is Ver? Well that explains a lot...
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To be honest, I had no idea that bussing chez was the plan. I think he came up with that plan at the last minute and when I woke up the next morning I got a halfdozen msgs from him saying HEY PLEASE LOG ON AND BUS ME BUS ME BUS ME when I had no idea that was the plan from the beginning. So I think that was miscommunication.
Regarding rolepicks: I don't blame anyone for this specifically, but I do think that mafia could have used a little more leadership. I think me and Kurumi looked to ace and caller specifically to provide us with some advice (this was my first game as mafia with such experienced players), but IMO the two of them were too busy doing their own thing. I remember asking what the plan was to coordinate picks and ace replying that 'everyone will expect us to coordinate picks. Instead, pick whatever you want and we'll be able to sidestep those analysises entirely." I thought to myself, ok that works fine. I'll just grab the greatest mafia role ever: bus driver, and since I have a reputation with that role I'll be able to fly under the radar if I'm rolechecked.
But then caller chose NRA member, which I heavily disagreed with (i wanted a GF role BADLY, like Caller GF which caller could easily have taken since caller GF was on a list of 'plz take this role so mafia can't have it' list), Kurumi chose admiral akbar because he was not confident with his play at all and wanted to go out in a blaze of glory before he could reveal his team (which I thought was kind of silly but I didn't trust myself), and ace chose capitalist which confused me at first but made sense later as cover. Chez choosing CPR was probably the greatest thing ever and I did not expect him to get it at all.
Regarding the mafia team: Personally I think mafia's greatest weakness this game was unorganization. We had three extremely independant and intelligent vets and two relative newbies playing together. The vets sort of ran off and did their own thing while the newbies huddled together like interns at the office, trying to figure out the copier, afraid to ask their manager(s) how something simple like that works. There was no post coaching, no organization in picks; In fact, 80% of the time we weren't even online at the same time, which made it particularly difficult to plan. Also, most of our conversations happened in IRC which made it difficult to catch up if you were afk while the rest of the team was talkin' strategy (which rarely happened anyway).
Regarding the setup: I personally think the problem was a large abundance of info roles with very few logical anti-info roles for the mafia. Yes, there were roles like framer, but the problem is that framer is an auto-mafia role in any set up, especially one where you get to choose your stuff. Since there are so many info roles in the game, no mafia would ever pick framer, especially given some of the other crazy good roles in the game. Mafia needed more caller GF type roles, or roles that were some combination of blocking/framing or framing/action immune. The beauty of this crazy sort of game is the unexpected interactions between players roles. As it was, there were a few very powerful roles and a great deal of fluff.
Having said all that, I should add that I thought we played very well given our situation. I may have seemed suspicious after the fact, but from my standpoint during the game I thought I had been flying more or less under the radar. My analysis's weren't being responded to, and my pressure was ineffectual, which is precisely the position I wanted to be in. The rest of the team was in similar positions until the the checks came to light. The failed chez bus was indeed bad, but IMO we could have survived even that given some more cover. It was an honor playing with Ace and Caller and I think if the two of them had provided a little more leadership in sheparding the rest of the team early on we would have won easily.
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Just as an aside I don't usually coach my scum mates on what exactly to post unless the situation is critical (like GMarshal on the last day). Your posting was fine imo and so was your play. It was a fun game ^_^
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i got owned too hard and lost a lot of morale
that is all
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United States22154 Posts
Thanks for the write up and responses guys, this is awesome.
First of all, I would absolutely play again, even if I rolled mole (which seems to be a trend of late  )
My thoughts on the game. In retrospect the Kav lynch was absolutely retarded, I should have realized that that is simply how kav plays, having been in games where he acted exactly the same way, but I allowed my "faith" in good analysis to get in the way of that. Lesson learned, trust what you know. As soon as I revealed my list day 2 I was sure I was dead, so I regret to say I didn't play my best, as I was sure I was eating a bullet anyway. It didn't work out that way, which left all my "I'm dying, here are my contributions" posts hanging, which was disappointing. I was *really* confused when I saw the day 3 day post come up and no mention of me dying.
My role really sabotaged any chance I had of winning this as a mole, I feel that if I had gone with my first choice (assassin ^_^) or a defensive role (I was going to pick meth man) I might have stood a better chance, but me being alive in the endgame should have tipped off every alarm in everyones head.
In retrospect it seems to me that assassin is a must have for the mafia, it brutally punishes role-claims, and forces DTs and such to trade one on one to reveal their checks. Combined with capitalist it would have been a great method of upping the mafia kp and of slaughtering anyone with a revealed role. Busdriver was a better choice than I expected, although I fundamentally disagree with the choice of Ackbar, i feel like kurumi would have made a much better choice with something as simple as vigi (which people were unlikely to take) or if he though that was gone then day vigi (which has the potential for two kills with one shot if fired at lynch time).
I think the mole should be informed he is the mole since the beginning, sort of like a traitor that is later induced, otherwise it feels a lot like a conversion role, and while *i* dont mind having singlehandedly killed my team, others might be demoralized. Also I feel like the game can't be balanced around a traitor, because frankly, with all the awesome roles that made it down to even the lower ranks, why would anyone ever pick traitor? I feel like traitor would be a much more tempting choice if it had a framing or roleblocking ability that the traitor would have to figure out how to use best.
A final thought, I think having serial killers would have really helped the game along, as it would have made the list checks much more tentative, sure you'd know the people left aren't mafia, but they could 100% be a serial killer.
hmm, this post is a mess. I'll probably organize it better and add to it later, but for now I'm just going to post it
EDIT1: I just remembered, if I landed in the lower half of the draft list I was going to pick recruiting mason, it seems like such an under appreciated yet fun role.
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I thought my way of executing a mole was the best-namely, you give an ambiguous hint to the player that they are not normal, and then you reveal the mole to both the mole and mafia. By having the mole aware that he may not be normal early on it causes him to take a neutral stance, preventing him from crippling either side... like he kind of did here, huehuehue
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Also, JimboSilvers is Ver? Well that explains a lot...
WHAT?! Maaaaannnnnnn
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6 x Double = 12 right? Cool.
Interestingly, I've emphasized point 6 and 9 a lot, throughout the game, in numeral MSN conversations with bystanders. Specifically 9, you can doubt yourself, but should never let that show much or at all in the thread especially when making an analysis. Either do it with confidence or don't do it at all. Huge difference when you want to convince others.
On June 21 2011 19:27 Incognito wrote:
Also, JimboSilvers is Ver? Well that explains a lot...
The moment Jimbo made a real post in that game, first thing I said to BC was, "Who's smurf is this?"
On June 21 2011 16:11 Ver wrote:
Overall the game still ended up very close. I'm pretty sure mafia had the game won if tnkted had bussed chezinu with radfield at the start of day 3 according to plan, Ace and Caller stayed active, and kurumi hadn't bombed. However, tnkted couldn't get online in time and hadn't talked to me about this, so the mafia missed this golden chance and their team just crumbled apart. It's especially ironic onsidering Radfield was the one who ended up getting gmarshal killed.
I've emphasized and hinted many times, making sure that IS would lynch Chezinu right away, even if tnkted was online, before he can PM you.
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My morale from the very beginning was terrible.
"I am going to get lynched Day 1"
I kept writing this on our IRC. I didn't think that I'll fly under the radar for such long time,though I felt like the first second someone will start re-reading the thread he will notice my bad counter-attack on Incognito and many decent posts. I wasn't quite active,but reading my alignment from meta would be horribly wrong (as far I remember I played only XXXIX by that time)
I was having a ton of fun though. I thought killing three people,with Parity Cop+Kingmaker+some random guy would be good enough.. There would be no chance like that in the future,the radio was used.
I played poorly,but I am happy I could play such awesome game with such awesome guys.
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so much good advice in this thread, time to digest x.x
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While I agree with most of this analysis (I would have done the scores a little differently), I think there is one big thing that is mostly missing from this: a more thorough discussion of the Mafia 2 Detective + Voterigger plan. Here is how it is supposed to work:
On day 1, the vote rigger rigs the vote so 6 players vote for each of A, B, and C while 7 players vote for D. D can be either a player which the vote rigger thinks is inherently scummy, or a player which the town agrees to lynch. D is forced to vote for A (can't vote for D to make the lists all even). The vote rigger can force players to vote together based upon how scummy the rigger perceives them to be, based upon their position on the list, or really based upon any criteria the vote rigger chooses to use. Obviously this plan is slightly stronger if the vote rigger is a decent analyst, but it is not necessary.
On night 1, the M2DT checks list A (a 5 player list). The reason to check a 5 player list first is because smaller lists help the town more. The town wants to weed all of the players who appear as scum from these lists as quickly as possible and then focus on looking for potential godfathers.
On nights 2 and 3, the M2DT checks the lists of players which have been reduced due to lynches or night kills. By day 4, if the mafia have left the M2DT alone, they are all on a votecheck list or a list of players not on any votecheck list. The town should first assume that there are no godfathers and look for mafia in the final list after the others are clear. After that, they can go hunting for godfathers.
The point of this plan is the mafia are all forced onto a list. There is absolutely nothing they can do about it. Additionally, all of these lists are decently small. The town isn't trying to muddle through something ridiculous like a 1/7 or 2/7 list. They can focus on the lists where the odds are good of them finding scum. And worst case, the mafia have to focus on killing the M2DT early or continue to be backed into a corner. Also, if the vote rigger is lucky/ a good analyst, there could be a 0/6 or something like a 3/6 list out there, which is obviously a huge boon to the town. Finally, the mafia have to worry about shooting into lists containing mafia members too heavily. It is always a good idea to give the mafia reasons to think twice about hitting targets they would otherwise hit.
The fact that Incognito posted this plan should have immediately established his innocence. Nobody else brought up this combination at all and it is way too powerful for the mafia to try and bring up to establish townieness. Even if they do, they have to pick a godfather role to avoid getting placed onto a list and then their team is still in trouble. I think Incognito's big mistake was he didn't explain this plan thoroughly enough. In fact, people spoke against it! For example:
On May 15 2011 09:01 Kavdragon wrote:
Incognito suggested that Vote Rigger could be used in conjunction with the Mafia 2 det in order to build ideal lists.
This wouldn't work because the vote rigger is a 1 shot power, and over all is more dangerous to the town than helpful. The lists from a default vote will be useful enough that I think the advantage gained by the vote rigger is not worth the risk.
My guess is this happened because people did not realize 2 things:
1. The vote rigger gets to control all votes, not just who is lynched for the day
2. The M2DT can check vote lists from previous days, not just from the lynch which just happened.
There were also concerns about this not working because of traitor + godfather + mole. However, let's assume the absolute worst case: the mafia selected both godfather roles and both the mole and the traitor were on lists checked before they switched to the mafia team. There are still 3 mafia (half the team!) who can be busted via these lists and the mafia were forced to take the godfather roles instead of other roles. Additionally, the mafia who can be seen by the list (other than the mole whose rolepick the mafia couldn't control anyways) have the most important roles for the mafia! Godfathers lack kill power. The mafia need more kill power in a game with this many players or the town will organize and they are going to get cornered eventually.
In conclusion, this could have been a huge part of the town strategy if they had realized its value during the game. Merely suggesting a plan like this should have established Incognito as an innocent, which causes problems for the mafia when he is posting high quality analysis. But sadly it was overlooked and the mafia had a better chance to win than they should have.
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EPT
