Yet Another Normal Mini Mafia - Page 87

This is kinda in response to Palmar's post in the Obs QT
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I think you're a bit harsh on me, Palmar. I didn't go into this game planning to bus all my teammates and help town make all the right decisions.

My strategy was to try to play exactly as if I were town. This is of course not ideal scum strategy. Ideal scum play IMO involves somehow leading town down the wrong paths in such a way that it is undetectable by town. But I think that is very difficult to do and I don't consider myself nearly good enough at scum to be able to be that malicious and still avoid being lynched.

I think that the scum strategy of trying to emulate your town play is reasonably good. After all, if all members of the scum team are able to perfectly emulate their town play, then the scum become indistinguishable from the town, and scum will most likely win. The problem, as pointed out by Palmar and others, is that my scum partners were not able to avoid suspicion. And no matter how townie you look, you should lose to blues if you are massively outnumbered.

Almost all of my reads this game were, to the best of my abilitiy to fake it, the same that I would have made if I were town. I slightly changed a few as was convenient, most significantly my read on Vivax. In fact pretty much everything I said, to the best of my ability to fake it, were the same things I would have said if I were town. Right down to LYLO.

On D1, I stated suspicion of Wiggles because I thought he was acting scummily, but I wasn't intending to get him lynched. I don't think my post about Wiggles was the difference between him being lynched or not. Palmar would have most likely pushed through a Wiggles lynch even if I hadn't posted about him. And I don't think I could have stopped the Wiggles lynch even if I tried. Town (mainly Palmar) just read him too well. In retrospect, the only thing I would have done differently on D1 would have been to vote Wiggles earlier. I had actually started wrting up the post to vote him before Toad voted him, but I got ninja'd, which made me look a bit bad.

During N1, I realized that with 2-3 non-miller blues out there, I probably couldn't afford to lose Vivax. So I used my town cred to try to defend him and keep him out from under the microscope.

I cringed when Palmar said, "I agree with nearly everything sciberbia has written" and then made it clear that the one thing Palmar didn't agree with was my read on Vivax. Palmar is just too good lol.

I realized we needed to start pushing mislynches, so I was pushing debears, who I thought was a townie acting like scum. But it turned out he was a SK acting like scum lol.

I wasn't in the thread for much of D2. When I got back N2, the entire rolelist had been made clear. Because the cop had claimed with only 1 check, and because I knew who the vig was, who the miller was, and soon figured out who the jailkeeper was, I realized that I was safe to play for town 100%. I realized that as long as I got all the VT's lynched before me (Stutters, Bugs, Prom, Eywa) I would win the game. And I had sufficient NK targets with all the blues that it would not look suspicious that I was never NK'd.

So from N2 onwards, I started just playing for town as hard as possible. I slowly moved Vivax from a townread to a scumread, because I knew I couldn't afford to look bad when he flipped.

And all the VT's were fortunately considered scummier than me by town, so things worked out. The modkill of Morbidius kinda threw a wrench into things though.

@Palmar
So I hope you don't disapprove too strongly of my play. I wasn't playing to lose.

Also, I'm sure you don't need an ego boost, but goddamn are you good at town. Even considering your reputation, I was quite impressed. I'd love to play town with you sometime.

I'm with you on this one, Toad. I don't see why everyone was so up in arms over this shot. You and me both just got dissed over and over. I think your WBG-quote pretty accurately summarised the attitude of the thread:

"only a really bad scum team would shoot Toad, or Toad was right about something (or a combination of both)."

If you look at the scum QT, you'll see my reasoning for the shot. When I play mafia IRL, I am known for never taking a shot at someone who is likely to be protected. I just don't think it's worth it.

I really had no idea if you were blue. It did not cross my mind that you were vig. I knew there was a mathematically decent chance that you were blue, which is the only reason I shot you instead of yamato.

I just shot you because
- you looked townie IMO
- I think you're a reasonably good townie
- you had not stated a townread on me
- you didn't seem to be a fan of Vivax
- there was a chance that you were blue
- you would not be protected

In retrospect I dunno if yamato would have been a better shot. I think he might have been. However, I strongly think that Palmar would have been a bad shot, simply due to the 40-something percent chance that he gets saved.

It was really rotten luck that we shot the same guy as the SK. I dunno how we could have seen that coming, though :/

Also, Toad, I really enjoyed this comment in the obs QT,
"really, sciberbia needs to get some attention. Dropping posts of massive wisdom like he doesn't care."

very accurate

I very strongly regretted doing this upon seeing the reactions from town, especially iamperfection.

I think that throwing a random roleblock into a sea of townies is very marginally helpful to scum. Think about it.

If WBG is:
VT (most likely) -- roleblock does absoultely nada
miller/mason -- roleblock does nothing
jailkeeper -- roleblock almost certainly does nothing because he would prot Palmar as JK
vigilante -- roleblock either does nothing or stops him from shooting some lurker who is likely town
roleblocker -- roleblock probably does nothing. No way in hell WBG would have roleblocked me N1.
cop -- the ONE scenario where the roleblock comes up big. However the chance that WBG is cop is exceedingly low. There was like a 50ish percent chance that there was a cop in the game. And there were like 9 townies alive at that point. So the chance that WBG was a cop was only like 5%.

So when making the roleblock, I think scum has to weigh the pros and cons
pro: might be helpful if WBG is cop
con: will make WBG look more townie when he claims the roleblock

In this game, I don't think it was even close to worth it, because apparently people on TL see a roleblock and go "oh that guy is probably town then". IMO that is an unstable meta. In retrospect, I would have had Vivax claim the roleblock. Then everyone would have been like "oh then I guess Vivax is probably town".

IMO, you should see a roleblock claim, and think "this is very small evidence that the guy claiming it is town".

I don't think it is that detrimental to scum to withold a roleblock if no blues have yet claimed.

As you guys talked about in the obs QT, this was a very interesting decision. The modkill of Morbidius made things very hard on me, because I could no longer go with the Palmar plan of lynch stutters & Bugs while shooting yamato & Morbidius.

Here is my reasoning for the shot on bugs and subsequent push to lynch Prom.

I think it's pretty clear that Prom had the best chance of being lynched if I was shot and flipped VT. I dunno why some people seem to disagree. This was the one Prom argument in LYLO that I really thought was absurd.

IMO, bugs was clearly changing his mind about Stutters and was leaning toward Prom as the scum. Also IMO, Stutters would have been more likely to vote Prom than bugs.

Maybe I'm misreading or misevaluating, or I'm just wrong, but that was my assumption going into LYLO, and I still stand by it.

Given that Prom would have most likely been lynched in a Stutters/Prom/Bugs LYLO, it makes no sense for scum Stutters or scum Bugs to shoot anyone but me. This is for two obvious reasons:
- I was a universal town-read (at least from their POV. We did not know Prom was lying)
- Prom was likely to get lynched after I got shot

I could quite possibly be wrong about this, but I didn't think, and still don't, that I could have convinced anybody to lynch Stutters or Bugs after a non-scib NK. Simply because of this NK analysis.

IMO, the conclusion is
scib not shot --> stutters and bugs both town

This is why I considered shooting Prom as out of the question. I thought that would basically be claiming scum.

Because I was scum of course, I could not be shot, and therefore stutters and bugs would both be proven town. Therefore, IMO, my best and only play was to try to lynch Prom in LYLO.

So I basically had to find a way to frame Prom with my final NK. I didn't really have a solid reason for shooting Bugs instead of Stutters. It just felt like the right thing to do. I think I agree with what Palmar said about it in the obs QT:
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I felt like I'd have an advantage on Prom going into LYLO, just based on my play throughout the game, Prom's play throughout the game, and the fact that a bunch of people such as Yamato, Palmar, Stutters, Bugs, seemed more suspicious of Prom than myself.

I felt like bugs would be more likely to have the self-confidence to make an against-the-grain decision than Stutters. Bugs would have been less predictable IMO.

I was half-hoping that Prom would continue to tunnel Stutters even after I did not die, and that I could just take the easy win, but to Prom's credit, he turned out to be way too smart for that.

It had crossed my mind that Prom might be lying about his scumread on Stutters. You can see it in this post:
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@Stutters
If I were in your position, I'm pretty sure I would have made the same mistake. Don't feel too down on yourself. I think that you made the correct conclusion that the NK could make sense for either scum Prom or scum Scib. I thought you made some nice posts throughout the game as well. In particular, I thought your post about Wiggles D1 interactions was some nice analysis.

And for what it's worth, I think that I would have read you as town even if I did not know your alignment beforehand.

Honestly, if I were town, I think I might have been interested in debears's offer. I think he was telling the truth that he'd have been willing to do town's bidding.

However, I feel like its a bit unethical for the SK to help either alignment after he is caught. After all, he is a 3rd party role. I'm pretty sure he had a 0.0% chance of winning the game after Palmar counterclaimed. I dunno; I'm just not that big of a fan of the SK role in C9++.

I strongly agree with this post from Adam in the obs QT:
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I just think this is a really good point. I'm usually the kind of person to write the 100ft block of text, both because I have a lot to say, and because it seems to persuade people. But I think that you can make some really strong points with very few words. For example, I really like marv's case and Prom's meta argument on my own filter this game:

Marv:
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Prom:
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On a side note, wtf marv I was really looking forward to seeing the obs QT debate who was scum between myself and Prom. idu how you are so good at surviving as scum when you make the worst obs-QT slip ever

I haven't done any math on it, but I feel like the setup was slightly harder on town than scum. Obviously, the introduction of the SK makes it harder for all alignments to win, because there is the chance that the SK wins.

I think town, led by Palmar, played exceptionally well. You guys caught Wiggles so fast and with so little trouble. You guys also caught debears, and then Vivax. I felt like Vivax did a pretty good job of playing like town Vivax actually. I was surprised how easily you guys ended up catching him. Palmar is pretty damn good.

I think the modkill of Morbidius actually ended up helping town, but the fact that Eywa wasn't playing the game helped scum a lot.

Also, I think the D2 claim by Morbidius helped scum a lot. You could make a very convincing argument that town would have won if he did not claim until D4 or so. The fact that his one check was on the jailkeeper, who was never going to get lynched anyway, was also convenient.

I think town still would have won, but I was fortunate that the only person I had played a full game with before (Vivax) was on the scumteam with me. The people that had seen me play before (bugs, Vivax, Prom, marv) all seemed less impressed by my scum play than everybody else (Toad, debears, iamp, Morb, Stutters, yamato, Palmar, Eywa). In fact, now that I think about it, the set of townies who had a strong townread on me is exactly equal to the set of townies who had not seen me play before. The lack of potential meta-reads definitely helped me.