EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/1rbR5Au.jpg)
Early game has been known to me for being not much serious and not very posty by many players. This early game instead kickstarted. I think an effective way to find scum in these stages is to find people who are too serious in a trolly environment and trying to look like they're posting a lot there.
Now there are voices that say that policy discussion favours mafia. Given the way people were still talking about the stupid mayor dozens of pages into the thread it also seems townies love to talk about policy just cause of the sheer amount of people talking about it. That will make it hard to identify mafia just based on policy talk alone.
What is instead possible is to categorize people into multiple classes based on the tone of their posts and also about policy interest, although mafia probably won't be findable just cause of the latter while townies talk so much about that as well.
Proceeding - chronological order:
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Me: Jokey start.
MilkSuckler: Trolly start, bait post.
WaveOfShadow: Motivational early post, announces he'll lay back and watch.
Layabout: Posts a creepy drawing, proposes the policy to lynch policy proposers.
Toad: doesn't want to be mayor.
VE: Announces candidacy, asks if he should run against MS.
Aquanim: Serious question to MS if he wants to run despite no bodyguards.
Restraining Order: Says MS didn't read, subtly criticizes pre-written post.
Toad: Talks bad about MS cause of prewritten post. Turns it into a WF support into lynching MS right after. Then unvotes and uncovers the posts' origin.
ObviousOne: Candidacy of jokey nature.
JJ: Mayor irrelevant, vote for the guy lynching the right guy.
BH: Semi-jokey candidacy, attacks JJ for previous statement.
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Prom: Candidacy with serious sounding post.
BH: Explains implications of mayoral candidacy.
JJ: Expresses doubts about WF's activity.
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That is enough material to extrapolate useful information for a start. The line indicates more or less the moment shit gets serious and the joke phase is over. Pretty quickly that was.
Boring serious people: WoS, Toad, VE, aquanim, restraining order, JJ, Prom.
In between people: Layabout, BH
Jokey: Me, Milksuckler, ObviousOne
Talks about mayoral election: Toad, VE, aquanim, OO, JJ, BH
Doesn't talk about it: restraining order, me
Let's get down to business then. First of all I would like to give you my opinion about the mayoral election: I didn't give it much importance. One lynch, two votes, that's it. A townie looking guy gets elected, either a townie looking guy gets confirmed if he hits scum or townie looking scum rides the wave to a mislynch and can shake off responsibility for it.
My major interest laid in creating a nice atmosphere where we can have fun together and catch butterflies all day so that people who are scum actually feel safe to play like scum. What I've learned in past games is that people I read as scum got a valid reason to not answer questions when I actually read them as scum and called them like that.
"Oh what you call me scum you idiot fine I'll ignore you" fuck that shit.
To catch scum you have to let them feel cosy, when they think they didn't have the pressure to post for two days, then you will struck them with holy might knowing that they actually had the confidence to really play like lurky scum. When they don't know you will push for their lynch at deadline they will post more information, closer to their agenda than to the one made visible by townies.
Since town doesn't seem to want to adopt such an innovative strategy, let's move on with standard play.
Purely based on these early game interactions I've become wary of restraining order/marv given his early dead serious tone despite the comparatively low interest into the mayor candidates. He subtly shovelled shit at MS for that awesome post and fucked off ignoring most of the early opinions.
However, given his later contributions to the pardoner talk, dissuading town from following Toad's terrible plan, my read switched back to a more townie one, especially when he suggested that WoS should be elected, which I agree with. I am curious to see what else he will contribute.
ObviousOne first serious post was when he spat out his geript scumread that made me suspicious of him, I actually liked his answer, very townie cause bold along with his lighthearted early posts.
aquanim I have a slight scumread on, his early contributions consist of asking MS a pointless question and then saying there's a voting thread. He likes to pick on people like WoS and OO, who I have townreads on and are at best guilty of lighthearted and at worst clumsy play. Most of his filter looks much artificial, his answers to reads look forced. I advise you to analyse him properly and I will support a mayor willing to lynch him.
Layabout could be lurky scum. If he's town I'd like him to post more. I remember him being an aggressive pusher as town in fruity mafia.
JJ is a good lynch candidate. His attack on me for playing casually is a scum trait, and he quit pursuing me asking me a weird question about what I think. Well, after the last refresh (23:40 TL time) I see he's actually back to get me. Saying I didn't follow up after calling him scummy for what he did, too bad that I went to sleep around 3 AM and I'm spending 2:30 hours with reading and writing this post, so his argument is again scummy and not thought out.
The argument he's used didn't apply to me, but also to Toad and some other dudes. He seems to think people trying to guess smurf identities are scum, as pointed out in my earlier post.
Last on in the chronology and hotly disputed in the thread: Prom. There's a lot to work on with him.
What bothers me about Prom is his unusual lack of confidence. He came dead serious into the thread with his RNG lynch idea, but didn't actually RNG anyone at that point, and even said he would lynch himself, which is a retarded thing to do when you know you're town. When people criticized him for his behaviour regarding the RNG, he quickly switched to a WoS lynch preference.
Then he votes VE, who wants to lynch him. Again, a point towards scumprom, who would probably not want to get lynched as town, it looks like a subtle buddying attempt.
Then again, it confuses me that he's been interacting in a way with VE that suggests that he would rethink his townread on me if just VE convinced him. That was after VE said he thinks I'm scum based on association with Prom (stupid reason).
Trying to see this from a scumprom perspective, this doesn't make sense to me. A scumprom would probably try to convince VE that there is an association and that he's null or town on me to frame me for later. Instead he expressed being content with changing his read on me if VE convinced him.
I am null on Prom given how he's been handling his reads of me.
Geript looked pretty scummy to me yesterday, but since he's a newbie that might just be a consequence of that. His attacks on me cause of me being casual made me pretty suspicious, and his blabber about an agenda linked to that as well, but I don't want to lynch a newbie this early, they can look scummy as either alignment.
In retrospect I'm not really able to get proper reads out for the early behaviour since it seems that scummy people seem to be scattered across the categories, but I thought I'd make an on-the-go-attempt to use that type of analysis.
