Post-Game Analysis:
I wrote up a town-focused post-game analysis while the game was winding down on Day 3. I think town really lucked out in this game. Town derped hard early on, but was bailed out by some amazing blue-role play (Oats and Damdred).
I'm going to focus a lot on what the town was doing wrong on the first two days. Here we go:
Part I: ”My gut says that this mafia player is town.”
On September 10 2014 18:24 geript wrote:
...
LM is town. Every time I read his filter I thought he was really towny. No clue as to why off the top of my head. Could be a bad read. I will laugh my ass off though post game if all the people I've been hard calling town are mafia and none of my mafia reads are mafia.
“Gut-town” reads, “leaning-town” reads, “feeling town” reads… all of these are a dangerous game. They’re often inaccurate and nonsensical, yet there’s something psychologically compelling about making them. In a game with 13 players and 3 mafia, odds are that a townie is going to be right on 75% of these reads. However, it is the 25% that people get wrong that can warp your ability to see the game clearly.
Geript’s quote above is the most egregious and memorable example, but a lot of townies were making these types of reads. All three mafia players benefited from it heavily on Day 1, and it led town down an apathetic spiral on the first two days when everyone couldn’t find a satisfying lynch. Take a look at some of these reads:
On September 10 2014 15:25 raynpelikoneet wrote:
LM is really hard to read because he just doesn't post enough for anyone to get a solid read on him.
I think he is town because what he says makes sense from town perspective except for the throwaway read on me at the start of D2.
On September 04 2014 15:53 geript wrote:
I don't really have any solid townreads yet. It's really sad. Plus there's too many people on my too lynch list. Gun to my head Koshi; he's not as happy and fun as I usually think of him. But there's an odd towny air to him.
On September 06 2014 12:45 gobbledydook wrote:...
ritoky
He is town jesus. All hail town jesus! Town jesus for grail!
Just three examples out of many more.
I can sympathize with people reading Ritoky as town for his Town-Jesus Post*, but otherwise, it was surreal seeing townies repeatedly read mafia as town for completely null-tells. Hell geript has good evidence to call Koshi mafia in that second quote above, yet somehow reads him town by the end of it.
*But really, a long and well-formatted post is not grounds to find someone as town… let alone one on a subject other than finding mafia.
The main problem with these reads is that it warps your view of the game. If you gut-read someone as town, you are going to be far less critical of their play, and probably will not read them seriously. Just look at the Day 4 lynch. LoneMeow was the most stereotypical lurker-scum I’ve seen in recent memory, yet it took SloOsh hammering this obvious point home 24 hours into the day for the town to finally end the game.
SloOsh with the truth:
On September 17 2014 05:30 slOosh wrote:
It's like everyone somehow got a townread on LM early, and never bothered touching it again. Like, I'm mildly baffled how yamato is having trouble deciding between us. I've been here for all the major points of discussion and talking about stuff, I believe I've been quite transparent of all my reads etc, Oats the probs scum had that weird dig against me, ritoky just flat out refused to make a read on me all game, and I'm still here talking about stuff. I say mildly because many people have suspected me all game, I'm guessing primarily because they found my early setup talk boring or my questions to be weak, which I could see but I don't see how it is indicative of me being scum.
I'm quite heavily inclined on LoneMeow scum as he hasn't been involved in anything, and has only done provisional singleton posts these past two cycles, of which there isn't any figuring out being done, merely agreement with what most people have made. Yamato is a distant second by PoE but even then it's like meh.
The conclusion here is that these reads are garbage. They seem harmless, but will mentally bias you against taking a serious look at certain players. Avoid making these reads, and do not be afraid of simply reading someone null.
Find people who are scummy and push their lynch! That is a far better use of your time.
Part II: “Let’s have a chat.”
On September 05 2014 02:15 slOosh wrote:
...
ritoky - the grail question was an opener, just to get chat going. It might be an easy question, but scum might have a tough time answering softballs so can't hurt to try. The little chat we had felt pretty good…
I dislike “conversations” as a method of scum-hunting. They don’t really test whether or not someone is being deceptive - they test whether someone is willing to tell you what you want to hear. That quote from SloOsh above is a good example of this; LoneMeow is given town-points for answering questions like a reasonable person.
Conversely, look at the insane arguments that geript had with players this game. Aggressively questioning a defensive and/or combative townie is going to create nothing but confirmation bias and spam.
Ver wrote about this in his post-game analysis of You Only Shoot Once Mafia, and I think it’s one of the best pieces of scum-hunting advice on this forum. Click here and read it.
A great way of finding mafia is to see what they do out of their own initiative. How do they react to big events in the game? What are their contributions to the thread when not pressured to contribute? Does this player's persona consistent? Focus on these observations, rather than creating "conversational" situations where scum can tell you exactly what you want to hear.
Part III: “Check the facts!”
On September 12 2014 22:23 raynpelikoneet wrote:
well ritoky is scum anyways so we might aswell lynch him.
##vote ritoky
just look at his claim:
"Damdred is soft-claiming my role. oh he hard claimed. Btw i have a red check on him (but i won't even reveal my other check)."
rofl
Day 3 was a turning point for the town. Ritoky and Damdred claiming inquisitor forced town to scrap all the bad reads made in the first two days and focus on a narrow objective. Rayn was masterful here. After town drew all the wrong conclusions from the dueling claims early in the day, he came in with great arguments and a productive attitude that sealed Ritoky’s fate.
I think everyone by now should understand why Damdred's claim was far more authentic than Ritoky's. So why was everyone so wrong initially?
On September 13 2014 02:49 yamato77 wrote:
well initially ritoky's big post looked convincing
but everything else he's posted doesn't inspire confidence
and I did read them the other way around at one point
it's just pivotal to make the correct decision
Townies took a look at ritoky's big counter-claim post, thought it sounded good, and didn’t consider much after that.
Mafia win games when townies take things at face value instead of spending the time and effort to analyze things. Good mafia players make a killing off of making “genuine” posts that look good at a first glance. However if you look at these posts in depth, it’s pretty clear that they’re complete nonsense.
Ritoky’s play is a perfect example of this. He made many “confident”, seemingly useful posts that many players took a quick glance at to establish his “towniness.” However these posts were generally useless and were used to make him look like he was contributing without actually scum-hunting.
Yamato’s post here is good...
On September 13 2014 05:49 yamato77 wrote:
this is really simple
One of two things is going on:
dam + haru are both fakeclaiming because they have a demon result that one of them got checked and they have a necro check on robik who was the actual exorcist. this scenario seemingly plays out as remaining duo with a third dead. it also relies on a lot of assumptions, none of which we can confirm
OR
ritoky is the fakeclaimer, and had to do so because he got redchecked with his pants down. his claim SEEMS weaker because of the stuff rayn has pointed out, and indeed, believing it fake is the simpler solution.
I also had the read that I thought damdred was town mid-late D1, but honestly I overstated it on purpose because I wanted to lynch lazy rayn. ritoky hasn't been very productive overall this game with the majority of his filter being one of three things: campaigning, koshi's alignment, and sylencia's lynch.
…but at this stage of the game, he does not realize how damning this is. If your town-jesus is not productive, he’s probably not town-jesus. Or town.
I'm not sure if this is laziness or oversight, but it's egregious nonetheless. Basic fact-checking is important. If you don’t hold people accountable for what they say, mafia can post/push any random “confident” bullshit and get away with it. And this does not apply only to role-claims:
On September 05 2014 01:54 Koshi wrote:
It's the new and improved me.
Mass posting is terrible for me because I get insanely caught within the thread. I need to be able to take a step back and look at the thread without bias.
It's much better for my reads.
I just need people to do the legwork for me.
Koshi makes this egregious self-assessment of his new playstyle early on Day 1. He portrays his new playstyle as "quality over quantity", but check the facts, and you can see that all his posting up until then has been mindless spam and pointless questioning.
Check the facts! Keep people honest! When you ignore these basic things, you will end up manipulated and incorrect about your reads.
Part IV: Loose-Ends and Other Stuff
This is some other stuff from the game that I thought was worth mentioning, but not deserving of a whole section in the analysis.
On September 15 2014 23:50 raynpelikoneet wrote:
Since i am confirmed town here is what we do:
There is one mafia left because ritoky was scum and Haru was telling the truth about his role.
We ARE lynching today because we have a mislynch.
Nobody speak and when you answer me ONLY answer to what i ask you to and nothing else.
First order of business:
Are you either one of the following roles; Judge or Crusader?
Order of claiming:
LM --> geript --> yamato --> Sloosh
go.
The claim plan at the end was pretty “meh.” Perhaps my view was tainted by knowing that LoneMeow was the last scum, but these types of claim plans seem more like a last resort than something to pursue right away.
It was just a lot of risk that can just be avoided my normal scumhunting. You don’t know what information mafia has from their roles. For example, it’s immediately obvious that geript was the crusader, given that mafia knew that Oats was the Judge from night information.
On September 13 2014 04:05 geript wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2014 04:01 HaruRH wrote:On September 13 2014 03:48 HaruRH wrote:On September 12 2014 09:01 ritoky wrote:
i am the inquisitor, on night 1 i investigated 1)geript and he is green, on night 2 i investigated 2)HaruRH and he is RED.
On September 12 2014 12:19 ritoky wrote:
like it's blatantly clear to me that 3)you saw i investigated you through the demon power, and formulated a fake claim. if it was a real red check you would have just come out with it instead of your teasing/half-assed claim. this claim is a joke.
lynch dam and haru, and it's probably gg. hopefully there's not 3.
I counted 3, geript.
Even if you had no idea who ritoky was replying to, you would know that he was replying to damdred, who claimed cop. And neither did you nor me claim cop, so ritoky investigated someone else????
D1: geript green
D2: haru red
Damdred's demon power caught him investigating damdred... when? D1? D2?
Hey geript how bout you explain why this does not make ritoky confirmed mafia
FUCKING READ WHAT I'VE ALREADY WRITTEN. IN TH ENGLISH LANGUAGE, THE PRONOUN "YOU" IS UNSPECIFIC; AS A MATTER OF FACT IT'S ONE OF THE WORST FUCKING PRONOUNS TO USE. IT IS GENDER NEUTRAL AND BOTH SINGULAR OR PLURAL (UNLESS YOU'RE IN THE FUCKING SOUTH WHERE I LIVE AND WE USE "YA'LL" SPORADICALLY). I CAN SEE SOMEONE IN THE HEAT OF THE MOMENT USING "YOU" INSTEAD OF "YOUR PARTNER" OR "HARURH" OR WHATEVER ELSE BECAUSE YOU THINK LESS AND TYPE MORE WHEN YOU'RE FUCKING MAD.
RTFT
Anger is a fine tool.
But overuse it,
and you look like a fool.
On September 17 2014 04:40 geript wrote:Show nested quote +On September 04 2014 20:39 Koshi wrote:
I think I am ok with the following people. Just based on their posts.
•Oatsmaster only because ritoky
•gobbledydook
•IAmRobik
•geript
•slOosh
•ritoky
Let's pretend Koshi is town. This list had at least 2 mafia on it then. The question though is would Koshi include both his teammates on his town list. I don't think he would so that would clear Sloosh and make it yam/LM.
This was posted on Day 4. It is completely nonsensical to look at this type of evidence when there’s so much more information in the thread. Why speculate whether mafia would or would not do something? Mafia can do any random shit (see: ritoky).
Instead, look at what players are doing, look at how they are doing it. SloOsh’s posts on Day 4 were an excellent example of this. Who cares whether or not Koshi posted a list of 6 players? However, Ritoky mentioning LoneMeow once but immediately pardoning him for questionable reasons is pretty relevant.
EPT
