Mafia in the Himalayas

On June 17 2015 13:00 wherebugsgo wrote:


umm

well I would say that one of the things about hunting mafia is that surface-level things can often be red herrings.

For example I hesitate to scum read active people too, and I think it is natural because a lot of the time scum don't put in a lot of effort. However it's not quite so clear cut because a lot of scum teams have one or two lurky players and a couple others who blend in or even attempt to lead town. e.g. I know I am not one to back down as scum and I know other players like Ace, BC, etc. who are also pretty active as scum. So here I would not hold activity as a high regard or alignment indicative unless you know a particular player does not care for playing one alignment or another. For example both Onegu and LS favor one alignment over the other; Onegu prefers to play scum and LS prefers to play town, so in the last game I played after I started suspecting LS of being scum when I looked at his past games there were a lot of similarities in effort and read quality between LS's play that game and his previous scum games.

What I think is more important than activity but along the same lines is the level of effort someone makes in qualifying or justifying particular stances they take in the game. Scum are unlikely to give specific reasons for the things they say because a lot of the time they are faking. In the cases where they are not faking (e.g. when they make "townreads") sometimes they give themselves away in the way that they will come to a certain conclusion through a thought process that isn't organic or doesn't appear to be grounded in events that occur in the thread. Signs that this is the case can be seen when a scum player responds to a request to elucidate a town read. If you agree that the target is town, see if your reasons match, and if not, try to see if the provided reasons are specific and make sense in the context of the thread. If they are not really backed up by anything or somehow come out of nowhere they are probably scum.

So instead of surface level things like aggressiveness, activity, lack of activity, etc. I think it's better if you try to look at motivation. e.g. if I were in X player's perspective and I were town, what would I do? Try to see if what they are actually doing can be explained from one perspective vs another. Certain things can be explained from both perspectives but you can filter those things out and try to identify the things that are indicative one way or another. Often times perspective analysis, at least for me, is easier from a town perspective because there are certain things that mafia "would never do", or at least be very unlikely to do, for example defend a particular player in a situation where doing so would attract a lot of attention.

On June 17 2015 12:53 rsoultin wrote:
+ Show Spoiler +

good lord i don't feel like dealing with this today -_-

fine

1. the LS read - i get him wrong a lot. that i said he was town at all this game toward the beginning was anything BUT a responsibility deflection. i simply gave it the weight it deserved. if i'm not good at reading him, i don't want people taking my read on him as gospel, but it IS the way i'm reading him right now

2. the damdred read - i feel that my toneread on damdred based on the fluidity of his posts is good enough. you do not. enough said. i stand by that read

3. the five townreads - reading my filter you would find that i've given reads on ls/damdred and have not on the other three. i refused to give a reason for fidei. no one bothered to ask about anyone else. i was being facetious since i was already being accused of not having a reason for one of the players that i did have a reason on

breshke - we think ridiculously alike when he's town. the fact that he's saying things that already resonate with me plus knows exactly what i'm talking about while being obscure means he is most likely town. breshke is slow to make reads but his posts are especially insightful. i love playing with him

gb - he has a tendency of going every which way as town. he knows that he does this (but i doubt he can help himself...and know that he's bad at replicating it as scum) the longer the thread went on, the more difficulty he seemed to have focusing on just one thing. while he can tunnel as town, i've only seen this level of disorganization from town gb

ls - the read basically mimics damdy's so i felt no need to repeat it

damdy - his style is interesting. he used to not post much and just come in with a case on a scumread late in the day phase, but he got pushed so often for it (and he gets highly frustrated at being scumread as town) so then he started offering weaker reads early. if you actually cared to look at the game i linked, he came in with an immediate scumread on team mate gb in that game, to the exclusion of pretty much all else, and even made the mistake of townreading someone for reaching the same conclusion as him with completely opposite reasoning. and yes, to me his posting seemed very stiff. i was scumreading him most of d1/n1 until i derped like an hour before i was nk'd -_-

my reads are because i know the players. meta-wise and tone-wise. it's personal to me, and no, i don't expect everyone else to get it, nor is there a real need to overexplain townreads when they're not getting lynched unless stubborn people keep insisting on it

next time ask -_- if it's not repeating myself i'm usually very forthright

as for VA...i've seen what he's capable of, but i also know how lazy he can be so i'm hesitant to vote him. he's scummy and being useless with the posts going nowhere and the opportunistic vote on a townie (assuming it made it to the vote thread) however i wouldn't put it past him to just want to lynch me for getting him mislynched last game as scum >>

the reasons i don't like hf are in the thread. he says it's a shit metaread, and on the surface perhaps it is. however it is undeniable that a scum hf tends to have very shallow reasons for scumreading people and be less forceful/proactive. there may or may not be another reason i distrust him right now

i also feel that ksc's posting is off, but i'm not as familiar with him. if he's not masons with hf, there was absolutely no reason to townread hf at the point where he said he'd just sheep whatever hf did. i don't like that any more than i like his push on ls based on reasons that don't make ls scum