Excited to see how this works.
Newbie Mini Mafia III
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zarepath
United States1626 Posts
Excited to see how this works. | ||
zarepath
United States1626 Posts
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zarepath
United States1626 Posts
Mostly, I just want to start sooner because I'm excited. | ||
zarepath
United States1626 Posts
Also: except for mafia goons and townies, can we assume that there can't be any more than 1 of all the other blue and red roles? For example, we don't know if there's a Miller or not, but we can assume there aren't 2 or more of them... same with DT, role-blocker, etc.? Or do we not even know that, just the 9/3 town/scum ratio? | ||
zarepath
United States1626 Posts
What do we want to accomplish on Day 1? We either no-lynch or randomly lynch, as far as I can tell. We don't have much game history to draw upon as far as deciding who to cut early. I see several possible outcomes: Randomly lynch a mafia/red: This is clearly the best possible outcome. If we have worthwhile hunches to go on, it's possible we can lynch a mafia on the first Day. From what I've read it's unlikely, but still possible; it all depends on what kind of discussion we see today. Randomly lynch a townie/blue: Bad. The only upside is that we can then use the information from that lynching to determine likely mafia. Who was most excited about randomly lynching that particular person? Who bandwagonned on? Who were the last few votes who made the lynch possible? No-lynch: We don't get a mafia, or confirmation of who isn't mafia. Because there's no risk of lynching a townie/blue, this seems to be very safe. But what I wonder is this: if we don't lynch anyone today, our information for Day 2 is limited, and we give the mafia a night to kill someone. We end up with 1 dead townie before we're willing to make deductions. Maybe it's riskier to not lynch someone on the first night, because we'd have less information to go on. So what I'm suggesting is this: we lynch someone randomly. Say, by reverse-alphabetical order. There's no reason at all for us to suspect this person. But by deciding to lynch them, we'll either see a lot of defense (ie, they're mafia), or a lot of people agreeing with killing that person (ie, those people are mafia.) Once that person flips blue or red, we'll know who was who. TLDR; I suggest that we randomly lynch zelblade, or seriously discuss it, and see what happens from there. | ||
zarepath
United States1626 Posts
On January 25 2012 14:19 zelblade wrote: I disagree with zarepath's plan to "randomly" lynch me. Of course i am being a litte biased here, but how does randomly lynching me provide any sort of information? How does me/others defending myself = mafia? Any player, regardless of aglinment, is going to defend themselves either way, as getting lynched in either case is bad for their team, and chances to win. Thus, i believe that lynching me or anyone else "randomly" is a horrible idea. As for what to do with our day 1 lynch, i suggest that we lynch a lurker unless a better canditate comes up. Remember that we still have alot of time left before the deadline, so we should utilize this time well to discuss and find a better lynch candidate than lynching by reverse-alphabetical order. The point is that upon flip, we have much more to go on. Anyone irrationally defending you now, if it turns out you're mafia, has a solid chance of also being mafia. So no, not anyone defending you is necessarily mafia, and not necessarily anyone accusing you, but upon flip, we can figure out which side of that we can throw our suspicions. After reading others' responses to the idea: no, a RNG lynch would NOT be as useful to us, because we don't learn anything from it (as has been pointed out). By me randomly accusing someone, that person is forced to speak, and others are forced to defend if mafia/bandwagon if he's not. I argue that the process has already begun, based on the content of some of these posts. I think the strongest argument against doing this is that, because of the high mafia/town ratio, we only have 2 miss-lynches before it's LYLO, as zelblade pointed out. On January 25 2012 15:24 DoYouHas wrote: There is no reason our first lynch should be random. We need to use the threat of lynching to put pressure on lurkers and suspicious people. This needs to start today. If we seriously consider a no lynch today all we do is encourage passive play. We should be creating opportunities to gain information and put pressure. The worst thing we can give the mafia is time. Lynching lurkers is not as great a strategy as it sounds. As others pointed out, mafia can just decide to post more, and then suddenly we're looking at lynching the less-active townies just because they don't talk enough. People who don't post at all get modkilled anyway, and seeing as how this is a newbie game, there are probably several lurkers who just don't know where to get started. I also agree that we should go after suspicious people. And I think we'll find out who they are by continuing to pressure zelblade. | ||
zarepath
United States1626 Posts
On January 25 2012 15:15 MidnightGladius wrote: I'm sorry if my first post came across as unhelpful, but I want to establish first principles before getting down to the nitty-gritty. I'll try to be more clear and direct. In simpler terms, players who suggest courses of action that hurt the town's chances are suspicious, as innocents should never be making these kinds of proposals unless they have much more information than they're letting on. As it's Day 1, this is clearly impossible, so I look askance at zarepath and FakePromise, who both advocate a plan with very low expected value. The other part of my methods take a bit longer to develop, as I need to see more posts before picking up any trends. Scummy behavior is such that it betrays access to hidden information, and then does not adjust accordingly as information is made public to the town. Players who behave in this way are either not updating their beliefs properly (tunnel-vision, confirmation bias, or ignorance are common causes), or updating them according to hidden information (perhaps a blue investigative role, but overwhelmingly likely to be mafia). Does that explain my position more clearly? The only problem with that is you confuse your actual detective for mafia just because he operates on hidden knowledge. The detective has an incentive to operate on hidden knowledge, while the mafia has no hidden knowledge to go off of except who else is mafia, and they're not going to talk about that. Also, I would save theorytalk for when it's actually applicable. Otherwise it looks like you're just making empty posts. | ||
zarepath
United States1626 Posts
On January 25 2012 14:05 MidnightGladius wrote: Supporting the lynch, in your argument, is evidence of being mafia. However, you claim that arguing against the lynch is also evidence of being mafia. That is inconsistent, unless you would like to claim which case is more indicative of being mafia. Upon flip, we'll know whether the plan's supporters or detractors were likely mafia or not. Not both sides at once, regardless of flip. It's far better than a random lynch because, with a specific target, people have to reveal themselves by defending/accusing him. The information we gain from his flip then has repercussions; the information we'd gain from a random lynch would just be hit/miss with zero opportunity for analysis, save theory-based ("anyone who votes for random is mafia" "with 4/13 random vote is actually worse for mafia" etc.). Instead we can see who defended him and who attacked him and have actual leads from there headed into Day 2. | ||
zarepath
United States1626 Posts
On January 25 2012 15:24 MidnightGladius wrote: What logic would you claim to use on the first day? There is insufficient data to make any valid attempts at deduction, induction, or hypothesis. With what is available to you now, would you take even odds or better on any accusation? The odds only get better when more townies die and more mafia are alive, so I think that a strategy of "playing the odds" is destined for failure. Mafia is more a game of deduction than it is of numbers. You have to start by making plays for information, and simply killing people who don't give information, in addition to being a bad "odds" play, doesn't create information. It just punishes people who will get punished anyway by mods. At 4/9 odds, we don't have a day to waste on policy lynches that the mods will already be doing for us. | ||
zarepath
United States1626 Posts
But we need something to go on; some way of getting info. I have a few ideas but there are still a lot of people we haven't heard from. Quiet people need to speak up soon. | ||
zarepath
United States1626 Posts
On January 26 2012 04:11 MidnightGladius wrote: Other indicators include his unwillingness to pressure lurkers, low-content posters, and inactive players. He argues that this would only force mafia to post more than the least-active innocent players, but that's exactly what we want: more content from players who would be most content saying nothing. The more they say, the more they're likely to slip up and reveal access to hidden information. Forcing mafia to post more is always good, granted. But if the only reason they're posting more is so that we eliminate one of our obviously inactive townies, it would be better to focus our lynch on an active, suspicious person. The inactive townies will get replaced by active players and then we'll know who was lurking and who was just inactive. So yes, let's pressure the inactives and see what happens. But I would much rather lynch an active suspicious person than someone who probably just AFK'd a couple days. | ||
zarepath
United States1626 Posts
I'm not as concerned about balt and SacredSystem... I think the way they framed their accusations was more out of noobishness than it was a sign of confederacy. I'd like to hear what they both think about Fake, zen, and Cosmos. | ||
zarepath
United States1626 Posts
On January 26 2012 06:39 CosmosXAM wrote: I had yet to post because I was at school, sorry if inactivity would lead people to this conclusion. But in my opinion even pressuring someone like that will be cause of an emotional and defensive response making them see even more likely to be right to lynch. I am completely against random lynches on the first day because the odds are just too small, you wouldnt bet your life on a 1/3 chance would you? That is the same stance I am taking here even on the chance we do kill a mafia in my opinion it comes at too great of a risk and we dont need to kill a townie only to have more killed in the night, that just brings our numbers too low to fast. Right, we've moved on past random lynching. Who do you think is suspicious? | ||
zarepath
United States1626 Posts
Let's look at his (quite limited) post history: On January 25 2012 13:50 FakePromise wrote: Poor Qatol, had such potential 4/13 = 30.7% chance of killing mafia so random lynch seems good for me If he's mafia, he runs these numbers through his head and goes, "Hey, that's great for us!" OR, he notes that I picked zelblade, and thinks to himself, "Hey, he's not a mafia, that's great for us!" So his first response is to immediately endorse the lynching of a townie... ...by suggesting that the lynching odds are good? That would be the worst, most obvious mafia move possible. And that's ALL he says. Doesn't respond at all to the point of my failed plan, which was to get information based on who likes it and who doesn't, and then use the flip to confirm one way or the other. All he likes is the percentage. AWFUL mafia play. However, saying the same thing as a townie is just as bad of a play, if not worse. Either way, let's establish that he's being careless. Let's continue. On January 26 2012 12:18 FakePromise wrote: I guess I was wrong with random lynching but from the looks of it, you guys are trying to random lynch me. Now that I think of it, if we do lose a townie, it'll be 4:8 and the next day, it can be 4:7 so town would be at a huge disadvantage. I'm kinda confused on why SacredSystem is so eager for me to die, just because I happened to be reading this forum right after zelblade posted. How does he defend his 30% endorsement? "I guess I was wrong." Then he follows that up with a complaint that people are trying to random lynch him. Also: "Now that I think of it..." as if he was just now running the numbers, which seems like an outright lie and an obvious escape route. The last part of his defense -- that he wonders why Sacred is after him because of some random timing on what he was reading(?) -- doesn't make any sense at all. It's the most scatterbrained defense imaginable. Now think about this if he's mafia. He makes a horrible, obvious first post right at the beginning of the game. There are three other mafia players who are going to PM him and say "look, that was the scummiest thing I've ever seen. You need to back off of that real carefully." They may even tell him what to say. They're sure as heck not going to let him post excuses like "just because I happened to be reading zelblade's post" or "now that I think about it..." (Disclaimer: the other mafia may be just as dense, but that's not a good assumption to make. Or Fake just read all the PMs and the thread at once, bugged out, and made an awful response.) If he IS mafia, this is the worst possible way to defend yourself of the fact -- lashing out, completely switching your stance, no explanation of your thought process, and something that doesn't even make sense at all. Either way, it's careless. But if he were mafia, I don't think he'd have a careless retraction like this, one that comes so late in the thread. It would be far earlier, with all the other mafia PMing him saying "what's going on? get over here and defend yourself, they're getting real restless and I sure as heck ain't going to defend your post." I think this post would be much better crafted defense, and would probably point out someone more suspicious than him to try to throw off the scent. Now his third and latest post: On January 26 2012 13:21 FakePromise wrote: What am I suppose to respond to? Really? As a mafia, I suppose this is a potential defense: seeming so confident in your innocence that nobody should have any accusations against you worth responding to. I don't see any guilt in that post. But really? Everyone is all for lynching you based on a single offhand belief that you made at the beginning with no back-up or reasoning. You don't know what you're supposed to respond to? Is that even possible? He doesn't see a need to defend himself anymore, even after his awful, scattered defense in his second post. This belies an utterly clueless view of the game. Additionally, who here has rushed to defend him (other than myself at this point)? Nobody. There are a couple of moves that could be seen as misdirections -- people voting for zelblade and Cosmon, but those votes made some basic sense. He's all alone in his defense because nobody else is on his team. (Knowingly, anyway.) He is alone in a corner, consistently clueless, and apparently sees no need to defend himself. What I'm saying is that it seems more likely to me that he is just a really awful townie. As an alternative, I suggest voting for Cosmon: On January 26 2012 06:39 CosmosXAM wrote: sorry if inactivity would lead people to this conclusion First post is an apology On January 26 2012 07:04 CosmosXAM wrote: If I had to say I would probably go with fakepromise because of how he was so quick to agree. Also Chocolate seems mildly suspicious because of his quick jump to voting straight for me based on little information Bandwagons on the popular vote based on little information, and then also throws suspicion on Chocolate because Chocolate's voting for Cosmos on little information(?) On January 26 2012 09:04 CosmosXAM wrote: I find it a bit odd your jump from to straight up voting for him, I mean sure he now has two votes going for him but you said that you wanted to wait for more information and based on him only posting once and your points about him just being copy&paste what other people had said earlier and not offering any new information or opinions I find your vote to be very bandwagon-ey. And then he accuses SacredSystem of bandwagoning on Fake (even though that's exactly was Cosmos did). | ||
zarepath
United States1626 Posts
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zarepath
United States1626 Posts
On January 26 2012 22:34 Simberto wrote: Also, zarepath, note that most of your argument is WIFOM, and that you flipflop between "mafia would tell him to act, but not help him to be safer", and "noone helps him", which are obviously contradictionary. Even further, you invalidate that whole argument by helping him with this post. I don't know what WIFOM is (these newbie games should have a list of acronyms at the beginning). And that's not a contradiction or flipflop. Mafia would tell him to defend himself because they couldn't be seen defending such an awful argument; but they'd help him defend himself a little bit, at least, which obviously didn't happen. You can count my post as an invalidation of that reasoning, but Fake's safety isn't my prime concern here; mis-lynching is, and with three votes tallied against him, I had to step in before the votes got out of control and we mis-lynched (according to my suspicions). I think that Cosmos is the stronger candidate. | ||
zarepath
United States1626 Posts
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zarepath
United States1626 Posts
I looked up WIFOM, and it refers to the Princess Bride scene where the genius guy lists off assumptions and says "Then you can assume that the wine is in front of me." It was a confusion tactic that didn't end up working. I suppose my reasoning was a little circular, but it's still hard for me to imagine Fake as a mafia. He does need to contribute more either way, though. | ||
zarepath
United States1626 Posts
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zarepath
United States1626 Posts
On January 27 2012 08:01 slOosh wrote: Zarepath opens the day's discussions with a random / no lynch proposal. We've discussed how it is a poorly thought out, Anti-Town plan. Yes. No one had posted, and figured much of the first day would be "well, how do we do this?" unless somebody put forth a concrete plan. I honestly thought it was a reasonable plan. I underestimated how much information we'd be able to glean on the first day, and, well, you see that I backed off. This isn't a hard slip up but it isn't quite null tell either. The question is good. What do we want to accomplish. He doesn't answer his own question though. He offers a plan and sweeps the question under the rug. Offering a plan doesn't preclude a discussion about our goals. To simply say "What do we want to accomplish?" without offering a plan is a nothing post. My plan's goal was to gain information based on accusing someone random. Don't see the problem here. Look at his mentions of alignments (mafia, blue, town). Look past the plan itself and observe his word choice. Did you see what I saw? "Once that person flips blue or red". You KNOW it was NOT a typo since one paragraph above he uses the phrase "1 dead townie" and that he considers the two factions mafia and townie/blue. I believe he has blue hunting on his mind and it leaked out. Blue/red is meant to mean good/townie/bad. I don't see how a plan to randomly lynch someone implies blue hunting, because I had zero to go on when picking zelblade. If every slight misuse of the term "blue" is supposed to mean you're mafia, we're going to have a hard road figuring things out. If we don't lynch someone today we won't have as much information to start day 2 I don't see the problem with this, either. He is pushing for a kill for information. Information!! He doesn't care if its not a mafia, because he wants information! He uses the word "necessarily" twice, and after the flip the information can help town "[cast] our suspicions". He doesn't even value the information gained from the flip that highly. Yes, I do. This is semantics. "Necessarily" means that I'm not implying that both accusers and defenders are guilty of being mafia; "necessarily" means that it's one or the other, and upon flip, we know which one. Zelblade points out that town has 2 mislynches to Lylo (which I think is unhelpful information but that is beside the point). Zarepath uses this information. If you use someones info, it means that they are contributing. He ends the post saying that we should go after suspicious people, namely Zelblade. He uses information provided by someone who he thinks as suspicious. He calls for pressure on zelblade that he does not create himself . I'm the ORIGINAL pressure on zelblade. All zelblade pressure originated from me calling for his lynch at the very beginning. Again, this quest for info (obtained by killing innocents or mafia he doesn't care) and self contradictions. What happened to the pressure Zelblade plan? You mean the plan that everyone else thought was super stupid and scummy? I don't see how consistently valuing information and a plan is bad. Everyone else seemed to think that pressuring less-actives was a better plan. Obviously I do care if we lynch an innocent; how is this different from putting pressure on less-actives (whether they're mafia or not)? And note that the pressure put on zelblade revealed a lot about him; the accusation against him showed that Fake is suspicious for awful argumentation; and it created a platform for discussion that's done nothing but benefit town. Ok. So he says he is concerned with mislynch. As in, lynching people who are not mafia. He says that Fake is not mafia very adamantly yet look at his wording at the end. First, "I think". Not, Cosmos is the stronger candidate, but "I think". Where did that conviction go Zarepath? I'm quite convinced in Fake's innocence. I'm more convinced in his innocence than I am in Cosmos' guilt. Again, I don't see the problem here. Furthermore, look at his voting pattern. After he posts his "FakePromise is an inexperienced town" at January 26 2012 22:00, he waits for Simberto to agree and vote first before he casts his own vote 6 minutes after at January 27 2012 03:05. 5 Hours and after someone else goes first. Vote timing is hardly an indication of me being mafia. Wouldn't it have been more suspicious for me to wait for someone to disagree, and then back off my "FakePromise is innocent" argument? Honestly, the least-suspicous timing would have been for me to vote exactly when I posted. You'll note that the entire thread is filled with people declaring their suspicions and yet not voting for that person until voting started. I voted after Simberto did because it was becoming clear that votes needed to be counted. Waiting for someone else's confirmation of my theory... what would that even gain if I were mafia? I'm impressed with how thoroughly you've examined my posts. But honestly, if you were to decide that any other active player were mafia simply because you read a thread about active mafia, you would find similar "inconsistencies" that are simply misunderstandings in semantics. I've done nothing but further town discussion, point towards suspicious people, contribute actual analytical defense of people that others are accusing, trying to aright the lynchpath -- etc. There are numerous others who only accuse without good argument, refuse to defend themselves, or don't even post at all. While a wall of text analysis is impressive, it's operating on assumptions and while it might feel cool to be suspicious of an active town contributor, you really have nothing to go on here. I don't think that you're mafia, simply because I don't think mafia would go to such effort to declare suspicion, on their own, against somebody on arguments that's frankly just looking for semantic proof to confirm their suspicion. You'd have nothing to gain when I flip green/blue (see how I learned?) because we'd all know who to lynch. I'm holding my vote for Cosmos, and I continue to suggest that people avoid voting for FakePromise, who's probably just a townie with bad arguments. | ||
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