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Radfield
Canada2720 Posts
So again, my feeling is not that the mafia was underpowered, I thought the new roles and the traitor did what they were supposed to. They did get very unlucky and a bit disorganized early on, then unlucky again mid-game with the whole bad santa thing.
I agree, It was an extremely unfortunate series of events for mafia. In PYP 1, even without the extra pro-mafia roles, mafia would likely have won had zona not been modkilled. They were in very good shape. As it was, town barely eeked out a win.
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The assumption about double lynches is wrong though. Even if the town has 2KP to 1 Mafia KP their hits are more informed. Mafia is guaranteed to not hit Scum if they feel like it.
Also double lynching is usually bad imo. Only worth it if there is going to be a definite Mafia death or there is a counter-claim that can be resolved efficiently by lynching both players.
Otherwise a double lynch is terrible. You're guaranteed to hit at least 1 town player and in most cases TWO. Add in the fact that most double lynches are based off of laziness and finger pointing instead of solid analysis and they are bad.
Incognito I'll reply to your post later ^_^
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On September 08 2010 12:03 Ace wrote: The assumption about double lynches is wrong though. Even if the town has 2KP to 1 Mafia KP their hits are more informed. Mafia is guaranteed to not hit Scum if they feel like it.
Also double lynching is usually bad imo. Only worth it if there is going to be a definite Mafia death or there is a counter-claim that can be resolved efficiently by lynching both players.
Otherwise a double lynch is terrible. You're guaranteed to hit at least 1 town player and in most cases TWO. Add in the fact that most double lynches are based off of laziness and finger pointing instead of solid analysis and they are bad.
Incognito I'll reply to your post later ^_^ Yeah - as I said in the edit to my previous post.
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On September 08 2010 11:58 Radfield wrote: Also Qatol, you mentioned that he JOAT didn't have a high enough priority in the plan, but I'm not sure I agree. It was given the second highest priority for townies to grab, the only role higher up was the role cop. Now whether these should be switched or not I don't know, but JOAT certainly wasn't left out of the plan or forgotten. It was regarded as very important.
Reasons it didn't get picked:
Southrawrea(50% chance) took Traitor instead of RNGing a chance of JOAT Opz(50% chance) RNGed a defensive role JeeJee(25% chance) either RNGed something else, or didn't bother RNGing bumatlarge(50% chance) almost certainly did not RNG, and simply grabbed something he thought he could get.
If all four players(All townies even!) had followed the plan, we would have had around a 90% chance of getting it(I think) I think it was strong enough it should have been assigned at #2 or #3 (with Bad Santa being the other one). JOAT is that strong. (Notice in PYP1 I tried to assign it at #4 behind Inventor, Roleblocker, and Compulsive Vigilante.) And I'm not sure that it isn't stronger than Roleblocker. It is certainly stronger than Prince of Darkness. It definitely shouldn't have been left up to chance.
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On September 08 2010 12:02 Radfield wrote:Show nested quote + So again, my feeling is not that the mafia was underpowered, I thought the new roles and the traitor did what they were supposed to. They did get very unlucky and a bit disorganized early on, then unlucky again mid-game with the whole bad santa thing.
I agree, It was an extremely unfortunate series of events for mafia. In PYP 1, even without the extra pro-mafia roles, mafia would likely have won had zona not been modkilled. They were in very good shape. As it was, town barely eeked out a win. Remember that the town lost the Meth Man (Hobbes) to a modkill too. Mafia were 1 hit away from being in that same situation without modkills.
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On September 08 2010 12:07 citi.zen wrote:Show nested quote +On September 08 2010 12:03 Ace wrote: The assumption about double lynches is wrong though. Even if the town has 2KP to 1 Mafia KP their hits are more informed. Mafia is guaranteed to not hit Scum if they feel like it.
Also double lynching is usually bad imo. Only worth it if there is going to be a definite Mafia death or there is a counter-claim that can be resolved efficiently by lynching both players.
Otherwise a double lynch is terrible. You're guaranteed to hit at least 1 town player and in most cases TWO. Add in the fact that most double lynches are based off of laziness and finger pointing instead of solid analysis and they are bad.
Incognito I'll reply to your post later ^_^ Yeah - as I said in the edit to my previous post.
I just refreshed the page ^_^
I hadn't looked at the forum for like ~20 minutes and the last response I saw was Radfield's.
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I didnt rng sorry team, but I already had the watcher idea in my head. Hey, zeks could have screwed us over! Though I cant help but think I would have been a good JOAT...
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i of course did not rng
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On September 08 2010 11:22 Radfield wrote: A few comments:
The idea of claiming numbers beforehand was not my idea, It was Bill Murray's. I originally argued against it, then said fine whatever, then after more thought argued against it again. I certainly never said it was a good plan.
I don't understand why town wouldn't want to double lynch each day. We all agree that a no-lynch is bad, so therefore a single-lynch each day is good for the town. Why does the line get drawn between a single lynch and a double lynch. Day one is of course a bit of a separate issue as I'm not sure a double lynch would really be a great idea. But once on Day 2, there is a wealth of info in the thread. At what point does lynching become detrimental to the town? 1.25 lynches per day? 1.5 lynches per day? I guess I don't see a benefit to drawing the line at 1 lynch per day.
The way I see it, the better the ratio between town KP and Mafia KP, the better off town is. With a CV(working as a double lynch) town gets 2 kills for every 1 mafia kill. That means 2 scummy players are dying for every non-scummy player. In a regular game with 30 people or so, you'd be looking at 1 scummy player(lynch) for every 3 or 4 non-scummy players, a much more difficult task for town.
Yes the CV hastens the end of the game, but unless your relying heavily on investigative roles or in a fairly inactive game, this isn't terrible. The fewer hits mafia get off the better, because it keeps the pro-town players alive. If town had infinity lynches and was active, that would be hugely in favor of the town, as they effectively reduce the mafia KP to zero. The issue though would of course be activity.
Also, although mafia can dodge the CV hits via roleblock/Medics etc, that only delays the inevitable. If someone is up for CVing and miraculously survives the night, then you're going to lynch that person the next day, putting you no further behind then if the CV didn't exist. I do agree that the CV's uncertain alignment is an issue though and that he certainly needs to be lynched before the endgame. I also agree that having the extra hit can make people more slack about scum-hunting. When you only have one lynch, you treat that lynch as a precious resource. With more lynch power it's easier to slack off, although of course this doesn't need to be the case.
Just wanted to make my thoughts a little clearer, as I felt you were missing my reasoning on the CV. I'm certainly not sure about any of it though, and am willing to be persuaded.
Sorry, you are right, the number thing was BM's idea. I'm really not trying to attack you, I just wanted to point out the flaws in that idea and lumped it with disagreements about your plan because it was there originally. My apologies. As long as we're on the same page its all good.
Actually we don't all agree that no-lynch is bad. One person who strongly disagrees is Ace. And the no-lynch thing needs some context. Its not that no lynch is always terrible. No lynch is only terrible if you go into the day with the mindset that we don't have any good targets, lets just no lynch. If you do that, you won't get any information from the vote process. Regardless of your day 1 lynch strategy (which I argue should be scumhunting, not random lynching or inactive/useless player lynching), you want to put the heat on people to judge reactions. In the event that after all this, you decide that the leading candidate is in fact innocent, then switching your vote to no lynch may be acceptable (although certain circumstances might make you appear scummy), as you don't learn anything if you know someone is going to flip innocent.
Like citi.zen correctly pointed out, the benefits of a lynch is a lot more because of the discussion generated from the lynch along with the accompanying vote list rather than whatever the lynch target flips. Of course the flip is important, but I'd say its only 5-10% of whats useful overall. Consider the scenario where three players are very close in votes. Is anyone defending any of the lynch targets? What are their reasons for doing so? Are people switching votes off one of the players onto a random player, or making other seemingly queer moves? Do the mafia seem to be interested in the results of the lynch? All these questions give information which would not have existed if people just said nobody is suspicious, lets no lynch today. A good reason why bandwagons are bad is not only because they are generally started on shaky reasoning, but because its hard to get information when the lynch outcome is obvious. You can't really judge whether or not the bandwagon was started by a dumb/impulsive townie or a mafia without using behavior analysis, and you can't see where people's allegiances lie because nobody is being forced to think about the lynch/defend people (This is especially true if a mafia is on the hot seat).
With that said, the addition of a second lynch target doesn't do all that much to increase the discussion or provide any additional information. The main thing a double lynch does is ensure that two people die instead of one. But you don't gain any information because in a single lynch you still have to debate between options. Say Qatol, Ver, and Ace are all suspicious and are leading the vote count but are roughly even with each other. If all three are town then its obvious that double lynch is a bad choice here. Lets say that Ace is scum though. In a single lynch, mafia wants to try to get either Qatol/Ver lynched and have incentive to try to get them lynched. You learn information from the fact that weird things are happening and Ace is being ignored. Suppose its a double lynch. Mafia is still going to want town to ignore Ace, but the addition of a second lynch isn't going to change their motivations or the way they act. They still want to get Qatol/Ver lynched. You aren't going to learn any more from lynching both Qatol/Ver than in a single lynch other than to find out that you just screwed up and that both are innocent. You learn information about a lynch based on the candidates and how people react to the situation. How many people die has very little to do with it.
You are saying that 2 scummy players die instead of one, which is good for town. This is valid if you assume that those same people will stay scummy forever and that the list contains ALL the scum. But that's a pretty ridiculous assumption, and if it were true, then town would lose every single time. Scummy people don't stay scummy forever because a) investigations can clear/confirm people, b) mafia slip up more/become more obvious as the game goes on, and c) you can pressure players and force them to give you info, which will be useful regardless of their alignment. Behavior analysis should be clearing people for you. You don't need to mass slaughter people to do that.
You say that single lynch causes you to lose a higher ratio of obvious townies to scummy players. That's actually not true, because the extra kills that the mafia is allowed to have is counteracted by the extra investigations town is allowed to make. Assuming you only have 1 BB or other investigative role, that still results in a zero net change in semi-confirmed townies because for every one that dies, another one pops up. Medic also *should* help protect valuable town analysts. If you have an alignment cop on top of that, then town benefits by killing as slowly as possible. In this setup mafia can't kill confirmed innocents fast enough.
Double lynch is nice when mafia has high enough KP that you can't afford to wait to eliminate a list and you have good confidence that bombing the list will net you some reds. I.e. Mafia KP is 3 so it would cost an additional 3 innocent lives to lynch X wait a day and to rolecheck Y. In that case, just kill X and Y and be done with it. If mafia KP is 1 this will never happen. Just let the mafia wallow in the mud with their pitiful 1 KP.
Double lynch is also nice if you know it will improve your chances of lynching a red AND that red kill will lower mafia KP for the next night.
I'd rather rely on investigations rather than killing to narrow down lists, because if it turns out you're wrong, then you haven't shortened the game/helped mafia win. I guess one time you could benefit from extra kills is if town skill level is so low that nobody can differentiate between the scum and the shady townies and you have no investigative roles. But if town is that bad you're doomed anyway
Mafia using RB or medic to block the CV hit isn't necessarily an indicator that something fishy is going on. I thought I mentioned this before but apparently not. TL mafia seems to be paranoid on the blue roles. Roleblocker blocking a CV hit is not an indicator that the target is mafia. Medic protecting the target does not mean target is mafia. But TL mafia seems to think so, so mafia can use this to their advantage by blocking CV or medic protecting a townie hit. As long as town is led on a wild goose chase mafia buys time which is good for them, considering its likely town will run itself around in circles and waste a lynch to kill the CV/target. If the targetted player is mafia has decent arguing skills, he may be able to argue his way out of why he isn't dead. Mafia aren't forced to only roleblock or medic protect when one of their own is under fire. Town can't logically lynch the target without behavior analysis.
*edit* I wasn't seeing things! My response was in my "roles" section, but since it was addressed to Ace mainly maybe you skipped over it.
On September 08 2010 11:42 Radfield wrote: Also, as far as my original drafting plan went. It's purpose was twofold, try to ensure town gets decent roles, but more importantly, get the town talking. Unfortunately, other than citizen, very few people tried to add or amend anything in the plan, when it was very much in need of amendment. At the end I started seeing more and more holes in the plan, but I felt it was too late to try and fix them. If there had been more discussion about it I think we could have come up with a much more sound plan.
Several strong points:
Denying powerful mafia roles by assigning them top slots(roleblocker should have been denied) Having town avoid 'gun' roles to make Bullet Bill much more effective Avoiding roles which are more beneficial to mafia then to town, making the role cop more effective. Using an RNG for defensive roles to try and minimize overlap(4 people sent in Meth Man at one point or another, no one sent in either Vet or BP at any time. It might have RNGed this way, but I bet people intentionally went after it)
If mafia want to take Bullet Bill, Medics etc, I think that benefits the town in this set-up, as town still have powerful pro-town roles, while mafia is denied their dark-side equivalents. Mafia can try and muddle up the town with their roles, but that takes a lot of skill and is inherently risky for mafia. Much more so than hiding in the shadows using PoD and Bad Santa to bolster their KP and wipe out any strong townies.
I am not *completely* against planning the draft order, but as I said, the way it was done in this game wasn't optimal. First off, you don't want to plan the entire list. Its much better to identify key roles to deny the mafia and let the middle/bottom of the list choose for themselves. Of course you should inform town of which roles are useful, but don't say should pick them. Thematic suggestions like avoiding gun roles and roles more beneficial to mafia then town are good. But outlining the whole list just tells mafia where to look. General hints are good, but other than that, townies should think for themselves. Consider where you are in the draft order before picking. If the roles aren't town assigned, picking meth man early in the draft order is sneaky since mafia would naturally assume players went for the good roles early. But once you tell mafia where the meth man is, the role becomes that much more useless. Element of surprise is good. Town doesn't need to tell the mafia what its doing. Townies can have tricks up their sleeves. But it won't work if everything is so transparent.
I think you underestimate the power of mafia's ability to use generally "pro-town" roles. Sure, PoD and BadSanta could bolster their KP, but mafia isn't all about KP. Misleading the town is huge. Instead of just boosting your own position, misleading the town uses the town KP against itself. A mislynch is better for mafia than +1 mafia KP. Mafia ensuring that town communications and investigations get messed up really causes trouble and distracts town from finding mafia. Town can't trust a RoleCop that doesn't come up with a role. Or a Bullet Bill who doesn't come up with a check on a shady player at the crucial moment. A mafia with the ability to screw with town investigations or find key town roles with a rolecop and eliminating them is worth the loss of some KP. PoD also means town gets more investigations so it isn't all too mafia favored. Especially since mafia KP is 1.
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Radfield
Canada2720 Posts
Thanks for typing that out Incognito. I think I understand what you're saying a lot better. A few of those points I hadn't considered. Really the reason a no-lynch is bad, is not due to the lack of town KP, but rather the lack of ready analysis to do on the lynch, and how the lynch is forming. Hence the reason that 1 lynch is great, but 2 doesn't necessarily add anything more.
Also given the fact that in PYP town investigative roles will likely outnumber the mafia KP makes delaying the game more attractive as well.
Again, thanks for laying that out, it makes a lot of sense.
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On September 08 2010 20:20 Radfield wrote: Thanks for typing that out Incognito. I think I understand what you're saying a lot better. A few of those points I hadn't considered. Really the reason a no-lynch is bad, is not due to the lack of town KP, but rather the lack of ready analysis to do on the lynch, and how the lynch is forming. Hence the reason that 1 lynch is great, but 2 doesn't necessarily add anything more.
Also given the fact that in PYP town investigative roles will likely outnumber the mafia KP makes delaying the game more attractive as well.
Again, thanks for laying that out, it makes a lot of sense. Don't forget the inherent value of watching the vote lists. The analysis and accusations are important, but you have to look at the whole picture. And yes, if you can get the benefit of a full set of accusations and votes and still get a no lynch out of it (assuming you don't have any of the mafia make a stupid mistake early), you are in pretty good shape, especially in a low KP game. Thank you for typing that out Incognito. I had thoughts along the same lines but hadn't figured out exactly how to say them.
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