[SETUP] Trapdoors Nightless

[Hoopla]

3 mafia, 7 townies. Nightless.

- Imagine all ten players lining up in a row
- At the start of each day the mafia selects which player to place the trapdoor under. That player is poised to be lynched.
- The town can choose to lynch that player or move the trapdoor under someone else
- If the trapdoor was under the player in position #5 and the town instead decides to lynch player #7, it costs two moves to lynch that player
- The town can only move the trapdoor ten times for the entire game
- For the purpose of this game, position #10 wraps back around to position #1, and when someone is lynched the gap closes in the lineup, ie; if #8 is lynched, #7 is now connected to #9
- The mafia can't place the trapdoor under the same player on consecutive days
- Mafia have daytalk
- The ten players' positions are randomised

Mafia wins if they control 50% of the town. If the town has used all their moves while the mafia is still active, the town will be considered endgamed as mafia cannot be lynched now.

~~

Scum will probably need to place the trapdoor under themselves at different points in the game, so it should create some tasty wifom about how the mafia think the town will react to their choices. For town, determining how to spend your resources could be an interesting mechanic -- how sure do you have to be for someone to be scum if it costs two or three moves to do it? Do you wait until the scum place the trapdoor closer on future days and lynch a second or third best target today who is closer? Conserving moves and regularly lynching scum's choice could be viable and as it gives the town more flexibility deeper in the game, but if scum thinks the town will be doing this, they might select townies for their trapdoor choice with a higher frequency, and so the wifom will flow.

[Ircher]

10 seems rather low; I'd say it looks rather scumsided at a glance due to the high amount of randomness and WIFOM involved in the setup.

[TierShift]

I cannot grasp if 10 is low or high at the moment. Hoopla, could you perhaps summarise a hypothetical game in a few lines so I can get a feeling for the numbers?

[Hoopla]

I cannot grasp if 10 is low or high at the moment. Hoopla, could you perhaps summarise a hypothetical game in a few lines so I can get a feeling for the numbers?

A major problem with nightless games is the positive feedback loop you get from lynching scum -- not only do you lynch scum, and get those juicy connection tells, the town also gains an additional mislynch. The deeper the game goes, the more lopsided the game is for town. Typically scum's best chance of winning a nightless game is to sweep the town and not allow them any additional mislynches, as quite often there are always one or two really good town players or obvtownies that simply cannot be eliminated if the game runs deep.

This setup tries to address the problem of the game becoming too much of an uphill battle for scum in lategame by accelerating it and allowing the possibility of town running out of days to lynch them. The latest this game can possibly run is until Day 8, which means town has a little more than 1 move per day. Even if town only uses 1 move per day, they still have access to three players for the lynch, and with scum spread out across the playerlist, most of the time they will have a closeby option to lynch scum. Remember, when a player is lynched, the gap closes, which means deeper in the game just one move could access more than half the playerlist for a lynch.

To be honest, 10 moves is an intuitive guess and possibly feels a bit too many if anything? I can't really tell how balanced it will be because nightless games are such a different beast (I feel like I haven't played/witnessed enough of these types of games to make sweeping calls about balance and how influential the dynamic of scum being unable to eliminate obvtownies/good scumhunters is) but I think 6 or 7 Days to lynch all the scum in this game is fair. This will allow the town to move twice on 2-3 days, and once on the remaining 4-6 days, which seems like a decent amount of flexibility, though occasionally town won't be able to lynch their number 1 suspect.

[TierShift]

Even if town only uses 1 move per day, they still have access to three players for the lynch, and with scum spread out across the playerlist, most of the time they will have a closeby option to lynch scum.

This reminds me of something called nomination mafia (I believe), a 6:2 nightless game in which mafia get to pick three nominees for lynching on even days.

Lol upon searching the game I see that you designed the setup, great, so you know about that.

I feel that was a very balanced setup (6:2 nightless has 50% EV, btw) and you should probably work from there. Why did you choose an extra mafioso and townie this time around?

Someone should do the logic and see if scum can force a win late-game if they have 2-3 members left and their positions are lucky

[TierShift]

Hoopla that nomination setup is seriously one of the best setups I've ever played

[Hoopla]

Why did you choose an extra mafioso and townie this time around?

mmm, i think this setup could be scaled back to 2:6 or 2:5 (nomination mafia was usually 2:5, though it has been played as 3:8 before), but i think i prefer 3:7 because it allows a wider variety of possible plays; such as lynching 2 or 3 moves away and shortening the game, or doing lots of 1 or no-moving days. 2:6 seems a bit short for this setup since after the first day most of the players are realistically lynchable for most of the future days -- i feel like the mechanic doesn't get explored enough with just 2 scum.

[TierShift]

3:7 nightless gives an EV of 40%, on top of which you're adding a lynch-restricting mechanic. Perhaps you should add 2 townies for a 50%?

[Hoopla]

In my opinion, EV is a relatively meaningless metric to determine town's chances because it ignores the way the game is played by the average town. Sometimes EV's will align with observed win rates, for example; mostly mountainous games with a standard factional NK for scum tend to align decently with EV predictions, but even if you played that exact setup in a live chatroom where instantaneous reactions to things can sometimes get you caught, it will often be more townsided than forum-based play. If you play that same setup again in face-to-face mafia, it will typically be even more townsided again, as it is much much harder to deceive face-to-face. All three venues playing the same setup will have different observed winrates -- what does that say about the importance of EV calculations? To me, it says that these things are fluid and is totally dependent on how the group of players plays the game. That's why I think observing winrates over large samples of the same or similar setups is the most meaningful way of inferring balance.

About nightless games specifically, I think we have enough evidence based on observed games to suggest that these games are harder for scum. A key factor is scum being unable to remove the best/most townie players -- town can typically lynch far more accurately after a couple of days in nightless due to PoE and better players still being alive.