[SETUP] Mafia on a Knife Edge

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[SETUP] Mafia on a Knife Edge

Post Post #0 (ISO) » Wed Oct 26, 2016 4:47 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

  • 5 Town Desperados (as a day action, you can shoot a player; if they're scum, they die, otherwise you die)
  • 3 Mafia Desperados (identical to town Desperados; thus they either kill a buddy or themself)
  • No lynching/nightkills, and the game lasts only one phase; all kills are made via the Desperado ability.
  • Town win by killing all the Mafia.
  • Mafia win if two townies die (i.e. the game uses the Black Flag mechanic).
The EV is theoretically 4/7 (about 57%), a value that took me a lot of analysis to come up with! However, the strategy I used to achieve that (which I believe is optimal) works like this: identify two players who are probably scum individually but who aren't scum together, then get one to shoot the other, treat the survivor as confirmed town and continue. This seems very easy to manipulate as scum, so the EV is probably lower in practice, and in particular town might want to use an entirely different strategy. Note that as a game with an EV above 50%, it's very important for moderators to ban provable randomness.

Scum are never going to use their Desperado ability on town (they'd be better off claiming scum and forcing someone else to kill them, because at least that way they simply die, rather than dying and confirming a townie in the process). However, it's important to the setup that they have the option to shoot each other in an attempt to look town.

I'm not sure how wise it is to actually run this (although knowing me, I'll probably run it anyway), because it requires discipline by the players; if players are going to shoot without discussion, they can end up losing very quickly. (That said, impulsive players are quite possibly less likely to use Desperado shots than Day Vigliante shots, considering the potential downside.)

As a side note, I've been wanting to make a "zoraster-style" setup for a while. This one wasn't explicitly intended as one, but it seems to have ended up in the same sort of space.

This almost certainly also works at higher player counts (seeing as it's technically a Bad Idea variant, it probably even scales up into the hundreds without much difficulty), but analysing the Micro-sized version was hard enough, so I'm not sure offhand exactly how many players you'd need. (It's probably rather easier to analyse if you just
assume
the strategy I gave above is optimal, though, rather than trying to
prove
it's optimal like I was.)
scum
· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·
town
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Post Post #1 (ISO) » Thu Oct 27, 2016 1:18 pm

Post by BBmolla »

Desp kill ends the day?
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Post Post #2 (ISO) » Fri Oct 28, 2016 1:53 am

Post by callforjudgement »

There are no nights and no lynches, so it hardly matters.
scum
· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·
town
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Post Post #3 (ISO) » Fri Nov 04, 2016 1:02 pm

Post by Gamma Emerald »

So...endless day?
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Post Post #4 (ISO) » Fri Nov 04, 2016 4:13 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Pretty much. Bad Idea normally works like that.
scum
· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·
town
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