chamber wrote:This setup has to be anti town. 9-3 nightless is 50/50 ev, I hear town wins 8/4 nightless though, at anyrate I think this is worse for town than 8/4 nightless. the strength masons have is shat on by the mechanic, may as well be 8/4 nightless where the mafia can randomly get kills.
8:4 Nightless is very town-sided from the games I've witnessed. The problem with Nightless games is that they suffer from a lot of positive feedback - a scum lynch earns the town an additional mislynch, and reduces the scum's abilities. With no way to eliminate townies other than the lynch, the game becomes more difficult for scum the deeper it goes, as the last 1 or 2 scum have to occupy the most towniest looking positions, which is just not realistic. Scums best chance of winning a Nightless 8:4 is by not giving the town an additional mislynch, and sweeping the town with 4 mislynches. The next likeliest chance is one scum dying and getting 5 mislynches (and so on).
EV isn't a relevant consideration in Nightless games (or at least when comparing it to the EV of normal games), as the function of the scumteam is completely different. There's a
huge
difference in having the ability to manipulate the game via nightkills and remove obv-townies/good players in a normal mountainous game, and a Nightless game where you can't do either. You literally have to play scum in a completely different manner.~~
I suspect this setup is still slightly town-sided - the double-edged sword of dying as scum if you miss is really valuable to town. The mechanic of forcing the masons to stay hidden is compelling to me, because it subverts traditional mason play, where you claim and become confirmed town. To have an influence, and use your numbers to manipulate lynches without giving your identity away is a lot more challenging.
If this setup was run again, I think certain strategies might start to evolve. It is probably optimal from a scum perspective to only risk a shot when you're about to be lynched - if you're in no immediate danger of being lynched, what incentive is there to shoot? Even if your target is seemingly obv-mason, you might get them lynched before you need to take a shot at them. The scum shot is probably best used as a "well, I'm going down anyway, might as well try and hit a mason".
Conversely, if scum played in this manner, it would probably be in towns interest to push a lot of wagons to L-1 and leave them dangling to try and tempt the scum into a shot or risk being hammered. Someone then being shot while a player is at L-1 implies that player is scum, or scum are playing wifom games and taking a risk shooting unnecessarily (which is what town want).
~~
Anyway, I'm curious to see if anybody would play this again? Was it a fun setup? I suspect the balance concerns is more of a knee-jerk reaction to this current game than an objective view of the full spectrum of possibilities. The last time this setup was run, town won with 4 players left alive.
