On Compromises

[Hoopla]

Excellent transparency indicates a poor/undeveloped scum game. Transparency is a necessary sacrifice if you want to protect your scum game. Unless you're playing with different people each time, or constantly one-upping your skillset to be seen as town in different/deeper ways than before (both are unrealistic beyond the short-term), you won't always be seen as town.

Accuracy and Pragmatism become more important town qualities once you go beyond that level.

[Hoopla]

Excellent transparency indicates a poor/undeveloped scum game. Transparency is a necessary sacrifice if you want to protect your scum game.

To a degree, yes. But remember, transparency is just the word I took to mean "being correctly read as town".

Having all of your votes be for scum would also get you correctly read as town, for example.

It is true that a deliberate transparent playstyle (like mine) will hurt your scum game while helping your town game. But Transparency, capital T, isn't NECESSARILY having a transparent style. It's getting read as town correctly by however it is you do that.

If you're often being correctly read as town, then you must be doing certain things to warrant people reading you that way. It logically follows, that if you don't want your scum game to suffer, you must adopt a similar play style to how you do as town. If you can't perform to that level as scum, then yes, your scum game is being suppressed by your town game. If you can perform to that level, you won't be read as town for the things you do any more. Thus, you need to be constantly improving at an increasing rate, with your town-game one-upping your previous efforts as scum and so on. There will be a point where the amount needed to grow to be at the next level will be beyond your ability.

[Hoopla]

I believe Hoopla is saying that you need to find a middle ground, you don't want to be so easily read as town that you're defenceless as scum.

A 50/50 middle ground of just being unreadable either way is probably not optimal either. You're town three times more often than you are as scum, so sacrificing your town game to level out with your scum game probably isn't ideal in the long run, if it only helps one in four of your games. Having

some

level of transparency as town is probably more beneficial overall (if you're capable of controlling it) - say a 60/40 split. Because you then get 60/60/60/40 as opposed to 50/50/50/50. That's a ridiculously rudimentary way of explaining the logic, but I think it's easy to follow without cheapening the idea.

I've often thought at times, maybe it'd be worthwhile to just sacrifice your scum game completely, and become completely transparent. You then switch up the equation to 100/100/100/0. Which seems like a pretty good deal for three games out of four. It raises ethical questions of playing to win, if you know you can do better but are actively choosing not to. That would essentially be throwing one game out of four if you did it to the level of being so obviously town, that when you're not, you're scum.

But as much as being read 100% correctly seems appealing, it's quite likely you're going to be offed on N1/N2, minimising your influence in the game. How influential are Innocent Childs Day 1 of a game? Not very. You're still prone to accuracy issues even if you do manage to live to a point in the game where you can be influential. I doubt your win percentage in town games would increase much beyond your normal rate - certainly not enough to justify a strong chance of losing in your scum game.

There's probably a sweet spot there somewhere, though. You certainly don't want to gain a reputation for being a strong scum player, but likewise, becoming obv-town is suboptimal if you can easily be eliminated by scum. A neutral to slight town lean in your town games, and a slightly "off" appearance as scum is probably best. You do enough to avoid a decent percentage of lynches in each game, maybe living to D3 or D4 to have a meaningful contribution as town - which if you pride yourself on accuracy, living to that point in the game is great. And as scum, living as long as possible is always beneficial.

I think trying to win but using the bare minimum resources needed to succeed is a good long-term strategy. Having an extra gear or two to go into when you really need it, and really think it'll be beneficial (ie; strongly improve your chance at a win) is important. There's no point playing to your absolute best if something half as good will achieve the same result. If it's likely you'll shut the game down as scum, with town being on the wrong track, you don't need to start towning it up, being the leader or trying to get viewed as super town, even if you're capable of it. You've just wasted that next gear in a situation where it gains you nothing extra. Save it for when it'll get you something.

Pooky's guarantee is an example of this strategy. A long time ago, Pooky used to "guarantee" he was town every now and again. It was maybe only every 10-15 games he used it, but he did it enough (always as town), to essentially confirm himself as town. This occurrence was infrequent enough to not inhibit his scum game in any meaningful way, yet he'd gain a notable advantage in maybe every 10th game. If you can confirm yourself at a pivotal point in the game, say when a cop is faking a guilty on you in lylo, or say in a 3:2 lylo with everyone trying to pick out partners, you eliminate your chance of being lynched and paint scum deeper into a corner. Done right, you could easily expect to win 90% of the games where you confirm yourself which obviously nets you a greater win percentage in the long run, if the damage it does to your scum game is minimal. I think this was an/the? event that caused mith to intervene and ban this tactic. Some mafiascum historian can elaborate on this, because I forget.

That's an exaggerated version of manipulating transparency to do more for you in the long-run, but I think this concept could easily be watered down into your overall approach to mafia with good results. It unmasks a very murky water with what is playing to win, and what is gaming the system though.

[Hoopla]

Adel actually posited this before - the best way to maximize your win rates (and everyone else's) is for everyone to claim scum as scum.

It would only work if everyone else did it. Nobody doing it, but you doing it would be a disaster...

[Hoopla]

Play to win is on a per-game basis. Sacrificing your town game to further your scum game is a blacklistable offense in my book. It's treating an theoretical problem anyway: no one is obvtown when town all the time and people don't really get lynched over not appearing obvtown.

I don't know how and where you draw the line, though.

For example, If I could be reasonably sure a well-reasoned wall-post analysis of the game, maybe sprinkled with some authoritative vote count analysis or statistical based hunting would give me a lot of town points, but I can't be bothered making the effort and just post a 3-liner coming to the same conclusion, am I violating "playing to win" in any sense of it's meaning? I could be playing better - I have greater potential to be better right now, but made an active decision not to do it. Are you saying there is an empirical difference between that situation and choosing to post a 3-liner because you don't want your town game to be too strong? There's no way to differentiate the underlying motivation between the two. That's the how. Here's the where;

What about players experimenting with their playstyle? If you deliberately deviate from your playstyle, which presumably would/should be the current peak of your evolution as a player - months and months of gradually refining and incorporating new tells, gaining a deeper understanding of how to influence people, how people interact with you, strengths weaknesses, how/why your play works etc. - doesn't throwing that away (or at least some it) violate playing to win? Experimenting with playstyle is seeking an improvement in play in the long run, not for that individual game. You often have little idea of how it is going to work out, other's reactions to what you're trying to do - it's unreasonable to believe that for your first game of experimenting this would yield a better chance of winning than your current playstyle. That could easily be classed as sacrificing the current game for the purpose of a longterm benefit.

It's treating an theoretical problem anyway: no one is obvtown when town all the time and people don't really get lynched over not appearing obvtown.

About this specifically, it may not always be a direct cause in getting you lynched, but it could decrease your influence in YOU want lynched, increase your chances of being targeted for investigations, and if you live deeper in the game you're more likely going to be asked why you're still alive, and have a higher chance of being filtered into PoE type endgames. All the players mentioned in relation to this would probably do better overall if they sacrificed their town game just a little.

[Hoopla]

Why am I self-voting?