In post 672, serrapaladin wrote:One thing I have been considering is how cfj's role fits into this. As town, it doesn't really seem to have much utility outside of quicklynch baiting in MyLo, but if he were an arsonist, his role would allow him an additional night to douse/ignite.
Please think about what you're saying here. If I (or any other player) were a 1-shot unlynchable arsonist, then (given that this site's definition of Mafia requires at least two scum on the same team) the setup would currently be either 3:2:1 (if the arsonist's a third party), or 4:2 (if the arsonists are a scum group). In the latter case, you can't lynch the arsonists until after they've already won the game, because they're guaranteed to be able to get a douse and an ignite off and almost certainly have at least one player doused (with two opportunities to douse and only two players dead since the first dousing). The former case is really screwy (and doesn't fit with the deadline rules, although there's always a chance that those are simply just screwed up). In general, if a role is overpowered as scum, it's not going to go to scum.
Also, this argument looks a lot like "but BBmolla wouldn't add roles that do nothing" in a setup with a Compulsive Visitor, players who can only vanillise themselves, and either a Conspiracy Theorist or a Firefighter whose role ability targets a faction that doesn't exist (unless you're still seriously arguing 6:2:1, which I refuse to believe without much better evidence because it's mindbogglingly hard to balance and doesn't fit well with the evidence we actually have).
serrapaladin wrote:1-shot lynchproof is also an alien role, and cfj/yessiree's interaction fits the mould much better. Since replacing in, cfj hasn't had any interaction with yessiree that would help him figure out yessiree's alignment, which I would expect given how he immediately identifies the mac/yessiree 1v1.
Seriously, if you're town, please stop with the "this role is in Greatest Idea therefore it must be correct" reasoning, given how few roles actually come from there. Are you fakeclaiming because you claimed a role that isn't in Greatest Idea? Also, it seems weird to me that you seem so certain that I wasn't fakeclaiming with the unlynchable claim (although not quite as weird as I thought, because I've been running through the possibilities for unlynchable trueclaims and fakeclaims as town and scum to determine what the claim looks like from your point of view, and concluded that while from town it's almost guaranteed to be a trueclaim, scum who actually are unlynchable are quite likely to trueclaim it, and scum who are not unlynchable are not that likely to fakeclaim it). In fact, you seem to be generally assuming all claims are honest (e.g. #
670, where you assume yessiree trueclaimed about being a follower).
If yessiree is scum, then the scumteam probably has no kill at all (possibly a 1-shot vig owned by a
specific
scum player). If they have the ability to kill repeatedly, even via a method as clunky as Arsonist, then given that we've seen no nightkills yet, the setup is too scumsided to be likely to exist (given that town has no roles useful in finding scum in that scenario, with the only real town advantage being that Alduskkel knows enough about Bob's role to have a good suspicion that he's town). If the scumteam have a factional 1-shot kill, then they're Aliens, and now town is underpowered if either Alduskkel or Bob is scum, and the action results don't make sense if they're both town (we know that Serra and Mac aren't aliens from investigation results, Aldusskel and Bob aren't aliens by assumption), unless the Alien team is me/yessiree (it isn't). If the scumteam has no kill at all, yessiree as scum makes more sense (and could reasonably be scum with Mac, Aldusskel, or serrapaladin), although the setup's probably still scumsided in that case because town has no roles that actually do anything (and yessiree's role could well be a fakeclaim).
WRT the interaction, I asked yessiree a question upon replacing in, and the answer was interesting (given that yessiree pretty much entirely goes along with my theory about the current scumteam). To me, this implies that either yessiree is scum, or my guess at the scumteam is correct (or at least, if yessiree is town, town is unlikely to win unless the scumteam is serrapaladin/Mac, because other lynches are unlikely to happen.). I wasn't sure about that, and I wasn't sure about Mac/serra either, so I decided to run an experiment. I genuinely believed (and still do) that Mac/serra was the most likely scumteam, and laid out my case in as much detail as was reasonable; this was partly to help people follow my thought processes (which I consider a good way to help people read me correctly when I'm town), and partly to serve as an easy reference for helping to push the lynch if I decided it was completely correct. However, it was also a vehicle to do something I rarely get the chance to do (because being able to vote in probable lylo is rare, and mostly only possible due to the weirdness of the setup): I got to put a vote on serrapaladin. I admit to not telling the whole truth (in fact, being somewhat intentionally misleading) in my first paragraph of #
646. Why did I vote for serra? Well, yes, it was because I could do so safely, but I could almost certainly vote for Mac safely too (the most likely scumteam in which voting for Mac could cause a quicklynch is Aldusskel/yessiree, and in such a circumstance, they likely wouldn't win by doing so due to that scumteam being unlikely to have a kill). No, the reason I voted for serrapaladin is because I wanted to see how serrapaladin would react. In order for the test to work, I also had to focus mostly on serra over the next few posts, because the test wouldn't work unless the vote seemed genuine. (The fact that it
was
genuine helps it to
seem
genuine, but it helps to make sure your motivations are perceived correctly.)
Throughout most of the game, scum have more to lose by being lynched than town do. In lylo, the situation is reversed; town lose if they're lynched (or any other townie is lynched, but they're more vehement arguing against their own lynch because they
know
their lynch loses the game), but scum get a second chance. Thus, voting someone in lylo, when you can get away with it, is a useful source of tells.
I would get the most useful results from the test if serra was town, and perceived me to be town. The typical "please don't throw the game" behaviour you get in that situation is quite hard to fake. This would be the best outcome, and one that I was hoping for, but I agree it was unlikely (and it didn't happen). It did produce useful results from someone else though: I think #
642 pretty much completely wipes out the chance of an Alduskkel/yessiree scum team, and (not as strongly, but still quite strongly) implies that Alduskkel is town regardless of yessiree's alignment. There'd be no reason for Alduskkel to point out the flaws in my reasoning otherwise (they weren't put there intentionally, they were things I genuinely hadn't considered), except maybe if Alduskkel were scum with Mac (in which case he might want to go for the win toda hasn'ty by persuading me to mislynch, but it's unclear who exactly he'd be trying to get me to mislynch).
I nonetheless got useful results from serra (and Mac, which was a bonus). #
651 from Mac is clearly treating me as scum. The tone of that post isn't the sort of language you use to try to defend yourself from what you think is a mistaken accusation coming from a townie. It's the sort of language you use when you're trying to get someone lynched. Mac hasn't outright said "let's make this a 1v1" (especially given that he's already in another 1v1), but I got that impression from his post.
serrapaladin, on the other hand, doesn't seem to be reading me as scum (or town, or anything else) based on play; his defences against my push have been entirely theory-based. We can both do the theory calculations, and we can both come to the same results on them (although serra seems to come up with a bunch of implausible extra results that I'm rejecting, most likely because he doesn't like the results he gets): the most plausible scumteams, on a theory basis, are by far serrapaladin/Mac (Arsonist) and me/yessiree (Alien). Still, serrapaladin seems to have stopped there, and just concluded that me and yessiree must be Alien scum purely based on the theory. He isn't trying to scumhunt by other means, and he isn't trying to make a non-theory-based case on me or yessiree (read serra's iso: his arguments for yessiree-scum are entirely based on Mac-town, until very recently where he claims lack of interaction with me). The reason that this is worrying is that his thought process seems to have gone as far as "work out who I should be voting under the assumption I'm town → it must be yessiree/CFJ → downplay all the other possibilities (especially the one where I'm scum) as ridiculous". The situation's effectively a 2v2, especially from serrapaladin's point of view. However, getting into a 2v2 isn't enough by itself. You actually have to try to
win
it, and serra seems to be leaving this stage out.
Is this an indicator of scumminess? It's actually mostly an indicator of laziness, although I think it's a weak scumtell too. As town, if you're in a 1v1 or a 2v2, you at least have the benefit of knowing for certain that the other player's scum. Having the unsureness taken away is pretty liberating for town, in that you don't have to focus on scum
hunting
any more, but scum
proving
. As scum, it's much more annoying (I've been in this situation more than once before as scum, and although I can handle it, it's a lot of pressure): you can't work on trying to get just anyone lynched any more, you have to focus on someone in particular, which may even require reversing your read on them. So town's more likely to go through with the effort. I won't claim it's a strong tell, though.
I should note that I had a range of possible reactions in mind when I voted for serra, and this wasn't one of them, so I'm a little out of touch on the theory of this test and don't know for certain what the result means. It isn't something that invalidates my theory, though.
The remaining question, of course, is "is this actually a 2v2?". I have a tendency to tunnel, so I want to make sure that all the possibilities are covered. We have 1v1 based on night action results between Mac and yessiree, so there are 9:
Incidentally, this analysis also means that (if my vote isn't needed to observe reactions) it makes more sense to have Mac as the day's lynch over serra; it works just as well in terms of actually lynching scum, and better in the (unlikely but possible) case of Mac/Alduskkel, especially as the specific nature of the scum that flips will help inform the lynch for tomorrow.
I'm happy to make this into a 1v1 between me and Mac, anyway. In any situation where Mac is town, I don't see town winning anyway. It's almost a 2v2, but there's an outside chance that serra's innocent even with Mac guilty.
Anyway, I think that pretty much finishes the setup spec arguments for this game, at least until we have a flip. You can get into a 1v1 via night actions or setup speculation just fine. However, only dayplay can actually
resolve
one.
VOTE: Mac
