Provable randomness

[Vampirate]

Expected Value (of a town win). 2:11 mountainous has a 39.5% EV, so if town lynched randomly the entire game it would win 39.5% of games.

And no one would sign up for these games (I hope) sounds booooooooring.

Like if you ran one of these games with town PRs most would become obsolete, do it without......yeah a VT only town game isn't one i'd play.

[Magua]

You keep saying things that are your opinion like they are fact.

You may be surprised to learn that there are people who do not share the same opinions as you.

[TheButtonmen]

Expected Value (of a town win). 2:11 mountainous has a 39.5% EV, so if town lynched randomly the entire game it would win 39.5% of games.

And no one would sign up for these games (I hope) sounds booooooooring.

Like if you ran one of these games with town PRs most would become obsolete, do it without......yeah a VT only town game isn't one i'd play.

Vengeful was and I believe still is the most popular micro setup and yet it only features VT's. White Flag has spawned a series of other Flag games that once again only feature VT's. There's plenty of other examples as well, the horror.

[Vampirate]

You keep saying things that are your opinion like they are fact.

You may be surprised to learn that there are people who do not share the same opinions as you.

I apologize if i'm coming off as arrogant as that wasn't my intention. I can be an opinionated person and, well i play mafia games so there's that.

Vengeful was and I believe still is the most popular micro setup and yet it only features VT's. White Flag has spawned a series of other Flag games that once again only feature VT's. There's plenty of other examples as well, the horror.

I guess i've played so many mafia games with so many weird and interesting variations with unique roles that a game with just vanilla ton players just sounds so vanilla.

Anyways back on subject, if the dice is mod choice than it's mod choice, I was going under the impression that it was a site wide thing. Welp, mod rules so you play the game, you follow the rules.

While I can understand the mods wanting to ban it to stop it from going to a full town random player vote, I wouldn't really worry about that considering the many different personalities and opinions mafia tends to have. Most likely the extremely small minority who diced would be frowned upon, I think anyways.

[TheButtonmen]

What exactly are you arguing in favour of here? We should allow dice tags again because players will probably not abuse them? What has you so determined to argue in favour of confirmable randomization? What are you so convinced it adds to the game?

[Vampirate]

If kept to a minimum, it could add to the game, if it went rampant and everyone used it, the game is ruined from an enjoyment perspective.

I'm null on it you can say. I understand why people would ban it from their games but I don't think it would ever get to that point.

Imo there's no such thing as no information, even someone voting and backing up their own random vote can be used in a case.

Someone is randomly voting and has proven as such. Well here's a good question, why is that person doing that action, does the person believe that by not voting absolutely randomly will make them a target? If so why.

Here was my first post and probably my most accurate opinion on the thing.

Btw has a game ever gotten to the point where everyone voted randomly? I'm curious.

[Magua]

The town scenario isn't "where everyone does it randomly," it's "when one everyone follows the same random order." Big difference.

Again, if your rule is "This is ok in small doses, but bad in big doses," then it's not really a good rule imo.

[Vampirate]

The town scenario isn't "where everyone does it randomly," it's "when one everyone follows the same random order." Big difference.

Sorry, I was referring to that as well. My bad on the miscommunication.

Again, if your rule is "This is ok in small doses, but bad in big doses," then it's not really a good rule imo.

You're right.

The reason as explained to me when I asked years ago, if I'm remembering right, was that randomness doesn't allow people to get reads on you by analyzing your voting history.

Anyways my first post was in regards to this, it's my belief that anything can be used as information, even proven random votes. Why is this player voting 'proven randomly'? Is the player afraid of having their voting history in the limelight?

In essense, even negative information can tell you something about a player.



And with that................*slowly walks away*

[Reticent]

"[Tactic] is such a terrible way to play that if we don't ban it everyone will do it."

Pretty sure only terrible players are going to regularly employ terrible tactics - and if this one is against the rules they will find other ways to express their terribleness - they're very resourceful that way.

[PokerFace]

I allow randomness in all my games. I really don't see how you being random limits other players

even if you random vote with dice, someone can still vote you for choosing to be random over choosing to scum hunt legitimately. Hell i'd want to vote you for that

[vettrock]

Really, the problem with verifiable randomness is that

town can come up with a plan for everyone to follow, and scum can't secretly make their choice non-randomly.

So town trades away their ability to use their greater numbers on reads, but it disrupts scum influence and crucially eliminates means scum can't COMBINE their influence. Because scumhunting is not that much better than randomness, the gamestate can reach points when this enforced mass plan is better than scumhunting. Boo!

One dude random voting isn't really the problem. The problem is that verifiable randomness allows plans that aren't really healthy for the game. Banning all verifiable randomness is just the smart solution because it's bright line enforceable whereas "no mass plans involving verifable randomness" really isn't.

And yes, as Ether notes, it needs to be "no verifiable randomness" and not "no dice tags" because there are a TON of ways to generate a sufficiently random number.

This is really the issue I think. If you are scum and you object to the plan, it makes you look scummy, and you can't secretly avoid voting your partners.

[Plum]

Provable randomness is a form of provable thought process divorced from the influence of one's win condition. I think of Mafia as a game where necessarily the uninformed majority starts off with no way of proving the motivation for someone voting someone else or for saying a specific thing. Provable randomness in voting allows players to prove one specific motivation for an action to the exclusion of all others. The second-order thing - the motivation for choosing the provable random motivation for the action - is still not provable in all cases, technically. But it opens the door to multiple issues stemming from the fact that it allows players to make or demand plays that aren't influenced by the win conditions of the players making them.

[PokerFace]

Really, the problem with verifiable randomness is that

town can come up with a plan for everyone to follow, and scum can't secretly make their choice non-randomly.

So town trades away their ability to use their greater numbers on reads, but it disrupts scum influence and crucially eliminates means scum can't COMBINE their influence. Because scumhunting is not that much better than randomness, the gamestate can reach points when this enforced mass plan is better than scumhunting. Boo!

One dude random voting isn't really the problem. The problem is that verifiable randomness allows plans that aren't really healthy for the game. Banning all verifiable randomness is just the smart solution because it's bright line enforceable whereas "no mass plans involving verifable randomness" really isn't.

And yes, as Ether notes, it needs to be "no verifiable randomness" and not "no dice tags" because there are a TON of ways to generate a sufficiently random number.

This is really the issue I think. If you are scum and you object to the plan, it makes you look scummy, and you can't secretly avoid voting your partners.

If that's the issue then I think the real problem is that the game setup is not balanced well. If your setup gives town an advantage by being random then your setup sucks and you need to re-balance it before running it again. Don't ban randomness. Just don't play badly designed games

[Vampirate]

Really, the problem with verifiable randomness is that

town can come up with a plan for everyone to follow, and scum can't secretly make their choice non-randomly.

So town trades away their ability to use their greater numbers on reads, but it disrupts scum influence and crucially eliminates means scum can't COMBINE their influence. Because scumhunting is not that much better than randomness, the gamestate can reach points when this enforced mass plan is better than scumhunting. Boo!

One dude random voting isn't really the problem. The problem is that verifiable randomness allows plans that aren't really healthy for the game. Banning all verifiable randomness is just the smart solution because it's bright line enforceable whereas "no mass plans involving verifable randomness" really isn't.

And yes, as Ether notes, it needs to be "no verifiable randomness" and not "no dice tags" because there are a TON of ways to generate a sufficiently random number.

This is really the issue I think. If you are scum and you object to the plan, it makes you look scummy, and you can't secretly avoid voting your partners.

To shove that right back at you, what if it's scum who started the whole provable random thing to look town?

[Vampirate]

And out of curiosity has it ever happened where the town went 'fuck it, let's let the game be decided on a dice'?

[Magua]

Assassin in the Palace springs to mind as a game that has an EV > 50% based on random lynching.

Of course, AitP is a terrible setup so no one plays it anymore.

[PokerFace]

AITP is not a bad mafia setup. Its not mafia at all. The game has informed majority vs uninformed minority, so its not mafia. Some people play it and its fun, i play it alot. Because its not mafia, it does not need to be played like mafia. Scumhunting is actually anti-town in AITP.

Provable Randomness is slightly less than 50-50 in AITP. You have 1 king and 1 assassin. If you roll the dice to get the player lynch schedule and its got the assassin way before the king, then town should win. If you roll it and king comes before the assassin or assassin and king are the last few, then town will loose. It likely gives town a 45% chance at winning. But since scumhunting gives the town only a 33% chance of winning, you want to be random in AITP

[PokerFace]

For a bad mafia setup that gives town a 70%+ advantage when using randomness you want Texas Justice

Dice has been used to decide that game before and it helped town alot!

And because that setups sucks, Mr. Flay and Myself have designed many alternatives

[Ether]

Yeah...EVs assume that the town will never lynch the king in AitP, but if you're using provable randomness, it's not so easy. (Also, I can't find those EVs?)

I'm not convinced it's as broken as people keep claiming it is. But I am not a good person to debate that with.

[PokerFace]

Proving randomness is a

Good

strategy in AITP. Town has 45% chance the king will be in a good place when they randomize the player list to decide who gets lynched when.

Its not broken

strategy as Assassin should still have at least a 55% chance he will win.

How is PF estimating these numbers you ask? Well in AITP assassin wins by killing the king or by being the only player alive with the king at the end of the game. If king is before assassin in player listings than Assassin will win. If Assassin is one of last 2 names in the list than Assassin wins. If assassin guesses right, he can still suicide bomb the king when he dies

50% assassin is after king when list is randomized. 50% assassin is before king when its randomized. HOWEVER You need to subtract from that 50% since assassin wins if he is in last 2 and he also wins if he guesses right when he dies. I'd say the odds of either of those two things happening is at least 5%. It may be more than 5% but either way since you are subtracting from 50% Town's chance of winning will be less than 50%. And since Town's chance will still be less than 50%, its not broken.

If it were broken, town's chances would be greater than 50% like how they are 72% in Texas Justice

[Magua]

My apologies. AITP is townsided if:
1) The first person each Day chooses someone other than themselves to lynch (who is not the King if the person in question is the guard or the King), and
2) No one chooses a lynch again until everyone still alive has chosen one

So I was wrong when I said provable randomness. (But still a broken setup.)

We've talked about this before.

Texas Justice is a hugely townsided setup if you just randomly shoot, and I do believe that Town did randomly pair people up to shoot there.

[PokerFace]

Texas Justice is a hugely townsided setup if you just randomly shoot, and I do believe that Town did randomly pair people up to shoot there.

Yes, that is correct. 72% is hugely town sided and they did random pair who would shoot who

As far as your other comment I'll have to do some math and get back to you. I was retired/on hiatus OCT 2011. So I'm not sure how correct your findings there are. Give me sometime to look into it and I will get back to you

[PokerFace]

ok I have a question. You have a chart with (Minimum Day Assassin Will Lynch vs Town Win %)

That chart has town win chance start at 60% and increase to 64%. Why would town get a better chance at winning each day? Logically the assassin should get a better chance each day as there are less and less wrong answers for him to choose from. So is your chart backwards? Because if its not, then I think your math is wrong

Also is the fact assassin and king being last 2 alive makes Assassin win getting factored into your code? Because it should get factored in

[Magua]

ok I have a question. You have a chart with (Minimum Day Assassin Will Lynch vs Town Win %)

That chart has town win chance start at 60% and increase to 64%. Why would town get a better chance at winning each day? Logically the assassin should get a better chance each day as there are less and less wrong answers for him to choose from. So is your chart backwards? Because if its not, then I think your math is wrong

Also is the fact assassin and king being last 2 alive makes Assassin win getting factored into your code? Because it should get factored in

Yes, it would make the assassin leading a lynch more effective -- however, it also means the assassin is more likely to end up lynched before then. Eg if the assassin waits until D5 then that means that there are four lynches that could possibly hit him. If we assume those four lynchers are guards, they're not lynching themselves, and they're not lynching the King, so it's a 1/7, 1/6, 1/5, and 1/4 chance that the assassin is lynched each of those days: that's 1 - (6/7 * 5/6 * 4/5 * 3/4) = 58% that the Assassin has already been lynched before D5 begins. That's a little high because it's slightly lower if the King is one of the lynch leaders, but not by much.

Assassin/King in 2 player is always an assassin win, because it will always end with either the Assassin leading a lynch on the King (assassin win) or the Assassin getting lynched and shooting the King (assassin win).

[PokerFace]

So your plan is not true randomness but rather loosely guided randomness since you have lyncher's picking lynchees. Correct?

So your code is only trying to find the odds the assassin gets lynched? Or does your code have anything that factors assassin's chance of making the right suicide bomb once he has been lynched?