[SETUP] Betting Mafia

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[SETUP] Betting Mafia

Post Post #0 (ISO) » Thu May 18, 2017 5:08 pm

Post by Tenshii »

Is this the right place to post this? I just thought of this idea. It's a setup based around betting on a player's flip. I want see what people think of it.

2 Mafia Goons
vs
7 Vanilla Townies

Mafia have daytalk, but do not have a nightkill.

Each player starts out with $100 to bet with throughout the game.

Day - Standard voting/lynch mechanics. However, the person who is lynched doesn't flip until the start of the next day.
Night - Each player will privately submit a bet with 1:1 odds (against the mod) on what the lynched player will flip. Bets must be made in increments of $10.
Start of Day - The player lynched from the previous day will be flipped. All bets made and players' totals will also be revealed. The player with the least amount of money will also die.

The game keeps going on until either:
1. Both mafia are dead (Town win)
2. Mafia controls half the population (Mafia win)
3. 3 players are alive. At this point, the player with the most money will win the game for their faction.

Pre-Game:
In addition to the $100 each player starts out with, each player will start out with a bonus $1-$9 dollars. No two players will have the same bonus.
The mafia will decide who gets what bonus. This will prevent ties and also theoretically replaces RVS.

Thoughts?
Last edited by Tenshii on Thu May 18, 2017 7:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post Post #1 (ISO) » Thu May 18, 2017 5:15 pm

Post by Tenshii »

I think, in theory, only the players who are confident and consistently make correct reads will live.
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Post Post #2 (ISO) » Thu May 18, 2017 5:23 pm

Post by BlackVoid »

What do you mean by incremental betting? Do the players know what other players are betting or are they betting against the mod? You should probably clarify how exactly this works.

Also, since the mafia already know the flip of the lynched player, won't they always win?
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Post Post #3 (ISO) » Thu May 18, 2017 7:25 pm

Post by Tenshii »

In post 2, BlackVoid wrote:What do you mean by incremental betting? Do the players know what other players are betting or are they betting against the mod? You should probably clarify how exactly this works.
Betting against the mod.
In post 2, BlackVoid wrote:Also, since the mafia already know the flip of the lynched player, won't they always win?
Reads can be made based off of bets. Like if scum is going to bet everything on a flip and they haven't shown a legitimate train of thought to arrive at it, they're likely to get lynched the following day.
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Post Post #4 (ISO) » Thu May 18, 2017 7:27 pm

Post by Tenshii »

In post 2, BlackVoid wrote:What do you mean by incremental betting?
Bets can be made in increments of $10. So the following bets can be made: $10, $20, $30, etc.
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Post Post #5 (ISO) » Thu May 18, 2017 7:27 pm

Post by BlackVoid »

So, bets are public? How is anyone going to know what scum bet?


Never mind, you said the bets are going to be revealed. This is actually a good concept. Not sure about balance but I'd play.
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Post Post #6 (ISO) » Thu May 18, 2017 7:31 pm

Post by BlackVoid »

How exactly do the bonuses prevent ties though? Are they automatically included in every bet that's placed?
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Post Post #7 (ISO) » Thu May 18, 2017 7:36 pm

Post by Tenshii »

With the bonus, the starting totals (for Day 1) would look like this.

Player A: $101
Player B: $102
Player C: $103
etc...

If Player A and B both betted $10 on a flip, they would either both win or lose $10. They'd be at $91/$92 or $101/$102. If they both managed to come in last place, the $91/$101 would die.

Same concept applies to Final 3.
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Post Post #8 (ISO) » Thu May 18, 2017 7:37 pm

Post by Tenshii »

Err...They both can't manage to come in last place. But yea you get the idea.
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Post Post #9 (ISO) » Thu May 18, 2017 7:41 pm

Post by BlackVoid »

Yeah, that makes sense. It's a game I'd love to play as town. I see a couple of small issues though. #1: Scum don't really control the nightkill. This is fine since it's otherwise mountainous and you could consider this as a nerf in lieu of having power roles. The only problem comes when there's a real chance scum might get nightkilled themselves. So, the optimal strategy seems to be to whiteknight hard on mislynches which makes it a lot harder for scum. The other option is to bus but since there basically isn't going to a 3-way lylo (you automatically give the victory to the faction of the person with the most money), this comes down to hard-bussing and betting everything they have on their partner flipping scum. If one scum is lynched while the other is defending them, it's pretty much game over. I think this makes dayplay rather difficult for scum.
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Post Post #10 (ISO) » Thu May 18, 2017 7:43 pm

Post by BlackVoid »

Reminds me of the Duck, Duck, Goose game you modded where there's the aspect of scum accidentally nightkilling themselves.
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Post Post #11 (ISO) » Thu May 18, 2017 7:48 pm

Post by Tenshii »

Do you think the town:scum ratio should be changed then?
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Post Post #12 (ISO) » Thu May 18, 2017 7:56 pm

Post by BlackVoid »

I'm not sure actually. Just thinking of various strategies. Scum could hard-defend each other from the get go and play it as if it's white-flag (a scum lynch won't cause auto-loss but would very likely cause a loss). If that's the case, they just need to push three mislynches but they can't do it too hard because if they bet too much, they would be nightkilled. I guess there is room to play WIFOM games ("I wasn't really sure he was scum but I wanted scum to think I was so they'd be comfortable betting more/I bet the opposite of what I thought so if it was a mislynch I at least gain some money" etc) so it's not that cut and dry I guess. I think it's probably balanced as is but you should probably get it reviewed by someone good at balance.
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Post Post #13 (ISO) » Thu May 18, 2017 8:01 pm

Post by BlackVoid »

I think town could potentially break the game by controlling who bets what. While theoretically, I like the idea of good scumhunters being more likely to win, that may not actually be optimal town play.

Town could through concensus force people to bet certain amounts. So, there are two consensus scumreads, they could be forced to bet the most extreme amounts of money and the obvtowns bet the medium amount (say $50) so regardless of the flip, there's no way the obvtowns would get nightkilled. The longer the game goes, the harder POE becomes. I just don't think a competent town will play this game the way you intended it to and would try to force bets to their advantage.
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Post Post #14 (ISO) » Thu May 18, 2017 8:08 pm

Post by Tenshii »

Ahh didn't think of that.

I'm not personally sure that I would agree with that if I was consensus scumread though. Like agreeing to that is essentially self-hammering right? Or at least that's the way I'm imagining it.

Also, that guarantees a consensus scumread doubling their money. This would be terrible lategame.
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Post Post #15 (ISO) » Thu May 18, 2017 8:39 pm

Post by BlackVoid »

I see a way that the game can be nearly broken if there's a scumlynch. If a scum is lynched, town follows this strategy: every day in addition to the lynch vote, town could hold an unofficial "bet vote" where the player who gets the most votes is obligated to bet the most amount or they get lynched the following day. Everyone bets on the lynch being town (a scum lynch would end the game so that's irrelevant) so the second scummiest player would be dead. This way town directs a lot more kills than it may have been anticipated by the setup. I haven't though about this much but yeah, main point is that it probably won't play out in the "ideal" way of everyone betting of their own accord without some sort of concensus manipulation going on.
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Post Post #16 (ISO) » Fri May 19, 2017 9:40 pm

Post by Tenshii »

Wow that's lame.

Although I think that only works because of the threat of being lynched the next day.

So if this situation were to occur the day before Final 3, it wouldn't work.

Therefore, with this town:scum ratio, this strategy would only work if scum got lynched Day 1.
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Post Post #17 (ISO) » Fri May 19, 2017 11:41 pm

Post by Mac »

I'm not sure it works. It's an interesting concept, but I can't see any reason not to bet on the player flipping town every time. If you bet $50 on the player lynched D1 flipping town and he does, great. If he's scum, you lose $50 but then you just keep betting that $50 on town because either the game will end upon the next scum lynch, or you get to 3 players left with $250. And that's only betting $50, after one scum is lynched it actually makes me more sense just to pile all money on players flipping town.
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Post Post #18 (ISO) » Sat May 20, 2017 12:00 am

Post by Tenshii »

Ah.

So if the optimal strategy is to bet on a town flip every time, the game becomes how much each player will bet?

Assuming each player wants to survive/win Final 3, I don't see why everyone would agree to $50.
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Post Post #19 (ISO) » Sat May 20, 2017 12:05 am

Post by Tenshii »

Kinda tempted to just run the setup awyways
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Post Post #20 (ISO) » Sat May 20, 2017 12:09 am

Post by Mac »

Pretty much, I only went for $50 since after two flips (one incorrect, one correct) you have your money back. It essentially turns the game into figuring out whether the person with the $9 dollar bonus is town or not, since they're probably going to win if it reaches final three and everyone is betting the maximum.

Edit: Probably should read highest bonus since the $9 bonus could be dead.
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Post Post #21 (ISO) » Sat May 20, 2017 7:40 pm

Post by inspectorscout »

What prevents scum from going all-in the night before lylo (if one of them reaches it) so they double their money? It is too risky for town, but it's only in scum's advantage.
But I know,
At the end...
Remind me of the fool I really am.


Am Zaphkael now.
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Post Post #22 (ISO) » Tue May 23, 2017 1:47 pm

Post by Tenshii »

I think at that point you have to assume the person will flip a certain way.

2v3 = Assume scum, because a town flip results in a loss anyway
1v4 = Assume town, because a scum flip results in a win anyway
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Post Post #23 (ISO) » Fri Jul 14, 2017 9:34 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Working backwards…

At 3:2, every player is going to bet $100 on a scumflip, because there's no reason not to. Therefore, the lylo lynch will be the player with the least money at 3:2.
This means that at 4:2 going into night, if the two least wealthy players are townies, scum have a breaking strategy of betting the maximum on the townflip; it'll arrive at a 3:2 with both scum confirmed, but the least wealthy player (who's a townie) will end up being endgamed D4 even if town is lynched.
In turn, this means that 5:2 is a likely lylo, a situation that makes me very uncomfortable. (On the other hand, if scum is lynched early, town have a huge advantage as they can effectively control the nightkill too.)

I think one important change that needs making to this setup is to remove the special case for 3 players left; make that a typical 2:1 lylo, and scum will have to stay in hiding in order to stay alive (whilst making sure that they don't end up accidentally nightkilling themselves). I have a suspicion (not sure) that that'll leave it somewhat townsided, but there may be other ways to fix that issue (e.g. town:scum ratio changes).
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Post Post #24 (ISO) » Fri Jul 14, 2017 9:41 am

Post by Gamma Emerald »

In post 0, Tenshii wrote:Pre-Game:
In addition to the $100 each player starts out with, each player will start out with a bonus $1-$9 dollars. No two players will have the same bonus.
The mafia will decide who gets what bonus. This will prevent ties and also theoretically replaces RVS.
How will this "replace RVS"? And since you can't bet this bonus money it basically seems to be a WIFOM bait mechanic, as you'll continually wonder "did the mafia take a high number, low number, middle number, yadda yadda".
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