[SETUP] Investigative Reporting

[northsidegal]

21 Players

1 Mafia Watcher

4 Mafia Goon

1 Publishing Cop

1 Vigilante

14 Vanilla Town

Publishing Cop's results are made public at the start of the day should the cop survive the night.

Main issue I see is with swinginess. If it's too townsided, could also change the cop to be loyal.

[callforjudgement]

In addition to the swing issue, there's also the issue that the game's likely to really drag out if town power roles die early (and yet the game's balanced around the fact that that's fairly likely to happen). Perhaps the general idea needs to work in a smaller setup.

[BBmolla]

Make the vig one shot and make it 8 players, 2 scum

Or as is but 11 players 3 scum

[northsidegal]

Is there any way of making the larger setup work? Remove the mafia watcher, maybe? A strategy was pointed out to me where any scum run up will simply claim Vig and then watch that person as the vig shoots them

[Mathdino]

Mafia Watcher can't work in a setup with 2 PRs. I'd even hesitate to include a rolecop, tbh.

Wrote a program for this setup without a mafia watcher.

Assumptions:
- Cop investigates randomly among non-clears
- Vig shoots randomly every night among non-clears
- Mandatory lynches/kills
- Mafia shoots confirmed townies whenever possible
- Mafia claims VT when run up (BAD ASSUMPTION)

The town EV came out to be 44%.
This is going to be much worse considering that scum is highly likely to claim cop or vig when run up in order to buy them an extra phase or two.

[RadiantCowbells]

Why would mafia shoot confirmed townies they are known not cop

[RadiantCowbells]

Also you can't cc cop

Cop claims should have to target a specific person, real cop just has to not target that person and guilty next day.

Vig gets to just shoot CC's

[northsidegal]

Cop claims should have to target a specific person, real cop just has to not target that person and guilty next day.

these types of strategies are why i want to run this game to see how it plays out.

any cop claims should be instantly sorted by the NK anyways given that scum can't really afford to leave the cop alive?

[RadiantCowbells]

44% is good enough to run in my opinion

[Mathdino]

If mafia shoots randoms that aren't confirmed, the town EV goes up to 55%. That's why I tried both.

Plus there's the argument that if scum never shot confirmeds, it becomes optimal for cop to just confirm themselves so they don't get shot.

And you can cc cop just because it'll buy you a phase. This will drop town EV significantly considering it'll take like 2 days to get any scum lynch.

[northsidegal]

Cop can't self-target.

[Mathdino]

Got it.

If mafia tries to kill only people who aren't confirmed town (to try to find the cop), town EV jumps up to 60%. Killing PR claims --> ICs --> randoms is always better.

[northsidegal]

also going off the assumption that the cop's results only get published if the cop survives the night

[RadiantCowbells]

Stalling one day is super low +equity

[Mathdino]

That was accounted for, yeah.

Edit: It's low but it will demonstrably alter EV.

[RadiantCowbells]

I mean it's scumsided don't get me wrong.

[northsidegal]

what if the cop started with a head start i.e. the game begins with one person confirmed as innocent?

[Mathdino]

One VT or one random? If vig starts confirmed innocent it's pretty bad.

I suspect the main reason that killing ICs is so +EV for scum is because you run a high likelihood of NKing the vig. I haven't accounted for a potential strategy of not killing ICs once the vig is dead.

[RadiantCowbells]

What if NSG is guaranteed to be in the game and town?

[northsidegal]

One VT or one random? If vig starts confirmed innocent it's pretty bad.

I suspect the main reason that killing ICs is so +EV for scum is because you run a high likelihood of NKing the vig. I haven't accounted for a potential strategy of not killing ICs once the vig is dead.

probably just random? i'm not sure how much of an effect it would actually have.

[Mathdino]

Turning one VT in the game into an IC (or having NSG guaranteed to be in the game and is a VT) causes an EV of 41%...

There's something about optimal strategy that I'm leaving out.

[RadiantCowbells]

Interesting idea: what if vig check came privately to avoid outing the vig?

Wait I'm going to double check your numbers when I get home, I have a program that does this in general cases

[Mathdino]

Oh my bad I forgot to actually add the ICs into the program.

Cop head start brings town EV up to 48%.

[northsidegal]

Interesting idea: what if vig check came privately to avoid outing the vig?

Wait I'm going to double check your numbers when I get home, I have a program that does this in general cases

i'm not sure i get this. are you saying if the vig gets investigated then it isn't made public?

Oh my bad I forgot to actually add the ICs into the program.

Cop head start brings town EV up to 48%.

i like the way that sounds.

---

Investigative Reporting

21 Players

5 Mafia Goons

1 Publishing Cop

1 Vigilante

14 Vanilla Town

Publishing Cop's results are made public at the start of the day should the cop survive the night. A random innocent on a town-aligned player is published at the start of Day 1.

[RadiantCowbells]

Yes NSG

It should be explicitly vt though

Run the numbers if vig inno is private