[SETUP] Vengeful Nightless High Noon

[AnonymousGhost]

I'm planning to run an altered High Noon setup. I took suggestions from this post (specifically the increase in player number) to help balance the setup a bit more.

Plus, I contacted another user who gave me another suggestion to ensure max balance/fun (plurality vote mechanics) and prevent players from no lynching over and over again.

If I could have a few more eyes take a look at this, it'd be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

Planned Adjustments Include:

- 10 Players instead of 9 (2 v 8)
- Scum are Vengeful for both the Duel and Lynch Mechanics
- Nightless
- 12 day long Day Phases
- Plurality voting for Duels and Lynches
- 36 hour prod timers
- Players only allowed to be prodded twice before being replaced
- Scum get day chat

[callforjudgement]

EV should be identical to 2:8 Vengescum. mith's EV calculation thread puts this at 54.59% to town, which is probably too high to be balanced. (In a setup where the scum have a full kill, a balanced EV is around 50%; people tend to assume it should be lower but history seems to prove that wrong. However, in a setup where the scum have no kill at all, a balanced EV appears to be in the 20-30% range as scum can't get rid of competent town voices and there are normally a few of those. I don't think we have enough evidence yet to show what a balanced EV for Vengescum-alikes is yet, although Grey Flag Nightless, with its vengescum mechanic and 45.9% EV, is currently 3:0 to scum. So perhaps 50% is right there too.)

Balanced numbers should be more like 2:7 (perhaps not enough players, based on your commentary) or 3:12 (probably too many?). Perhaps it should have a White Flag victory rule (either 3:6 or 3:7 are the correct numbers for that).

I'd also recommend giving a deadline extension when a duel finishes, to prevent duels very close to deadlines causing bizarre voting behaviour. (You could shorten the "normal" day deadline to compensate.)

[AnonymousGhost]

You're going to have to unpack your first paragraph in a bit more detail.

Talk to me about the Grey Flag Nightless setup and it's 45.9% EV. Can you break it down why the EV is at that specific point? I don't know as many of the in's and out's regarding things that can make a setup favor one side over the other, but can you explain why have a 3 v 6 matchup doesn't tip the balance into scum's favor? Thank you!

White Flag victory rule sounds interesting and would force scum to play it smarter than usual, probably. Is there any significant difference in balance between the 3:6 and the 3:7 number distribution?

Good idea about the after-duel deadline extension! I never thought about that. I'll sure to implement it! How short would you recommend the "normal" day deadline be to compensate this?

Thanks for your help!

[callforjudgement]

Grey Flag Nightless has a White Flag victory rule, which is what makes 3 vs. 6 (probably) balanced (although the actual results have been fairly scumsided so far). That's a White Flag + Vengescum setup that should be balanced based on the numbers, making 3 vs. 6 a likely balance point, but given that it has 3 scum wins and 0 town wins, the actual balance point may be 3 vs. 7 (showing that there was something off in our previous understanding of balance for this sort of setup).

EV calculations are basically a long case analysis of "assume everyone acts at random; what's the chance town would win?" Of course, in practice, people don't act at random, but setups with higher EVs tend to be more townsided, and over time you can get a good idea of what sort of EV is balanced given what set of mechanics is in place. So far, the largest influence on town win rate compared to town EV appears to be the nature of the scum nightkill; town tend to perform below EV if scum can kill all the best players, and well above if scum have no way to eliminate them and the best players survive to endgame.

For deadlines, something like "8 days natural deadline, extended 2 days if a duel starts, extended another 2 days when a duel finishes" would probably work out quite well. The natural deadline isn't long enough to scare people off, and it should help to keep the game moving. Perhaps you'd want it a bit longer (e.g. 9+3+3) because having two major decisions per day means that you probably need more time than if you just have one lynch per day.

[AnonymousGhost]

Good to know. Thanks!

I'll adjust the setup to 3 v 7 and implement the White Flag victory rule if that's the case.

Interesting. I'll probably roll out with the the 9.3.3.

Thanks for the help!

Edit: Do you think plurality vote mechanics will have a negative impact on the game? I'm hoping not, but I don't want to resort to tactics like 'if the duel isn't resolved by the EotD, then both duelists will die' because I feel like that can encourage bad play over good. Thoughts?

[callforjudgement]

The main negative effect of plurality voting is that it can encourage people to stall towards deadline, but it's only a small effect, and in a Nightless you pretty much have no other option (modkilling random townies at deadline would be excessively draconian and there's not much else you can do if deadline elapses without a vote). So nightless setups should almost always be plurality.

[AnonymousGhost]

Thanks for your help!

Anything else of note, either big or small, you think I should include in the final setup?

Current Plans:

- 3 v 7
- Pluraity
- Nightless
- Vengeful Scum
- White Flag Victory Rule
- Deadline Duel Extensions
- Scum Daychat

[callforjudgement]

Looks good to me.

[AnonymousGhost]

Great. Thanks for your help!

[mith]

If I were running a Nightless game and wanted strict deadlines, I would just give scum a kill if no lynch was reached by deadline. It's better than lynching a random townie (because it's not random).

[AnonymousGhost]

That would give the town an incentive to avoid no-lynching.