[SETUP] Bonnie, Clyde, and the Other Guy

[mith]

3 Mafia
7 Town

Pre-game, the Mafia pair all the players as Lovers so that one pair contains 2 Mafia. The goal of the town is to lynch this pair.

The 2 Mafia pair does not have a nightkill. If the 1 Mafia pair survives Day 1, this Mafia kills their lover and flees town; if the 1 Mafia pair is lynched Day 1, the game proceeds as nightless.

EV is exactly 1/2. (1/5 * 1 + 1/5 * 1/2 + 3/5 * 1/3)

Updated version: If the lone Mafia is lynched, their lover gets to guess the Mafia pair, secretly - if correct, town wins, otherwise game proceeds as Nightless. If the lone Mafia's lover is lynched, the lone Mafia gets a nightkill before fleeing/dying.

EV is now 119/240 (1/5 * 1 + 1/10 * 5/8 + 7/10 * 1/3)

[RadiantCowbells]

I think this game is actually very scumsided in practice.

[chennisden]

D2 Lylo if you lynch wrong.

[mith]

Mafia can make it difficult for town to lynch successfully day 1, but risk giving them a lot of information going into day 2. "D2 Lylo" sounds rough out of context, but an EV of 1/3 in the worst case isn't that bad. I would actually expect this to be a little townsided, honestly.

Quick and swingy, but it's basically a 5 player game in disguise. (1 Mafia, 1 Traitor, 3 Town with Traitor fleeing if not killed day 1 is equivalent, EV-wise, though the lover version gives more potential for information due to third Mafia.)

[RadiantCowbells]

Disagree; Mafia can make it difficult for town to lynch successfully day 1, but risk giving them a lot of information going into day 2.

Mafias best play is to pair their weakest scum with the strongest town and just out as scum and lalalalalalala spam the thread. No associations will realistically be made with that slot. Scum get to hard defend each other due to mechanical reasons so there won't really be associatives there. It's difficult to tell scum apart from town in this game and with the strongest townie absolutely only impacting 1 lynch and scum having complete control over who gets paired with who, they should realistically win nearly all the time unless two scum players are completely unable to play scum.

[mith]

Disagree; Mafia can make it difficult for town to lynch successfully day 1, but risk giving them a lot of information going into day 2.

Mafias best play is to pair their weakest scum with the strongest town and just out as scum and lalalalalalala spam the thread. No associations will realistically be made with that slot. Scum get to hard defend each other due to mechanical reasons so there won't really be associatives there. It's difficult to tell scum apart from town in this game and with the strongest townie absolutely only impacting 1 lynch and scum having complete control over who gets paired with who, they should realistically win nearly all the time unless two scum players are completely unable to play scum.

If the lone scum outs and town lynches that pair, the 2 Town pairs effectively become Mason Lovers to each other. The two scum players have no advantage whatsoever in this case - it reduces to a 1:3 Nightless Hydra game, really.

[RadiantCowbells]

It's a huge deal

Say that a lobby contains NSG Creature and Sakura Hana followed by a bunch of weaker players. Most games, that's enough to win. But in this one, NSG gets paired with the weaker scum to silence her and Creature and Sakura Hana get paired together so neither can independently townspew their slot. Scum choosing the pairings doesn't show up on EV but it massively changes the game if you have meta on the players.

If the lone scum outs and town lynches that pair, the 2 Town pairs effectively become Mason Lovers to each other. The two scum players have no advantage whatsoever in this case - it reduces to a 1:3 Nightless Hydra game, really.

They're going to become Mason lovers to each other D2 anyway and the difference here is that scum are choosing exactly who is hydrad with who.

[RadiantCowbells]

No one on D1 is going to support lynching their own Hydra pair because it's self resolving anyway, and by just treating the third scum as a burner slot you remove all ability to scumhunt by associatives.

[RadiantCowbells]

I think scum should win this no less than 65% ish of the time

Even in current site meta of town being favored to win most games

[popsofctown]

7:3 instead of 14:3 is a pretty stark contrast against the lover game that ran recently and the one that's about to run.

[Irrelephant11]

The main difference I think here being scum are forced to be lovers with each other

[popsofctown]

FakeGod argues he think the scum pairing with eachother voluntarily might be optimal; if he's right it's a distinction without a difference.

[Irrelephant11]

Well if RC is right about this setup it's functionally 6:2 with a D1 IC so that would make them different (i.e. this setup only requires 2/3 scum to die)

[popsofctown]

There's definitely no "one is 7:3 one is 14:3 so one is balanced one is not QED"

But the dayplay on a game with half as many townies per scum player would be expected to play out very differently in atmosphere.

[mith]

It's a huge deal

Say that a lobby contains NSG Creature and Sakura Hana followed by a bunch of weaker players. Most games, that's enough to win. But in this one, NSG gets paired with the weaker scum to silence her and Creature and Sakura Hana get paired together so neither can independently townspew their slot. Scum choosing the pairings doesn't show up on EV but it massively changes the game if you have meta on the players.

If the lone scum outs and town lynches that pair, the 2 Town pairs effectively become Mason Lovers to each other. The two scum players have no advantage whatsoever in this case - it reduces to a 1:3 Nightless Hydra game, really.

They're going to become Mason lovers to each other D2 anyway and the difference here is that scum are choosing exactly who is hydrad with who.

You're going to have to use people I know to make a compelling meta argument...

There is actually no reason for town to lynch a scum claim. If they ignore that slot, the game reduces to 2:6 Lovers Nightless immediately

with the now confirmed town player still alive to steer the discussion

on day 1. The claimed scum can be ignored and will exit the game regardless. Quite the opposite of silencing a strong player - arguably scum would be better off pairing scum with the weakest town player.

(Your argument also assumes that two of the three strongest players in the game are scum, which would happen only 17.5% of the time, and that there is a significant gap between the top three and the bottom seven in the first place. Strong players tend to win more than weak players, whatever alignment.)

The EV is what the EV is. If there is a strong scum strategy, it can be met with a town strategy.

[RadiantCowbells]

Strongest town is going to influence 1 lynch no matter what. They don't have to influence 2.
When I say strongest scum player, I mean that there are 3 scum players and 2 of them are stronger than the third.

[RadiantCowbells]

If you don't pair scum with the strongest town, then the strongest town is going to end up cleared anyway and clear another slot with them.
This way, your ability to lynch other slots is unaffected. Conftowning a slot doesn't make all that much of a difference if they're not getting lynched anyway.
If you pair with the weakest town player, you're wasting the potential ability to mislynch that player and you're leaving the strongest town player in play to spew a pairing town.

[RadiantCowbells]

Obviously there's edge cases where strength of reads isn't at some equivalent level to ability to towntell, but largely in this game I think the priority is to focus on having two mislynchable pairings, and very few games with 7 townies don't have 4 mislynchable players. If a strong player as either alignment was in play for example I think it would be more likely that they were put into a pairing where they could be paranoia lynched, but the vast vast majority of currently active players who are -good at mafia- have one alignment that's significantly better than the other alignment.

Mountainous 9p for example requires the lynch of the 2 scum that were rolled with 3 mislynches to lose. This game requires the lynch of the two stronger scum players, versus four mislynches. It's better than mountainous for sure particularly because 1 scum can bring down the other but that "two stronger scum players" is a big deal and you have a lot of control over the gamestate and the narrative by selecting the pairings.

[RadiantCowbells]

The names that I chose basically all of them are able to clear their slots as town simply by existing, and weren't selected for any other reason really.

[popsofctown]

Is this even mafia? The bus isn't a true bus, because the jekyl/hyde pair dies n1 either way. Hyde can pretend to pressure the Bonnie Clyde pair but cannot follow through.

Then after that it's technically a mafia and not an SKship in that 2 forum accounts are being used but since it is a single slot as far as the lynching mechanics are concerned it's pretty much an SK game.

I feel like that would make it less fun.

[RadiantCowbells]

I feel like that would make it less fun.

Not just less fun: I think it would also make the game significantly harder for town.

[mith]

So, there are two different things here:

1. Can scum assure themselves a higher win percentage by having the weakest scum paired with town and claim immediately? My contention is that, on average, no, not substantially. (65% is completely absurd.)
2. Does scum lose anything by claiming immediately? No, and that's an actual problem.

The latter can be fixed though by having a single player lynched and a different outcome for lynching the lone scum player vs. lynching that player's lover. I'll have to play around with this. A quick attempt:

If the Mafia pair is lynched, town wins (1/5, EV 1)
If the lone Mafia is lynched, their lover gets to (secretly) guess the scum pair; town win if successful, otherwise game proceeds without nightkill (1/10, EV is 1/4 + 3/4*1/2 = 5/8)
If the town paired with scum is lynched, lone scum gets a nightkill before fleeing/dying. (1/10, EV 1/3)
If any other town is lynched, lone scum must kill lover and flee (3/5, EV 1/3)

EV = 1/5 + 1/16 + 1/30 + 1/5 = 119/240 (49.58%)

[RadiantCowbells]

I think that this game plays very differently than the EV would dictate because of how many advantages scum have that aren't reflected in EV. I don't think 65% is absurd at all.

[popsofctown]

This game fits the rules for the monthly challenge if you didn't notice mith.

Maybe you like the one currently on file there better though

[mith]

RC: Well, you're wrong, but ok.

65%

might

be reasonable if the two strongest players left at 2:6 are the scum pair... if you ignore how town would view the two clearly strongest players (in your example) being paired. For the sake of argument, let's say that happens 20% of the time, and the other 80% of the time the EV is just 1/2 as expected. That gets us to an overall EV of 53% for scum (47% for town). That ignores that town may do better if scum are weaker players, of course. Or that town may be able to get some small bit of information out of how the players are paired.

There just isn't evidence that even the strongest players would do significantly better as scum in such a small, low info game (effectively 1:3 Nightless with no prior game to base decisions on). The onus would be on you to demonstrate that advantage (and that such an advantage is purely or mostly scumsided).