[REVIEW] Angels Vs Demons

This forum is for discussion of individual Open Setups, including theoretical balance.
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[REVIEW] Angels Vs Demons

Post Post #0 (ISO) » Mon Oct 12, 2020 12:40 pm

Post by MURDERCAT »

I want to make a game that is effectively mountainous, but balanced. On the wiki is says that 11:2 is still heavily scum sided. I was thinking about something like this.

11 Vanilla Townies

2 Mafia Goons

Instead of a normal elimination, players vote for a player to be treestumped during the day phase.
Night kills work normally.


Anything like this exist? Do you think this actually helps town enough?
Last edited by MURDERCAT on Sat Nov 14, 2020 3:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post Post #1 (ISO) » Mon Oct 26, 2020 2:57 pm

Post by Blatant Scum »

In post 1049, MURDERCAT wrote:I want to make a game that is effectively mountainous, but balanced. On the wiki is says that 11:2 is still heavily scum sided. I was thinking about something like this.

11 Vanilla Townies

2 Mafia Goons

Instead of a normal elimination, players vote for a player to be treestumped during the day phase.
Night kills work normally.


Anything like this exist? Do you think this actually helps town enough?
If town lynches randomly, they have ~44% to lose. Where did you see that it is heavily scum sided?
Don’t forget about how when I asked him for a link to his scumgame, he linked THIS game. - Pyrrha Nikos
He usually never puts effort into reads like that, which does sometimes get him scumread, but since he was on an alt and we didn't know his meta, I can see CL!him making reads as an exception since he knows he'll probably be scumread otherwise.
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Post Post #2 (ISO) » Mon Oct 26, 2020 3:07 pm

Post by Ircher »

According to The EV Project, 11-2 mountainous has an EV of 39.5%. As to MURDERCAT's posted setup, I think a near 40% win chance is pretty decent, and the treestumping ability is likely +town EV, so that within a reasonable level of balance.
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Post Post #3 (ISO) » Mon Oct 26, 2020 3:19 pm

Post by MURDERCAT »

Yeah I was citing that ~40%, plus I read a few posts suggesting town might actually play worse than that (but I believe that was just opinion, not sure if there's any large dataset on that).
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Post Post #4 (ISO) » Mon Oct 26, 2020 3:33 pm

Post by Isis »

empirically, scums have stomped 11-2 mountainous's 39%, and town has stomped 8-4 nightless's 33%. The limmed slots are the ones that would be less helpful if they stayed alive, generally, so we should expect this to go closer to the 11-2 mountainous and to be scumsided. I have a subjective vibe that towns are pretty good lately and roundabout ready to start winning 11-2 mountainous and feel like it's fine.

My bigger issue than winrate is that I feel like setups with higher scum ratios are more fun. (it's possible that setups with higher scum ratios also lead to town outperforming their EV more often : 8-4 nightless has a very heavy scum ratio, and 11-2 mountainous has very few scum to be found)
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Post Post #5 (ISO) » Tue Oct 27, 2020 4:48 am

Post by MURDERCAT »

In post 1053, Isis wrote:My bigger issue than winrate is that I feel like setups with higher scum ratios are more fun. (it's possible that setups with higher scum ratios also lead to town outperforming their EV more often : 8-4 nightless has a very heavy scum ratio, and 11-2 mountainous has very few scum to be found)
What if it were just a 5p 4:1 micro instead? (EV project says 4:1 is ~47% town win.)

Also, I realize I probably should have made a separate thread for this, sorry. I can make one now and move this convo if it's too spammy.
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Post Post #6 (ISO) » Tue Oct 27, 2020 7:17 am

Post by MURDERCAT »

thanks :)
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Post Post #7 (ISO) » Tue Oct 27, 2020 8:26 am

Post by Blatant Scum »

Amazing. I don't remember posting here, so someone hacked into my account and posted here or I was drunk.
Sorry if the post is inappropriate.
Don’t forget about how when I asked him for a link to his scumgame, he linked THIS game. - Pyrrha Nikos
He usually never puts effort into reads like that, which does sometimes get him scumread, but since he was on an alt and we didn't know his meta, I can see CL!him making reads as an exception since he knows he'll probably be scumread otherwise.
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Post Post #8 (ISO) » Tue Oct 27, 2020 8:29 am

Post by MURDERCAT »

A magic mod moved it for us
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Post Post #9 (ISO) » Tue Oct 27, 2020 9:19 am

Post by Ircher »

Eh, the 5p version doesn't really qualify as mafia which presents a problem.
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Post Post #10 (ISO) » Tue Oct 27, 2020 4:13 pm

Post by Blatant Scum »

You might add more players if you want to balance it.
I have counted EV for a few more players.
https://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?ti ... ous_Setups

If you need EV for even bigger games, just PM me or post here.
Don’t forget about how when I asked him for a link to his scumgame, he linked THIS game. - Pyrrha Nikos
He usually never puts effort into reads like that, which does sometimes get him scumread, but since he was on an alt and we didn't know his meta, I can see CL!him making reads as an exception since he knows he'll probably be scumread otherwise.
-Hectic
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Post Post #11 (ISO) » Wed Oct 28, 2020 2:28 am

Post by MURDERCAT »

I kind of agree with Isis that 11/2 might be boring if it's too hard to elim scum. Maybe I should restate my goal. I'd like to create a setup with minimum swing. If you take the same n players and put them in the game over and over, the higher Elo players should win consistently. In my mind eliminating power roles is necessary here because there's no extra importance placed on any one town or scum player. But maybe there is like a 10:3 setup where everyone has the same, weakly powerful role that accomplishes that goal and is more fun?
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Post Post #12 (ISO) » Wed Oct 28, 2020 2:10 pm

Post by Isis »

The "no items, Fox only, Final Destination" setups are generally White Flag, Black Flag Nightless, Nightless Vanilla, Lovers Mafia. I saw Plotinus run 2 Goon 7 Bodyguard (I think it had special rules for bodyguard interactions) which I feel like I want to believe could be balanced and is pretty tryhard. northsidegal ran One kill Mountainous which I think has 50% EV or very close to it based on nightless expectation rule.

Hectic's Death Curse game is an ongoing large theme that we can comment on only regarding design that doesn't really investigate people.

If you don't care about a setup being apeshit townsided or maybe just want to fight me about whether 68% town EV setups are ok, then FakeGod's dance setup which has been run like 8 times has all players given virtually identical roles, a special mechanic that is fun, and seems to reward good play.

There's quite a few all-vanilla setups that seem more like definite failures, player feedback from northsidegal's Baton Pass was pretty negative and I've finally convinced Purgatory's own designer that the setup is broken for town (in an altogether different manner than a setup that leads townsided, it's completely backbreaking).

As far as setups with a fully functional factional nightkill go, White Flag is probably pretty convincingly the most balanced skilltesting setup. I don't know much about Plotinus's setup, but it sounds good? I suspect one kill mountainous favors town too much. Jingle's Nightmare Mafia might be balanced but also might have a breaking strategy hiding somewhere in there that ruins it, and I think the latter is more likely than not.

Whether to give the mafia factional nightkills and whether the impacts that has are desirable or undesirable is a pretty major point in design theory. In closed setups with power roles the factional nightkill is absolutely necessary have much of any game at all, even a pair of masons almost destroys a three man scumteam by itself! In open setups there are attractive arguments about the skilltest in selecting a town player to remove, or how skill is being snuffed out when a player is removed and gets no more ability to influence the game, and at the very edges even how you potentially create bizarre constraints on someone's opportunity and ability to obvtown as scum when they can't nightkill themselves when they seem like the nightkill to make sense and that forces town to re-evaluate, yet one might say that is a skillful scum that deserves a win.
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"Well, I..."
"What? Nothing? You would make the prince suffer over... nothing?"
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Post Post #13 (ISO) » Tue Nov 10, 2020 6:10 pm

Post by northsidegal »

In post 11, MURDERCAT wrote:I kind of agree with Isis that 11/2 might be boring if it's too hard to elim scum. Maybe I should restate my goal. I'd like to create a setup with minimum swing. If you take the same n players and put them in the game over and over, the higher Elo players should win consistently. In my mind eliminating power roles is necessary here because there's no extra importance placed on any one town or scum player. But maybe there is like a 10:3 setup where everyone has the same, weakly powerful role that accomplishes that goal and is more fun?
in my mind nightless is basically exactly what you're looking for here. it's been noted by many before me (and i definitely agree) that one's individual skill factors a lot more into your scum victories than it does into your town victories, and i think that a large part of this comes down to the nightkill. if you're playing out of your mind as town, your time to actually influence the game positively will be limited by how long scum allows you to live, and generally the more positively you're influencing town the faster that your time will be cut short. thus, if you consider "high EV" to mainly correlate with rhetorical skill, going nightless means that players compete on sort of a "level playing ground", without scum's ability to silence a high-EV player's voice by killing them.

of course, i think that being "high EV" or "high ELO" as town comes down to more things than just rhetorical ability. primarily strength of reads to me, but in a lot of games being silent but deadly with good PR play can singlehandedly turn what would've been a loss into a win. even still, that introduces an element of swing based around who rolls the PR, which seems to go against the idea of replay-consistency when it comes to "high ELO players" winning.
In post 12, Isis wrote: There's quite a few all-vanilla setups that seem more like definite failures, player feedback from northsidegal's Baton Pass was pretty negative and I've finally convinced Purgatory's own designer that the setup is broken for town (in an altogether different manner than a setup that leads townsided, it's completely backbreaking).
haha, i can't really disagree too strongly on your framing of baton pass, but it still hurts a bit. even still, i'm pretty proud of that game. i think that actually doing the numbers it's a lot
lot
more scumsided than i initially realized, but even still town did insanely well. it's probably not the best go-to for trying to find the least swingy, least skewed game, though.
Whether to give the mafia factional nightkills and whether the impacts that has are desirable or undesirable is a pretty major point in design theory. In closed setups with power roles the factional nightkill is absolutely necessary have much of any game at all, even a pair of masons almost destroys a three man scumteam by itself! In open setups there are attractive arguments about the skilltest in selecting a town player to remove, or how skill is being snuffed out when a player is removed and gets no more ability to influence the game, and at the very edges even how you potentially create bizarre constraints on someone's opportunity and ability to obvtown as scum when they can't nightkill themselves when they seem like the nightkill to make sense and that forces town to re-evaluate, yet one might say that is a skillful scum that deserves a win.
yeah, i think these are all great points.

i think that my end conclusion for what might be the highest "ELO consistent", least-swingy and least-skewed game would be some variant of Revenge of the Vengeful. the strength of the scum nightkill is inherently balanced out by the fact that they only get them when scum is lynched (a self-balancing factor), apart from that it more closely resembles the "rhetoric vs rhetoric" nature of a nightless game, and there's even some element of a "silent in dayplay but deadly in PR shots" factor being relevant, in that if you're a townie and you get lynched but you still have great reads, you can kill scum. so it kind of takes a little bit from the best of all the worlds.
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Post Post #14 (ISO) » Tue Nov 10, 2020 6:13 pm

Post by northsidegal »

it's also probably arguable that some variant of nightless like half mast nightless would raise the skill ceiling and allow better players to win more often, but looking back on that setup and taking into account that the default nightless numbers already skew townsided so much, it might be impractical to actually run an in-practice balanced version of it
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Post Post #15 (ISO) » Fri Nov 13, 2020 7:48 am

Post by MURDERCAT »

Ok so I've been thinking a lot about what both you and Isis have said. One issue I see with nightless setups is that it is removing a major part of scum's counterplay. There's also something that just seems really inelegant to me about the black/white flag setups. So anyway, I took the idea of limiting the scum night kill from revenge of the vengeful and combined it with some of the ideas from fire on the mountain and ended up with this:

Angels vs Demons
6 demons

3 angels


On night 1, each demon must send their true name to another player. This player receives the message at the beginning of day 2.
At night, the Angels can kill any or all demons they know the true name of.
Each player can only learn a single name each night (randomly selected if necessary).


The numbers seem ridiculous, but they have to be more scum sided than 8:4 nightless otherwise town will just never use their ability.

Scum should get about 2 total night kills on average which can't happen until N2 at earliest. This means town gets at least gets 2 shots at scum which, thanks to the large number of scum, should usually lead to a hit even randomly. From there, the game goes to 5:2 elo where town has a lot of info and 2 of the miselims don't lead to a loss. The biggest metagame strategy I'm worried about is people being forcefully paired off but 2 scum just clear each other and 1:1 pairs CC each other so it doesn't seem that effective.

I think this does a better job of doing what I wanted to accomplish with the original setup because basically all the power in the game comes down to "how well did you read/trick other players" but scum still has some ability to interfere with strong town players. I don't feel like I have a good mind for the numbers though, so curious if you think this is terribly scum (or even town) sided?
Last edited by MURDERCAT on Fri Nov 13, 2020 5:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post Post #16 (ISO) » Fri Nov 13, 2020 8:25 am

Post by Blatant Scum »

Demons may or must send their name?
Don’t forget about how when I asked him for a link to his scumgame, he linked THIS game. - Pyrrha Nikos
He usually never puts effort into reads like that, which does sometimes get him scumread, but since he was on an alt and we didn't know his meta, I can see CL!him making reads as an exception since he knows he'll probably be scumread otherwise.
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Post Post #17 (ISO) » Fri Nov 13, 2020 8:26 am

Post by MURDERCAT »

I went back and forth but may for now

Now must
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Post Post #18 (ISO) » Fri Nov 13, 2020 8:48 am

Post by Gypyx »

How is 3:6 more scumsided than 8:4?
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Post Post #19 (ISO) » Fri Nov 13, 2020 8:56 am

Post by MURDERCAT »

Oh it's not :lol: for some reason I had 25% in my head because of the nightless expectation rule

I thought about giving scum a N1 investigation if I need to give them more power
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Post Post #20 (ISO) » Fri Nov 13, 2020 12:13 pm

Post by Isis »

Social dynamics make 3:6 more scumsided than 4:8 imo but the ev should be the same
"Let us say that you are right and there are two worlds. How much, then, is this 'other world' worth to you? What do you have there that you do not have here? Money? Power? Something worth causing the prince so much pain for?'"
"Well, I..."
"What? Nothing? You would make the prince suffer over... nothing?"
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Post Post #21 (ISO) » Fri Nov 13, 2020 5:31 pm

Post by MURDERCAT »

Ok, town is now required to have fun (action must be used N1).
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Post Post #22 (ISO) » Fri Nov 13, 2020 5:34 pm

Post by Isis »

I have trouble wrapping my mind around the weird implications of this whole FN effect that can kill you. But not right away.
"Let us say that you are right and there are two worlds. How much, then, is this 'other world' worth to you? What do you have there that you do not have here? Money? Power? Something worth causing the prince so much pain for?'"
"Well, I..."
"What? Nothing? You would make the prince suffer over... nothing?"
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Post Post #23 (ISO) » Fri Nov 13, 2020 5:34 pm

Post by Isis »

It's gotta be better than Purgatory right
"Let us say that you are right and there are two worlds. How much, then, is this 'other world' worth to you? What do you have there that you do not have here? Money? Power? Something worth causing the prince so much pain for?'"
"Well, I..."
"What? Nothing? You would make the prince suffer over... nothing?"
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Post Post #24 (ISO) » Fri Nov 13, 2020 5:42 pm

Post by MURDERCAT »

I figure the EV is bounded by 6:3 nightless and 6:3 mountainous :lol:
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