Cult Balance Thread

[mykonian]

There's a couple of issues beyond "my allignment changes I won't play to win because of that" which might depend on your players discipline. I don't think that's the worst.

One is the rate of conversion. With each recruitment, town gets one townie less, scum get one more. In effect, that's at least double as effective as a nightkill. Nightkills are huge balancewise already, balancing a game where scum would get two kills is really rough. So that's one thing you are up again. The second is that cult games are boring the moment cult gets critical mass, as town are waiting for the inevitable loss. Giving an escape route a la cult leader makes the game less mafia, gives cult members a reason to get lynched, makes the game trivial. It's a poor solution, but it shows the problem. Cults get too big and don't make for close games (which are fun). I believe you can tackle the cult problem if you limit the rate as well as the maximum size of the cult.

Oh, and you probably shouldn't make it a hidden cult.

[mykonian]

There's a couple of issues beyond "my allignment changes I won't play to win because of that" which might depend on your players discipline. I don't think that's the worst.

One is the rate of conversion. With each recruitment, town gets one townie less, scum get one more. In effect, that's at least double as effective as a nightkill. Nightkills are huge balancewise already, balancing a game where scum would get two kills is really rough. So that's one thing you are up again. The second is that cult games are boring the moment cult gets critical mass, as town are waiting for the inevitable loss. Giving an escape route a la cult leader makes the game less mafia, gives cult members a reason to get lynched, makes the game trivial.

That could easily be fixed by making the entire cult lovers with each other. If the town lynches any, they win.

Still a massive anticlimax.

There's a couple of issues beyond "my allignment changes I won't play to win because of that" which might depend on your players discipline. I don't think that's the worst.

It's not "my alignment changes so I won't play to win," it's "my alignment changes so I

can't

play to win if I'm playing optimally." If you start off as town, being the most obviously town player makes you a priority target for conversion, just like it would for a nightkill. It's okay to be a priority target for a nightkill because your alignment doesn't change when you're nightkilled; you've still played to your objectives. When you're converted, everything you've done before has actively worked against your win condition, assuming you are playing to it from the start. And the more you try to play to your initial win condition, the more you've worked against your win condition post-conversion. And of course if you just don't do anything you won't get converted at all.

It encourages that refuge of the inexperienced,

hedging

-- "I'm gonna behave scummy enough to be a viable ML instead of being obvtown so I can live longer!" -- instead of just playing with proper town fundamentals. It teaches placing a premium on survival instead of scumhunting so that you can have a chance to win, which ruins the entire point of the town/mafia dynamic in the first place.

Bingo, that's about discipline.

[mykonian]

it's like playing scummy so you don't get nightkilled. As powerrole that's fine, but hard to do. As VT it's simply not good play. Doesn't mean that some people won't do it.