Should a vig who shoots N1 be Modkilled?

[Leucosticte]

I played a game where I fired randomly on N1 and the result was that (1) most of the townies got angry and decided to punish me by ostracizing me the rest of the game, and (2) most of the scum kept their silence about it. So an astute observer could've paid attention to the reactions and gotten a read on who were likely scum.

Actually, what I did was, I announced on D1 that I was vig, and who my target was going to be that night, and that I was doing this to prove I was town. My thought was, in this way I could (1) get a shot off before getting killed and (2) narrow the pool of suspects by two, since I would be at that point confirmed town and the target of the shot would be out of the game.

[Leucosticte]

When the OP says "N1" does he really mean "N0"?

I always say that "N0 means yes" but some people insist it needs to be consensual

From https://archive.werewolv.es/extra/livev ... e=PostGame :

A D2 lynch would be implied consensus from the village/wolves and therefore have some control or influence over it. A night 1 maverick shot that in most statistical probabilities is going to harm the town rather than help it, made by a single individual, is a different matter.

[Leucosticte]

if you have ever killed town in a game when you were also town, then you were wrong and will continue to be wrong always and should therefore never try again because you will always fail. that's how things work.

Yeah, pretty much.

[Leucosticte]

I was a vig in my last game and took 2 shots with a 50% scum kill rate.

Were those N1 shots, though.

[Leucosticte]

The first night after Day1? Yes.

It was the same way over at werewolv.es; there had been three prior games (wlf-024, wlf-038, wlf-045) where a N1 militia (aka vig) shot took out scum, and I tried it and was unlucky enough to take out a friendly power role (the Diseased; when scum kills them, they're unable to kill the next night). So thus far, there's a 75% rate of the vig taking out scum on N1 since I was the first one to try it and hit a townie.

Maybe a N1 shot is similar to the king's gambit in chess. Supposedly, it's been refuted, but if you play it against people who aren't prepared for it, it can give you an advantage.

[Leucosticte]

I'm not sure if any analysis has been done here about the accuracy rating of vigs for N1 shots. If I had time, I'd probably look into it. My gut feeling is that statistically they shouldn't take a shot since there are entirely way more town than scum, but in practice, the ratio is beneficial to town. Same as on your site.

But personally, based on the dozens of games I've played I wouldn't include a vig in any setup I design. The role is powerful and too swingy. How much advantage and disadvantage the town gets from the role is entirely dependent on who happens to randomly receive the role.

A lot of setup designers try to mitigate that wild variance by putting limits on the role. Such as reducing the number of shots it can take (1-shot Vigilante - only has one bullet during the entire game).

Yeah, over on Werewolv.es, the militia has only one bullet for the whole game. I think part of the reason for including the militia as a core role may be that the games are on a 24-hour (12-hour day, 12-hour night) cycle, and some players just show up for maybe 20 minutes and then are gone for the day; so a situation could arise where there isn't enough time to get everyone to change their votes if some revelation (e.g. an unexpected counterclaim) happens at the 11th hour; and therefore the militia may just have to act during the night on his own initiative in those cases. Also, there's the kind of situation where it's a 4-player endgame, and you know Player B is trustworthy, but aren't sure which of Player C or D is scum; you could just lynch C and shoot D, and it would be a village win. (You wouldn't want to just No Lynch because then the scum could kill Player B in the night.)

Anyway -- what ended up happening was, when I did a N1 vig, I got taken to task pretty harshly, which I think is their normal practice for dealing with people who make what they consider dumb plays. And I suspect this is because it's a small site, and they have experts in the same games as beginners and just generally sucky and/or low-effort players. So, the experts get annoyed when weaker players mess up their game.

What they probably should do, when they became able to, is have expert-only games where those with more experience, higher win-rate, etc. can play against those who are at their same level of skill. But I think if anything, they're starting to de-emphasize win-rates, because they removed that data from their statistics page.