Cult Balance Thread

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Post Post #25 (ISO) » Sat Jun 21, 2014 1:11 pm

Post by LlamaFluff »

In post 24, reinoe wrote:What does everyone else think of the X-SHOT idea for cults? Is it really as bad as Tierce made it out to be?
The reason people don't like cults is their alignment changes midgame. Balance like that is needed because otherwise its near impossible to bring down the cult, but its still something players are not happy to have happen to them. You don't (shouldn't) want to have two months of your life invested and then suddenly have none of that apply to a new win condition.
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Post Post #26 (ISO) » Sat Jun 21, 2014 1:44 pm

Post by Cabd »

It's also unfun to be the town left behind.

Let's say the recruitment is two-shot.

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Post Post #27 (ISO) » Sat Jun 21, 2014 5:35 pm

Post by Natirasha »

I think to flat-out say 'cults are bad noooooo you suck for wanting a cult' is poor and naive.

But cults are tough to both balance and make fun.

So there's that.
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Post Post #28 (ISO) » Sat Jun 21, 2014 6:14 pm

Post by Psyche »

look at all of these people you just put down without really any substantiation
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Post Post #29 (ISO) » Sat Jun 21, 2014 7:15 pm

Post by Eden »

In post 23, mykonian wrote:
In post 13, Eden wrote:
In post 10, mykonian wrote: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.
no it's not, there's no "discipline" in playing scummy or not playing pro-town so you don't get converted and change your wincon, it's
suboptimal play that shouldn't be encouraged


EDIT: strikeout area was too vague. it's not a matter of discipline here, because the incentives are such that town plays scummy in order to stay town. it destroys the entire purpose of the town/mafia dynamic in the first place, because if you try to catch the mafia instead of stalling out and waffling around, you get converted, and if you sit around and don't do anything, you don't get converted. this incentivizes town to act like scum and to kill people who try to solve the puzzle because if you try to solve the puzzle, you get converted, and your previous effort actively works against you. and when town act like scum, stalling around and not making themselves a threat, they play right into scum's hands by wasting time when time works against them
In post 28, Psyche wrote:look at all of these people you just put down without really any substantiation
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Post Post #30 (ISO) » Sat Jun 21, 2014 9:26 pm

Post by 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.
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Post Post #31 (ISO) » Sat Jun 21, 2014 9:57 pm

Post by Eden »

In post 30, mykonian wrote: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.
imo as a power role it's a goofy gimmick that distracts the town's ability to scumhunt, and clearly suboptimal to just playing the game straight with proper fundamentals. you don't have to act scummy to avoid getting nightkilled as a PR if you encourage everyone around you to play well enough to merit a nightkill as well

make it so it's the optimal strategy for
everyone in the game
(as trying any harder puts you at appreciable risk of conversion and setting yourself back worse) and you've got a right clusterfuck on your hands

granted that i haven't played but maybe 4-5 major conversion games (plenty more with like a 1-shot mafia converter but not as main mechanic), but every single one i've played has played out the same way:
* only 3-4 townies bother to scumhunt at all because they see their team isn't doing anything because everyone else is hedging
* those townies get converted and lynched immediately
* town gets steamrolled due to inactivity and/or village-idiot-level poor play to avoid being converted
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Post Post #32 (ISO) » Sun Feb 11, 2018 7:12 am

Post by NuclearBurrito »

You could just use the method ToL uses. Have a cultfia with a mafioso (that can be promoted into) and Bulletproof Cult leader with a cooldown(which cannot). Then give them a member limit. From there you can have roles that block conversions and others that block nightkills. You could even make some power rolls immune like the cop. Another way to do it is to let people convert into the cult leader but then make the night kill x-shot or possibly even require killing your own members to use. Again if you have a way to block conversions like with kills and the faction itself has nightkills to counterplay it and a cooldown and member limit to prevent the exponential growth problem it is very possible to have a balanced and fun conversion game. If you don't think that this would work then look up throne of lies.
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Post Post #33 (ISO) » Tue Feb 13, 2018 9:08 am

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Post Post #34 (ISO) » Mon Apr 09, 2018 8:47 pm

Post by BBmolla »

In post 32, NuclearBurrito wrote:You could just use the method ToL uses. Have a cultfia with a mafioso (that can be promoted into) and Bulletproof Cult leader with a cooldown(which cannot). Then give them a member limit. From there you can have roles that block conversions and others that block nightkills. You could even make some power rolls immune like the cop. Another way to do it is to let people convert into the cult leader but then make the night kill x-shot or possibly even require killing your own members to use. Again if you have a way to block conversions like with kills and the faction itself has nightkills to counterplay it and a cooldown and member limit to prevent the exponential growth problem it is very possible to have a balanced and fun conversion game. If you don't think that this would work then look up throne of lies.
this works for 20 minute games, not for 3 month games.
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Post Post #35 (ISO) » Tue Apr 10, 2018 4:43 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Something I've been thinking about is a Cult with a factional recruit (i.e. no leader) but when the Cult successfully recruits someone, the recruiter dies.

This is very comparable to a regular Mafia group in terms of nightplay balance (slightly more scumsided, but not much). However, it's considerably more scumsided in terms of dayplay. Those seems like fixable problems, though, as it's the runaway nightplay of a Cult that makes it so hard to balance.
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Post Post #36 (ISO) » Tue Apr 10, 2018 9:12 pm

Post by BBmolla »

The problem isn’t balance so much as the unfixable dread that comes from losing because you got recruited. You had a huge part in defeating the cult and bam you lose too.

That seems alright though if you must have a cult game.
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Post Post #37 (ISO) » Wed Apr 11, 2018 6:08 am

Post by callforjudgement »

I assume that people who willingly play cult games are accepting of that.
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Post Post #38 (ISO) » Wed Apr 11, 2018 7:08 am

Post by Who »

If you do that you should make it white flag. Scum hunting becomes terrible when there’s only one person left (the extreme version of the “reliving day one” problem) and also if the town just no-lynches they all win.
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Post Post #39 (ISO) » Wed Apr 11, 2018 7:46 am

Post by callforjudgement »

White flag is a good idea.

Repeatedly no-lynching so that everyone wins is actually a pretty funny tactic, but I don't think it works (the remaining townies get endgamed once cult controls half the town, as they can stop the no-lynching during the day).
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Post Post #40 (ISO) » Wed Apr 11, 2018 8:00 am

Post by Who »

In post 39, callforjudgement wrote:White flag is a good idea.

Repeatedly no-lynching so that everyone wins is actually a pretty funny tactic, but I don't think it works (the remaining townies get endgamed once cult controls half the town, as they can stop the no-lynching during the day).
If there's only one cultist left, that's everyone but one person, hence the need for white flag.
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Post Post #41 (ISO) » Thu Apr 12, 2018 5:17 am

Post by Mathdino »

How about red flag? Cult loses when 2 of them get lynched or they're all dead
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