Cult Balance Thread
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Cult Balance Thread
I was thinking of some way to balance cults. Perhaps games with a 'cult' could incorporate a 'conversion resistance' attribute to slow down the cult's acquisition of members?
The Conversion Resistance attribute is an attribute that prevents you from being converted to the cult, as long as your Conversion Resistance is greater than 0.
Each time the Cult Leader try to convert a player, the player's conversion resistance is reduced by 1.
That means if the Cult Leader want to convert, say, a 3 C.Resistance player, he need to try 3 times. However, he could instantly convert a 0 conversion resistance player.- Eden
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Ultimately, I don't think there is any way to "balance" a cult that would make cults permissible in a Normal game. The simultaneous strengthening of the Cult and weakening of the oppositional factions makes that untenable. That and what Eden said about the bit about changing win conditions.
Now if you are building a game specifically designed to handle a Cult, this might be one way to handle it, but you're likely going to need to reveal this mechanic to all the players to make it functional. Also, you'd have to consider length of game and action rate. If a cult leader can only recruit once per night and a 3CR player existed in the game, they'd have to waste three nights out of game (which in a mini-theme can average 4-7 days total) just getting one player, let alone enough players to win. This in of itself, if not accounted for, ruins your mechanic.Welcome to the Network.- Scarab
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Cults can be balanced without resorting to crazy things like 3-shot recruit resistance (3-shot resistance is functionally equivalent to "unrecruitable" anyway....there's no reason to waste 4 nights recruiting one player). You just need the right numbers and roles, like with any other mechanic. The more important things to worry about are what Eden touched on (How do you not make it feel bad for players to play to their win conditions?) and town motivation/interest later in the game when the culting mechanic has potentially made all of their early reads worthless.- reinoe
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Couldn't Cult recruitment be balanced by just giving the Cult leader X-shot?In post 3, Scarab wrote:Cults can be balanced without resorting to crazy things like 3-shot recruit resistance (3-shot resistance is functionally equivalent to "unrecruitable" anyway....there's no reason to waste 4 nights recruiting one player). You just need the right numbers and roles, like with any other mechanic. The more important things to worry about are what Eden touched on (How do you not make it feel bad for players to play to their win conditions?) and town motivation/interest later in the game when the culting mechanic has potentially made all of their early reads worthless.- Tierce
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Psyche he/theySurvivor
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what if a cult leader had just a couple of shots and used them all in pregame???
it would equate to a single mafioso being able to choose his buds,
but that sounds kinda interesting, no?
or am i missing something- BROseidon
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That would be equivalent to a larger version of Offense/Defense mafia that RedCoyote ran a while back.
You'd have to have him pick before role distribution, probably.- RichardGHP
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If I told you you were an SK but you could arbitrarily not kill people unless you tried an unknown number of times, how would that go over? (If you made it public knowledge how Cultable someone would be, that would be more interesting and most likely completely defeat the purpose of attempting to balance the mechanic.)In post 0, Stabsinthe wrote:I was thinking of some way to balance cults. Perhaps games with a 'cult' could incorporate a 'conversion resistance' attribute to slow down the cult's acquisition of members?
The Conversion Resistance attribute is an attribute that prevents you from being converted to the cult, as long as your Conversion Resistance is greater than 0.
Each time the Cult Leader try to convert a player, the player's conversion resistance is reduced by 1.
That means if the Cult Leader want to convert, say, a 3 C.Resistance player, he need to try 3 times. However, he could instantly convert a 0 conversion resistance player.
The closest you're going to get is probably something like Mentor + giving players the ability to suicide rather than be recruited.
That's not really a Cult per se, and if you're not doing it in a WaCkY game like ehobanowhat if a cult leader had just a couple of shots and used them all in pregame???
it would equate to a single mafioso being able to choose his buds,
but that sounds kinda interesting, no?
or am i missing somethingwoofit's wickedly overpowered.
Although, again, if you told everyone at the beginning that one person could choose their scumpartners... then you get WIFOM: The Game, in which everyone tries to lynch based on who they think is best at being scum.
...meh, scum will still win.Everything you say and do matters. People will respond in ways you may never see. May those responses be what you intend.- mykonian
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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.Surrender, imagine and of course wear something nice.- LlamaFluff
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well at least i was right about it being a viable modification- Eden
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It's not "my alignment changes so I won't play to win," it's "my alignment changes so IIn 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.can'tplay 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.“Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.” - Henry David Thoreau- FakeGod
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Hey, Psyche. Here's a fun question.In post 12, Psyche wrote:well at least i was right about it being a viable modification
Can you prove that given that all players are faithfully playing to their current win con and that all lynches/recruits are random, a basic cult game, which is defined as day-start game with N players (1 Cult Leader, N-1 VTs, N is a positive integer greater than 2), will never have higher than 33.33% for the expected win rate for town?My favorite site mod is Zor Tester.
I have Brandi's autograph! I bet you're jealous.- Psyche
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i haven't taken any proofbased courses yet :(- FakeGod
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I'm not Psyche, BUTIn post 14, FakeGod wrote:
Hey, Psyche. Here's a fun question.In post 12, Psyche wrote:well at least i was right about it being a viable modification
Can you prove that given that all players are faithfully playing to their current win con and that all lynches/recruits are random, a basic cult game, which is defined as day-start game with N players (1 Cult Leader, N-1 VTs, N is a positive integer greater than 2), will never have higher than 33.33% for the expected win rate for town?
Spoiler: Answer- FakeGod
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Oops, you're right. I fucked up the mathsMy favorite site mod is Zor Tester.
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That could easily be fixed by making the entire cult lovers with each other. If the town lynches any, they win.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.
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.Who said that?
Chamber. It's all a conspiracy.
Or is it?6- Eden
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well that's ultra-townsided if i've ever seen itIn post 19, Who wrote:
That could easily be fixed by making the entire cult lovers with each other. If the town lynches any, they win.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.
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.
no matter how poorly town plays at any point prior to LYLO, if they're ~20% better than random lynching at LYLO they win“Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.” - Henry David Thoreau- Prof Fridays
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I remember being apart of a mafia game with a cult in it. It happened to be a Pirates of the Caribbean mafia, and I was Davy Jones, the Cult Recruiter. It was a massive game. The mafia consisted of the East India Trading Company (the British), and if I tried to recruit them at all, I died (seeing as they had my heart!). My win con was to recruit Jack Sparrow (I can't remember if having a cult majority ended in a win for me or not), who was a Self-Bus Driver (so, not easy). It was a *really* fun game, and probably one of my best as a player - I ended up claiming Davy Jones, Cult Recruiter, and convinced the town that they could just win with me, and I'd recruit them all and lynch off the British, but by that time Jack Sparrow had revealed himself, and we were able to get him to not use his self-bus drive, so I recruited him for the win, endgamed my whole faction and town got plowed by the mafia. Haha.
Anywho, while we did win as cult, it seems to me it wasn't an easy game by any means. I wonder if something like the Davy-Jack mechanic could work, in that you need to recruit a particular role name (not username). Perhaps that role could have a redirecting mechanic as a method of protection from the Recruiter, like Jack did."You. I am going to bury you. I am going to bury you and erect an icecream stand on your grave. And all the kids will love that you're dead because they get ice cream. Also your tombstone will say 'here lies a cheeky scumbag.'" - Papa Zito
What if you knew way more about the game state Day 1?THE LAB 4 is live!- Who
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How so?In post 20, Eden wrote:
well that's ultra-townsided if i've ever seen itIn post 19, Who wrote:
That could easily be fixed by making the entire cult lovers with each other. If the town lynches any, they win.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.
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.
no matter how poorly town plays at any point prior to LYLO, if they're ~20% better than random lynching at LYLO they win
Chances of winning at LYLO are 1/4, 2/6, or 3/8 depending on how large the game is and how the cult plays. Furthermore, the town don't know when it's LYLO, since the cult might not recruit every night.Who said that?
Chamber. It's all a conspiracy.
Or is it?6- mykonian
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Still a massive anticlimax.In post 19, Who wrote:
That could easily be fixed by making the entire cult lovers with each other. If the town lynches any, they win.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.
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.
Bingo, that's about discipline.In post 13, Eden wrote:
It's not "my alignment changes so I won't play to win," it's "my alignment changes so IIn 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.can'tplay 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.Surrender, imagine and of course wear something nice.Copyright © MafiaScum. All rights reserved.
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