Town Blocs

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Town Blocs

Post Post #0 (ISO) » Sun Oct 01, 2017 6:20 pm

Post by Ranmaru »

I'm curious how effective town blocs are. How should we use them? Should we use them often? If it should be used with our best judgement, when is the best time to use them? How do we minimize the risk that scum are in the town bloc? Do we spell town bloc with bloc? (Otherwise I have no idea why I called it town bloc) I have always considered trying making one in games to see how they'd go, but would like your thoughts on it. Feel free to talk about TB's in general, there may have been an aspect of TB's I have not considered. (I know Spyrex calls them Town Murder Blocs)
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Post Post #1 (ISO) » Sun Oct 01, 2017 6:54 pm

Post by Mulch »

I like claiming masons with random people early game. Say it's a 13 person game 3 scum. I know that the person I'm gonna claim with is 75% town. So I just create a 75% mason out of thin air. And if we don't CLAIM masons, I literally just treat them as confirmed town. That's creating a 75% friendly neighbor out of thin air.
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Post Post #2 (ISO) » Sun Oct 01, 2017 7:44 pm

Post by Alisae »

I feel like the question is best answered if you read games

thing about it this way
you don't form them
it just
happens

unless you're scum
then you form them.
That way you can break it up and enter it easily :P
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Post Post #3 (ISO) » Sun Oct 01, 2017 9:51 pm

Post by Ellibereth »

In post 1, Mulch wrote:I like claiming masons with random people early game. Say it's a 13 person game 3 scum. I know that the person I'm gonna claim with is 75% town. So I just create a 75% mason out of thin air. And if we don't CLAIM masons, I literally just treat them as confirmed town. That's creating a 75% friendly neighbor out of thin air.
huh
what the fuck is the logic
you realize if you apply it repeatedly you end up with fucking 12 75% confirmed towns and we can all have a laugh and then a bit more of whatever you're smoking aight
Last edited by Ellibereth on Sun Oct 01, 2017 11:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post Post #4 (ISO) » Sun Oct 01, 2017 10:11 pm

Post by Ranmaru »

lol i'm down to have a good ol' time pass that as soon as you're done
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Post Post #5 (ISO) » Sun Oct 01, 2017 11:42 pm

Post by Alisae »

Me and Eli are masons btw
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Post Post #6 (ISO) » Mon Oct 02, 2017 3:35 am

Post by Gamma Emerald »

Townblocs are terrible
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Post Post #7 (ISO) » Mon Oct 02, 2017 3:45 am

Post by Alisae »

You clearly haven't read For Us or Kingdom Hearts then.
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Post Post #8 (ISO) » Mon Oct 02, 2017 3:52 am

Post by Gamma Emerald »

I have
Those were lucky, townblocs suck 90% of the time
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Post Post #9 (ISO) » Mon Oct 02, 2017 4:23 am

Post by Alisae »

Lol ok let me put it this way
Have you won a game as town before?
Because if so
There was probably a strong group of people that TR'd each other that helped you win it.
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Post Post #10 (ISO) » Mon Oct 02, 2017 5:02 am

Post by Mulch »

In post 3, Ellibereth wrote:
In post 1, Mulch wrote:I like claiming masons with random people early game. Say it's a 13 person game 3 scum. I know that the person I'm gonna claim with is 75% town. So I just create a 75% mason out of thin air. And if we don't CLAIM masons, I literally just treat them as confirmed town. That's creating a 75% friendly neighbor out of thin air.
huh
what the fuck is the logic
you realize if you apply it repeatedly you end up with fucking 12 75% confirmed towns and we can all have a laugh and then a bit more of whatever you're smoking aight
It only works to its maximum potential if we know the pursuer is town therefore you can only do it yourself
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Post Post #11 (ISO) » Mon Oct 02, 2017 5:13 am

Post by MarioManiac4 »

i think that townblocs as in "a group of players who recognise each other as town and work together" are a good thing generally
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Post Post #12 (ISO) » Mon Oct 02, 2017 5:39 am

Post by Ellibereth »

In post 10, Mulch wrote:
In post 3, Ellibereth wrote:
In post 1, Mulch wrote:I like claiming masons with random people early game. Say it's a 13 person game 3 scum. I know that the person I'm gonna claim with is 75% town. So I just create a 75% mason out of thin air. And if we don't CLAIM masons, I literally just treat them as confirmed town. That's creating a 75% friendly neighbor out of thin air.
huh
what the fuck is the logic
you realize if you apply it repeatedly you end up with fucking 12 75% confirmed towns and we can all have a laugh and then a bit more of whatever you're smoking aight
It only works to its maximum potential if we know the pursuer is town therefore you can only do it yourself
can you reword that my reading comprehension isn't good enough.
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Post Post #13 (ISO) » Mon Oct 02, 2017 5:56 am

Post by Thestatusquo »

He's saying that it only works from the perspective of him because he knows hes town.

It's basically nonsense though. If this worked, mafia wouldn't work. All this does, as you pointed out, is create the exact same percentage chance that person could be scum anyway.
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Post Post #14 (ISO) » Mon Oct 02, 2017 1:13 pm

Post by HolySpiritTurtle »

Townblock for me is just list of townreads that people agree.

I think it can be an effective strategy since well-formed townblock can intimidate scum, as long as people are aware that townblock is not permanent and it is a thing that can be broken any time.
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Post Post #15 (ISO) » Mon Oct 02, 2017 1:38 pm

Post by fferyllt »

In post 14, HolySpiritTurtle wrote:Townblock for me is just list of townreads that people agree.

I think it can be an effective strategy since well-formed townblock can intimidate scum, as long as people are aware that townblock is not permanent and it is a thing that can be broken any time.
This.

I form my own townbloc in every game I play as town. It's a list of townreads I feel confident about and whose reads/abilities I trust.

I know that's not how most people define townblock, but SOMEBODY has to start the town consensus-building process, and doing that is where my abilities and interests lie as a mafia player. In games where for whatever reason, I feel like I can't pull together some players I trust on both levels, it's a long, hard slog and often a loss.
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Post Post #16 (ISO) » Mon Oct 02, 2017 1:46 pm

Post by Creature »

I've seen town losing more to townblocks breaking apart than townblocks having scum.
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Post Post #17 (ISO) » Mon Oct 02, 2017 2:25 pm

Post by MathBlade »

In post 15, fferyllt wrote:
In post 14, HolySpiritTurtle wrote:Townblock for me is just list of townreads that people agree.

I think it can be an effective strategy since well-formed townblock can intimidate scum, as long as people are aware that townblock is not permanent and it is a thing that can be broken any time.
This.

I form my own townbloc in every game I play as town. It's a list of townreads I feel confident about and whose reads/abilities I trust.

I know that's not how most people define townblock, but SOMEBODY has to start the town consensus-building process, and doing that is where my abilities and interests lie as a mafia player. In games where for whatever reason, I feel like I can't pull together some players I trust on both levels, it's a long, hard slog and often a loss.
I abhor townblocks with a passion for two reasons:

Town blocks are almost always made up of people who like each other versus people who are actually Town.
On the rare case I am Town and in one there has been scum in it or even majority scum.

The exception is if the setup forces a town block, there is something bastard and the grouping is absolutely necessary, its a hood fest or I am scum.

Those exceptions are really freaking rare.
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Post Post #18 (ISO) » Mon Oct 02, 2017 2:32 pm

Post by HolySpiritTurtle »

In post 17, MathBlade wrote:Town blocks are almost always made up of people who like each other versus people who are actually Town.
This doesn't sound like a townblock though.
Like any strategies ever, using them wrong will always go wrong.
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Post Post #19 (ISO) » Mon Oct 02, 2017 2:34 pm

Post by Mulch »

If two random people you didn't know claimed masons, and they weren't masons, that has a chance to horribly fuck up the game.


But there is a mathamatical advantage for doing it as town if YOU know you are town. This is because the "net gain" for the town is 2 confirmed players; devastating to the mafia. If you reach out to someone first (say 3 scum 12 town), you have a 75% of hitting town.

If it was just from your point of view, just confirming someone ELSE as town has drawbacks and advantages; you gain a higher chance to hit scum at the expense of 25% of the time decreasing your chance to hit scum.

But if you reach out to someone and they accept, suddenly you know that now TWO people are confirmed town, and you know that one of them HAS to be legit. It would be like...if the mod confirmed 2 random people as town (randomly regardless of allignment) you would tell them to fuck off. But would you take the risk if you KNEW one of them was guaranteed to be town? The rest of the town dosen't know this, but YOU do. In this situation, you still gain all the risks and benefits associated with a random person being confirmed town, and from the rest of the town PoV YOU are a risk as well, but YOU know that you aren't a risk and therefore it's beneficial.


Say math:

3/13 chance, 23% chance to hit scum. Blergh. If you cause the mod to randomly confirm a person for DAY ONE ONLY, there is a 23% chance they are scum, so 77% of the time you are moving the lynchpool to 3/12 and 23% moving it to 2/12. That means 77% of the time, it goes to 25% from 23%, and 23% of the time it moves to ~17%. So 77% of the time you gain 2 points, 23% of the time you lose 6 points, which makes sense because 6/8=near 77%.

This isn't bad, not neccecarily. It's just different. Maybe you can argue it's even better considering that people are bad at picking scum day 1.

However, if the mod does TWO of them, and one of you. It's a free fucking inno child with no drawbacks (you). So FOR FREE the town as a whole is gaining a 2% boost in lynching. Woo!!!! THEN, you have to take into account the randomness of the other person. So, you are taking one definite thing and at worst a null thing for free.
Last edited by Mulch on Mon Oct 02, 2017 2:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post Post #20 (ISO) » Mon Oct 02, 2017 2:37 pm

Post by fferyllt »

Hm. I'm playing games with quite a few players I don't know since coming back after a year+ mafia hiatus. It's probably slowed down my ability to find town and work with them, but not to the point where it's a useless tool to me, except possibly one game where day 1 cratered due to some really weird dynamics among players I was familiar with.

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Post Post #21 (ISO) » Mon Oct 02, 2017 2:38 pm

Post by Lycanfire »

please stop promoting shitplay
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Post Post #22 (ISO) » Mon Oct 02, 2017 2:54 pm

Post by implosion »

In post 19, Mulch wrote:But there is a mathamatical advantage for doing it as town if YOU know you are town. This is because the "net gain" for the town is 2 confirmed players; devastating to the mafia. If you reach out to someone first (say 3 scum 12 town), you have a 75% of hitting town.
There are very drastic problems with this.

First off, and most importantly, this can theoretically work as a one-off occurrence, if you get lucky. But as soon as it happens once, the meta is soiled. It'll never work again with the same set of people, because people can't trust random mason claims anymore. As a very poignant example this game featured two separate mason-pair claims on day one... with 0 masons. All it did was muddy the waters and lead to a bunch of people yelling at each other over meaningless drivel all day. People were pointing out reasons why the mason claims couldn't possibly be true, and using those to justify pushing the claimants, all of whom were town.

This is the most important point because as soon as you enter a metagame in which people are willing to fakeclaim masons, two things happen. One, other people can no longer trust that those claims are legitimate, and so they lose all value. And two, scum are just as capable of making them, so in the event that people do for some reason keep valuing those claims, there's an easy way for scum to take advantage.

Second, the math is inevitably going to work out that from your point of view, odds of lynching scum are equivalent to if you had removed yourself from the lynch pool. Claiming that you are a mason with a random player has a chance to do this, but also a chance for that player to say that they don't want any part in a gambit. There are other plenty effective ways to remove yourself from the lynch pool as town, and yes, they don't always work, but this isn't some magic panacea that will always work either.

Third, obviously, you risk the backfire of people finding out that your claim was a lie days later and simply lynching you for lying. A meta in which people trust claims like a d1 mason claim is a meta in which people trust town-aligned players to tell the truth; conversely, it's a meta in which people can safely assume that someone who overtly lied is scum. So the only way you can get away with this claim safely is in a meta where people don't necessarily trust townies to tell the truth, which is a meta where people won't trust the claim either.
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Post Post #23 (ISO) » Mon Oct 02, 2017 2:57 pm

Post by implosion »

To answer the OP, I think from a dynamics of the game perspective a formal townbloc can sometimes have value. But ultimately if it exists, it needs to dissolve at some point. I personally play very openly with my townreads in general, and if everyone does the same then sort of de facto townblocs can form. The main purchase you get from saying "let's form a townbloc!" is the ability to pressure with multiple votes, which can elicit reactions in different ways. It doesn't get you any hard information, but it can situationally be useful as a tool to get more soft information, both from those within the block and without it.
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Post Post #24 (ISO) » Mon Oct 02, 2017 3:05 pm

Post by Alisae »

I want to form a scumbloc and call it a townbloc
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