Open Setup Autopsies (HELP)

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Post Post #100 (ISO) » Thu Apr 05, 2018 1:12 am

Post by AnonymousGhost »

High Noon
Setup


7 Town

2 Scum


Duel Mechanic


At any time during the day if a duel has not already started or taken place, a player may choose to initiate a duel with another player in the game by declaring Duel: playername. When a duel is started between two players, their voting ability is removed, and the remaining players can only vote between the duelists. When a majority of the non-duelists have voted for a player, that player is killed and the day continues as normal, with all players voting for a lynch.

History


Micro 78 - Mafia Victory
Bounty on Endor (off site) - Town Victory


I'm quite fond of this set up, but it could use some tweaks.

Problems


- Too many kills per cycle (Day + Night Phase i.e. D1 + N1 = 1 cycle): Worst case scenario is that town looses 3 players (duel, lynch, NK), which creates a 2 M v 4 T game. In combination with the duel mechanic and the lynch mechanic, this effectively creates D2 into a LyLo situation. Duel/Lynch the right person or lose the game on D2. Which is basically how Micro 78 ended w/ a scum win.

Possible Solutions


I'm trying to keep the game true to its roots and leave it Mountainous, which leaves me to shuffle around with the ways players can kill one another. There are a number of ways to reduce the # of kills per cycle, but the question becomes: how can we reduce the number of kills without losing balance?

- Make the Duel mechanic end the Day Phase after a majority has been reached. It'd effectively turn the Duel into an alternative lynch mechanic. A reason why people might be so duel happy is because a finished duel doesn't end the Day Phase. Getting that immediately flip can produce discussion, but that want for discussion might lead to rash duels and dead townies.

- Replace the Lynch Mechanic with the Duel mechanic. This combos with the first suggestion of the Duel mechanic ending the day phase.

- If a day phase could host a duel and a lynch - this is ignoring the suggestion that a finished duel ends the day phase -, I'd suggest replacing scum factional NK with a scum vengeance kill.

- Or increase the # of players in the game from a micro to a mini to prevent a D2 LyLo.

Thoughts?
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Post Post #101 (ISO) » Thu Apr 05, 2018 2:05 am

Post by Mathdino »

In post 99, BBmolla wrote:Ooh good call.

Meditation

13 Players:

2 Mafia Goons

2 Werewolves

1 Town Angel Monk
1 Town Doctor Mason
7 Vanilla Townies

  • Daystart
  • Two vanilla players who are not Mafia are randomly selected to be Masons.
  • Two vanilla players who are not Werewolves are randomly selected to be Monks.
  • These masonries are allowed to talk together at night.
  • It is possible for a Mafia Goon to be a Monk, and likewise, a Werewolf to be a Mason.
  • Players can not be in multiple masonries.
  • If neither Mafia is a monk, they gain a factional rolecop.
  • If neither Werewolf is a mason, they gain a factional rolecop.


In this way scum have incentive to try to be townie enough to get the town protector to protect them from the other scumteam. With three members in the masonry it discourages just killing the PR because otherwise the other mason will probably out you.
Townsided I think (although I guess that doesn't mean much given low town multiball winrates). There's no disadvantage to just having a mason claim and either have the doc protect them or pretending that the doc is protecting them.

I think having 3 player hoods is probably along the right lines though. Also discourages crosskill which is also nice. Creates some nice WIFOM over whether masons/monks died because scum can PR hunt, because they have a rolecop, or because they're in the hood themselves.

How about:
  • Angel Mason and Doctor Monk (to discourage claiming and just protecting your mason buddies)
  • Give daytalk (to make the setup more interesting and give scum a counter-buff to the 3 player hoods)
  • Doc can't self-target (ofc)
Meditation is a great name for it too :P
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Post Post #102 (ISO) » Thu Apr 05, 2018 2:55 am

Post by Mathdino »

@Ghost:
I'm not totally sure I see an issue with the setup tbh. The EV should be exactly equivalent to Double Day Unlimited, assuming town takes the optimal strategy of dueling every day.

I wrote a program that calculates town EV for Double Day assuming town No Lynches when mathematically optimal.

2:7 - 38.6%
2:8 - 42.9%
2:9 - 42.9% (town No Lynches)
2:10 - 47.7%
2:11 - 51.6%

Basically, towns lose this here because towns suck at all-vanilla games. Assuming a skill level causing scum lynches even slightly more than random, this should be balanced.

And town was bad in the game you linked. Lynching the original duelist was so obviously the correct call.
In post 100, AnonymousGhost wrote:
Problems


- Too many kills per cycle (Day + Night Phase i.e. D1 + N1 = 1 cycle): Worst case scenario is that town looses 3 players (duel, lynch, NK), which creates a 2 M v 4 T game. In combination with the duel mechanic and the lynch mechanic, this effectively creates D2 into a LyLo situation. Duel/Lynch the right person or lose the game on D2. Which is basically how Micro 78 ended w/ a scum win.
This is a feature, not a bug. While it's true that 2 D1 mislynches results in 2:4, 2:4 also allows for 2 lynches. One duel, one normal lynch. If town THEN loses, they lost because they managed to mislynch 4 townies in a row, which is incredible leeway and more than basically any other micro setup allows. (lolMStowns tho)
In post 100, AnonymousGhost wrote:
Possible Solutions
- Make the Duel mechanic end the Day Phase after a majority has been reached. It'd effectively turn the Duel into an alternative lynch mechanic. A reason why people might be so duel happy is because a finished duel doesn't end the Day Phase. Getting that immediately flip can produce discussion, but that want for discussion might lead to rash duels and dead townies.

- Replace the Lynch Mechanic with the Duel mechanic. This combos with the first suggestion of the Duel mechanic ending the day phase.
While doing either of these is theoretically fine (as long as you balance EV around a total Mountainous setup which towns will basically always lose), it's generally not fun to have all your power taken away by gladiators. The lynch is a good mechanic for a reason.
In post 100, AnonymousGhost wrote:- If a day phase could host a duel and a lynch - this is ignoring the suggestion that a finished duel ends the day phase -, I'd suggest replacing scum factional NK with a scum vengeance kill.
Interesting. So scum only get a kill upon being lynched? This is basically just Nightless with vengescum.

Here's the program for that.

Your intuition is good. This is 49.5% EV.
In post 100, AnonymousGhost wrote:- Or increase the # of players in the game from a micro to a mini to prevent a D2 LyLo.
As shown above, 2:8 creates this situation.
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Post Post #103 (ISO) » Wed May 23, 2018 12:43 am

Post by BBmolla »

Jungle Republic should end in mafia victory if the game state is 2:2:1 with 1 being town.
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Post Post #104 (ISO) » Wed May 23, 2018 12:49 am

Post by BBmolla »

Just to be clear this is not relevant to any ongoing games I just came across the setup on the wiki and was reminded of the game I was in where this happened and it sucked
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Post Post #105 (ISO) » Sun Sep 02, 2018 12:44 pm

Post by Gamma Emerald »

In post 23, LlamaFluff wrote:
In post 22, Mathdino wrote:When it comes to JK9++, I'm coming it at it from the assumption that C9++ is balanced (I could be wrong because of massclaim tactics), and then arguing that JK9++ is more scumsided at every opportunity. I like the variation in the roles, but, for example, the tracker lineup is significantly worse than C9++'s cop lineup, while the mafia JOAT is better than the mafia roleblocker. For JK9++, I'd like to preserve that initial variability (it is what makes the setup fun) while bringing down to C9++ levels.
C9++ is somewhat optimized based on the massclaim tactic I like that instead of claiming outright you claim one of "VT", "Tier one - role that can exist with only one of your letter" or "Tier two - role that needs at least two of your letter" and then you circle back to PR claim. It makes it nearly impossible for scum to safely fake claim because they have to gamble on what town is and if town locks down what the setup is fast, they win rate jumps very quickly.
Don't think I ever properly addressed this, this is a good idea based on what happened in my first C9++
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Post Post #106 (ISO) » Sun Sep 02, 2018 12:51 pm

Post by Gamma Emerald »

In post 43, AnonymousGhost wrote:Light bulb moment. Could a Psychiatrist replace one of the town PR in JK9++ or Switch and still maintain balance or is that too swingy/crazy for Open games?
This gave me an idea via word association: detective/psychologist in JK9++. With vengeful, vig, and mafia and sk, I think it would be interesting.
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Post Post #107 (ISO) » Tue Sep 04, 2018 10:55 am

Post by mith »

In post 5, Mathdino wrote:
POLYGAMIST4 Mafia Lovers (1 set)
8 Town Lovers (4 sets)

- Nightless.

Now if lynches were random (which people say is against site rules but I can't find this), you'd get 60%, but suppose the town agreed on a single lover pair as a town king (to just decide or dice roll 2 lynches). This leads to a winrate of 70%. Town's optimal strategy is just to find one pair that's being townish and have them roll 2 lynches. Done.
True (and provable) randomness is discouraged (and banned in some rulesets). Mostly because there's no point playing the game at all if you are going to do that. (Also, the 70% winrate is only if the "town king" is actually town. 60% is the actual EV for this setup.)

It is true that on this site towns tend to get worse than random results in Vanilla games, though I don't think this is universally true; it's not (generaly) true even here for Nightless, but this setup is short enough (and has a high enough scum ratio) to prevent town from getting much of an advantage. Anyway, Polygamist is a gimmick game, and should not be run frequently (just run two games of Nightless Lovers 2:4 instead). It's fine if town would do better lynching randomly when that isn't a real option (lynching randomly becomes a real problem when there are named roles to potentially confirm innocent - then you have the "town king" for real and if lynching randomly would get you better results because you're terrible town, you have a way to do it).

Specific setups should be discussed in the subforum - regardless of how many people use it right now (and typically the ones that do comment on setups are prolific in reviewing such setups), that's what the subforum is for and the more use it gets the more people will look there.
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