Colour Concentration Mafia (Mini 1174) - Over

[Rhinox]

@packbat: I picked 38 because it would be the most runs scored by a team in a game in MLB history. If the yankees were just mediocre against [insert bad team], I'm sure they'd still win, but they wouldn't score more runs in a game than any team in history.

How many minis have towns that lynch perfectly? How many of those are against a 4 member scum group? How many of those were against a scum group that (in theory) gets progressively stronger?

Aside from the town execution being flawless (perfect lynching), how many scum mistakes or poor play in this game were unforced vs. influenced by the town pressuring scum into making those mistakes?

[Trumpet of Doom]

Feel free to sign up again next time around.
I'm interested in what people think of the set up.

I think I'll make colours unknown to the players next time. So you'll know you're a drop of colour, just not which one. Death will reveal the colour though.

This would probably fix the single biggest issue I saw with the setup as it was happening: scum are fucked basically as soon as they have to claim.

@Mod: What's a voyeur and follower?

Voyeur: Someone else targeted your target, you don't know who.
Follower: Your target targeted someone, you don't know who.

[Packbat]

@packbat: I picked 38 because it would be the most runs scored by a team in a game in MLB history. If the yankees were just mediocre against [insert bad team], I'm sure they'd still win, but they wouldn't score more runs in a game than any team in history.

How many minis have towns that lynch perfectly? How many of those are against a 4 member scum group? How many of those were against a scum group that (in theory) gets progressively stronger?

Aside from the town execution being flawless (perfect lynching), how many scum mistakes or poor play in this game were unforced vs. influenced by the town pressuring scum into making those mistakes?

Ah, I see what you mean, now. Yeah, I agree that town did well, even if you give them no credit for the accidental hammer D1 - and I'd say town gets credit for pinning one scum to the wall fast enough to make that hammer possible. And the first three lynches came before town had any powers whatsoever.

(That said, I don't think we'll find any comparable past games, being as until very recently minis have been limited to 12. 8v4 is just a bit ridiculous.)

[MagnaofIllusion]

As an independant, unbiased outside observer I can say the following two things -

1. Regardless of how the game turned out any Town that lynches 4 (in my mind 3) straight scum without a Ban-worthy moment by scum (ie claiming scum and all their partners directly in thread) deserves a best Town Performance nom.
2. This game, along with Blackest Night Mafia, shows how publicly declared via Mod color spreads is very harsh on scum.

[xvart]

I feel sorry for StrangerCoug, there was very little he could do. Do you know why he 'reacted too strongly'? Because his sole remaining teammate fucked both of them in a single post.

I was on to SC at the end of D1 and all over him D2 before any of that went down. I would not have relented similar to the previous day with hiphop.

As scum, I think not having a NK would have made me insta bus a partner for town cred and a kill.

So, lets say mylo is 3v1?

There are 1 red, 1 yellow, 1 blue, and 1 scum pretending to be yellow.
Town realise that one of the yellows is scum.
Town lynch wrong one, scum kills one of the others, scum wins.

Still, this is pretty decent odds if town guessed randomly.

At the end, I'm surprised it took that long to lynch Merans. I was ranting about it to Kat, but seriously, if there was any more doubt I would've imploded. Did people actually ever believe Merans for a second that I was scum that went LOLWTF and decided to suicide and effectively DOOM THE SCUMTEAM when the lynch was on Jedo, someone I've been calling scummy for a while?

The reason I unvoted when I did was because I started thinking about the powers the scum team might have gained with only one member. I started thinking all doomsday conspiracy scenarios in my head when the scum team would have a poison, NK, and some other kind of kill or lynch proof or something and I wanted to make sure that it wasn't some crazy gambit by you (if you were scum) that there would be no possible chance for town to win if you had beastly powers. Also, the whole thing with SC was really making my head spin. In addition, I don't think the role pm's were as definitive as every is making it out to be; yes, they indicate that there are three colors, but not definitively in my opinion. That was another thing I was considering. I almost claimed red the day SC did because I didn't believe him and my power was sufficiently weak but I kept going back to the pm possibly being slightly misleading.

Feel free to sign up again next time around.

Can I pre-in here or do you want a pm?

Also, regarding the setup, I think an uneven spread of colors is a good idea. I think having single color town would be good, too; as they would never get any powers but not be able to know that. That might be a decent way to mix it up.

Voided was an accident, hiphop burried himself, the rest you know. Did we as scum deserve to lose (maybe except SC)? Yes.

I have to contend the hiphop and SC to a lesser degree. I was all over both of them, and I believe hiphop folded under the pressure I initiated. Part of town play is to put scum in a situation where they fumble, mix up stories, get caught in lies, or have to create extravagent explanations. The fact that scum crumble under pressure should not demean the town's play for successfully putting them in that situation.

I was really surprised I wasn't killed last night since I was the first vote on each of hiphop and SCs wagons and never moved my vote.

[Leiskyrie]

xvart, I fully expected you to be the N3 kill. You were just so painfully competent obvtown.

You know, I wasn't certain about the even color spread beginning of D4, but it made more and more sense as I went on and poured over the rules/PM wording. That, and Merans' claim, confirmed it for me. Took a while for me to understand the SC-Merans thing too, but in the end it made sense (even though I was apparently wrong about some of it.)

I do like xvart's idea of having single townies to mix things up.

[Voidedmafia]

@Voided. I'm not saying you played a terrible game, but when I say flailing, look at the your post to other people's post ratio of Day 1. You were far too present. Nobody could look at anything but you. While you were definitely unlucky, you made it easier to be unlucky.

Okay, you have a point there. thanks for clarifying.

Also, I did ask to /pre-in if you run this next time in the dead thread, but I can ask through PM if that's the better venue. (pretty much this is copying what xvart said on this topic)

[Kise]

Ehh, Dogs, you still need to convince us harder that Jedo is a really good lynch.

I'll wait.

This was when I knew.

[Seacore]

Thanks for the comments. Here's some responses and thoughts

Town's Play

I do apologise if I even suggested that I said town did nothing. I find the baseball metaphor off target. I see it more as a game of soccer. The scum team scored some own goals and gained some penalties allowing some free kicks, thus allowing town to easily win the game. Town didn't get an opportunity to show they were great. Only good. And town were good. xvart was indeed on the money with SC early, and some of the comments in the Rhinocke hydra QT were also bang on. All I was trying to say was that scum lost this more than town won it, town didn't get a chance to shine.

Colour Claim

The game is safe from a mass claim right at the beginning. I definitely checked that. Assuming the scum split themselves 1/1/2 across the colours (which is why I gave them the colours), it gives scum all the power as far as night targets go, and it really just splits up the game into 3 mini games, with 3v1/3v1/3v2 pools of scum. I ran the numbers and it actually favours scum quite a bit.
The problem with what happened here is that scum fake claimed while obtaining no claim information from anybody else.
What I haven't looked at is a mid-game claim, and I think that is where it breaks down for scum, although not as completely as it did here.

I think for that purpose, I'd run the set up with colours unaware of what colour they are even with death.
This would remove claiming as a tactic. Players will still be able to work out what colour they had in common with dead people, but it wouldn't be as mod-confirmed.

Colour Spread and 3rd Parties

I think I want to keep it even for the next game. GreyIce PM'd me with lots of ways to play with the colour spread that doesn't just involve making them uneven, and they're good ideas too, but I think I'll still keep it to 3/3/3/4. We didn't get a chance to see it play out this time, and I think the lack of colour info might fix most of the problems. 3 drops to a colour allows me to play the weak power/strong power effect more easily.
I'm against 3rd parties even more, at this point, because 3rd parties are a fairly heavily balancing effect and I don't want to muddy up the potential balancing effect of the concentration mechanic.

Powers

I'm curious how people found the powers in this game.
As far as poison/detox go, I think I agree, I'll not tell somebody if they were poisoned in the future. So there's still the chance that an active detoxer/doctor can protect them but that'll power up the scum some.
The bulletproof fails in a 1v1 situation, to prevent draws that way. The rb/jk should probably do the same.

Originally (before Trumpets knocked some sense into me) I had three categories for each drop of colour, with each dot being predetermined into each one (although they weren't aware of it)
So each colour had a protective power, and aggressive power and an investigative power.
Protective powers were detox/doc, rb/jk and 1shotBP/full BP
Investigative powers were voyeur/watcher, follower/tracker, macho cop/cop
Aggressive powers were harder to settle on, and they weren't that town friendly, I had Paranoid Taser Owner/PGO (taser just removed your current PR for a day or something like that), Vig Poisoner/Vig Killer, ... yeah, I wasn't doing to good at that.

The upside of aggressive powers is that it limits the assurance of what powers will end up in end game. The downside was that a) I couldn't settle on what made good aggressive powers and b) they weren't really that pro-town.

Scum

Scum were very debated between Trumpet and I. His number crunching said that even with no kill, 4 scum were really strong. We played with 3 scum, starting them with a poison power and growing the same way. We discussed making their final stage unblockable as well as untrackable but agreed that it was probably too strong.

As xvart has raised, he's be tempted to bus a scum buddy to get the detox kill from the start. But if the town is headed for an easy mislynch, maybe it's best to wait for D2 to start doing that. Or D3. Of course, by then there could be 1 major or 4 minor powers in the mix.

Pre-ins

Packbat
xvart


Like I said, it's an experimental set up. The overarching principle of the set up is that the game (somewhat) balances itself. In a standard mafia game, killing town makes town weaker (unless there's a PoE effect happening) and killing scum weakens them (usually be allowing relationship analysis). While those effects still exist in this game, there's supposed to be an offset. "Yes, we've been mislynching every day, but now we have a tracker and a doc" etc.

I'm happy for any and all opinions. If this game does get to a stage where it works, it potentially be an open set up, with just the configuration set up randomly.

[Seacore]

Oh, that reminds me, thanks very much to the people who played

And thank you very very much to Trumpets for helping me with the set up.

[StrangerCoug]

I feel sorry for StrangerCoug, there was very little he could do. Do you know why he 'reacted too strongly'? Because his sole remaining teammate fucked both of them in a single post.

Quoted for @#$%ing truth. Yes, there are things I could have done differently (since you don't arbitrarily lynch people, I must have done something to get me lynched, and I knew something was up when I found out town wasn't told their powers in advance unlike scum), and yes, it could be altered to help scum out with mid-game claims, but still, give me a good reason not to beat Meransiel to a pulp with a sledgehammer.

I very much want a pre-/in for Color Concentration Mafia II. I deserve that second chance.

[Voidedmafia]

re-/pre-in-ing, I guess.

[Mr. Flay]

2. This game, along with Blackest Night Mafia, shows how publicly declared via Mod color spreads is very harsh on scum.

This.

and I knew something was up when I found out town wasn't told their powers in advance unlike scum

I cannot tell you how many times Theme Games have screwed me over as scum with this. Scum is supposed to be the

IN

formed side...

I think for that purpose, I'd run the set up with colours unaware of what colour they are even with death.

I think this is an even more terrible idea than balanced color teams. Takes away a lot of the flavor of the game, and will lead to a huge amount of speculation on setup that can't get anyone anywhere, thus distracting from scumhunting.

[Packbat]

Colour Claim

The game is safe from a mass claim right at the beginning. I definitely checked that. Assuming the scum split themselves 1/1/2 across the colours (which is why I gave them the colours), it gives scum all the power as far as night targets go, and it really just splits up the game into 3 mini games, with 3v1/3v1/3v2 pools of scum. I ran the numbers and it actually favours scum quite a bit.
The problem with what happened here is that scum fake claimed while obtaining no claim information from anybody else.
What I haven't looked at is a mid-game claim, and I think that is where it breaks down for scum, although not as completely as it did here.

I think for that purpose, I'd run the set up with colours unaware of what colour they are even with death.
This would remove claiming as a tactic. Players will still be able to work out what colour they had in common with dead people, but it wouldn't be as mod-confirmed.

If it's safe from an opening massclaim and usually safe from an endgame massclaim, I think what you need to do is

tell scum that

so they're (slightly) less likely to bone themselves.

[Packbat]

Seacore: do you want to post QT links?

[Leiskyrie]

Ok, some things:

1. I didn't tell SC about the plan. Sorry, buddy.
2.

I didn't do it for towncred, but for CONFIRMATION. I hoped inv roles would find it unlikely that I could've 1 shotted scum and investigate me. Which is great given the power scum receives when he's alone: Ninja godfather.

3. I was devastated when I shot yellow. Honestly I tried to hit blue so that my fake role would vanillize, but red could do aswell.

Just for future reference, Merans, the bolded is a terrible idea. I highly doubt any investigative roles would investigate you for finding scum- I certainly wouldn't have. Scum would have ended up alone at some point either way and gotten those powers...so not worth (purposefully) losing a scumbuddy for.

[Battousai]

Just read the thread, D1/D2 were obvscum. Though I would say I was more inclined to believe Mer was scum, gambiting by getting SC to claim a role and then call him town (then kill him that night). I was surprised SC flipped colourless, as I was betting on the Jedi or glass flipping scum.


I'd say if you run this again, you should do it as a large or at least remove a scum. It is way to scumpowered early game, then becomes too town sided. I'd suggest adding 1 or 2 colors that have no one else of that color and that they gain powers as the other colors are eliminated as, percentage wise, they become larger (though they gain them slower for obvious reasons). This makes it so scum can claim a color that is not in the game. With this game, they had to claim a color that a townsperson was (alternative would be for them to claim the same color and that would undo them as well once one of them flips colourless).

[Packbat]

Battousai's suggestions sound good to me - running the game as a large with uneven color distribution is perfectly feasible, and there are plenty of secondary and tertiary colors to select from. Heck, combine that with not telling people their colors in the PMs and you'll have

loads

of room for confusion as flips go by!

[Packbat]

And, obviously, secondary colors would get powers with deaths of

either

of their primaries.

And, also obviously, you don't have to stick with red-yellow-blue; not only would red-

green

-blue would make perfect sense if you switched from a palette to a rainbow metaphor, CYMK would even add an obvious miller in the form of black and give even more color options (and make blue, red, and green

secondary

colors, with all the delicious confusion that would imply).

[Gammagooey]

Hey Seacore if you do run something similar to this again I'd very highly recommend adding in the ability for mafia to kill even with no mafia deaths IF the town no lynched that day. If a drop of red had been lynched day 1 and the town figured out that scum didn't have a kill until one of them was lynched the game could be completely broken by no lynching until the cop found all the scum.

[Locke Lamora]

Well, that was certainly one of the easier town wins I've played in. I think Seacore hit the main point when he said that the ultimate problem was scum claiming without obtaining claim information from other players. Battousai was also right when he said scum were pretty obv D1 and D2, which did help a long way towards the win. I think town played well and didn't really do anything wrong, and scum did quite a few things wrong including one major mistake which basically made winning impossible. Will have a think about the progression of PRs and see what I come up with.

[Voidedmafia]

Was the reason I was obvscum the same that Seacore pointed out (far too active)? Or was there something else?

[hasdgfas]

Fin