In post 4519, Kagami wrote:on balance
Ok, so firstly, is the setup balanced? Before rolling for alignment, I think it's probably somewhat townsided. I think this particular instantiation (scum gets 3 receivers and 1 watch sensor) is actually pretty even, despite the objections people are raising.
What actually happened
Let's take a look at how the setup actually played out. LLD had a very difficult time winning, which she attributes in part to not having enough tools to deal with town power.
So what was this overwhelming town power? Town had an IC she had to kill because he could backup-ize and vig people. Town had an Alignment Sensor who got a single investigation off throughout the entire game. Town had a tracker who gave town a single Track result (on titus). Town had a neighborhood that had been infiltrated by scum.
Is a 4-13 game with an IC, and one-shot Loud Cop, and one-shot Loud Tracker, and a neighborhood that starts with a scummo in it townsided? No, in fact, it would be incredibly scumsided. Both investigations would have to get positives on scum to bring the game to a 2-11 mountainous (which is still extremely scumsided).
That LLD had a challenging game has nothing to do with roles, it's that she was a one-man scumteam. Games are not supposed to be balanced such that a single scum should have a 50% shot of winning through their own prowess, while the rest of their team does nothing.
An aside on NK choices
LLD has said in post-game discussion that she's good at picking NK targets, which people are agreeing on. This is actually a pretty critical thing to talk about at a theoretical level.
What does it mean for a setup to be balanced? It means that if all the players are equally skilled, I should not be able to guess which team is going to win with accuracy above chance. As a corollary to this, the scum's NK decisions in the world of balance theory are dictated by which roles are best to eliminate (since the players behind them are equally skilled).
So what should happen if the scumteam chooses
not
to kill important roles, instead choosing individuals players who they feel are more skilled? What should happen is that the roles of the town should start to feel imbalanced, because at that point they are. The scumteam has opted to enter a gamestate that is more townsided from a role standpoint in exchange for a gamestate that benefits them from a player-skill standpoint.
LLD did this numerous times. In the end, she won despite poorly performing partners, so it's quite possible she made the correct decision. It is, however, absolutely no surprise that she could have lost to roles, since she had no respect for the role-based balance of the game in making many of her kill choices.
From an role-killing perspective: Imperium was a better kill N1 than Wisdom, Imperium had softed sensor and is even a pretty great kill from a skill standpoint. Antihero was another skill-kill, and he had a role that was
known
to be doing absolutely nothing for town. Firebringer's role, the most powerful role in the game, was given very little respect despite the fact that it could have swung the game against LLD at numerous points. He was ignored for skill-based reasons (and, I think, LLD also underestimated the power of his role). Firebringer could have easily been killed instead of Imperium, even if the scumteam didn't believe he was GM going into N2.
Alright you wanna know about kills? Let's talk about kills.
Night 1, I made the single best kill possible. Not only was Wisdom CLEARLY not a receiver (I can't really explain how I knew it, it has to do with how he interacted with Titus for control) he was also just right on basically everything.
It's not under my control to know he'd be the weakest Sensor in the game.
Night 2, we kill Antihero, another role. So far, I'm 2 for 2 on killing sensors/emitters and also killing people who could have easily led town to a better point. I investigated Nacho this night, to see if he was a role. No surprise, he shows up Tracker. 3 for 3.
Night 3, we kill Void, because he claimed cop. I'm not afraid of a tracker when I'm not the one performing the kill. We just used Vampirate to cover those tracks.
I would like to point out at this point, we have killed or contained 4 of the Towns power roles. Simply, the only time we ever had a chance to kill the GM was Night 2, and I struggled to believe the real GM would just claim like that, or play how he did.
The issue after night 3 was that the GM represented such a problem, being able to res roles I had killed. I didn't have an opportunity to kill the GM.
Imperium HAD to die Night 4, because they were ready to lynch me, I could feel it. Nacho confirmed this post game.
It was at this point, with almost no receivers left I switched tacts and went after receivers. Nether almost outplayed me, getting BOTH receivers to target him, instead of one. In the end, he chose to investigate SDB though, which turned out well. A bit of luck here. We killed Spiffeh night 5, to be clear.
From this point, there were veyr few paths to victory, a lot of them probably due to a lack of a scum team. Vampirate and SDB slated to die, meant I needed to carry.
Tricking DS into targetting Marquis, and killing the GM was the best move I could have made night 6, and it paid dividends for the rest of the game. I removed the final receiver night 7 and won the game day 8.
In total, the issue with the setup was the redundancy. A better GM would have absolutely crushed this game, and even with him being revealed Night 2, while I think I made a mistake in not killing him, the fact that FB was so useless de-incentivized me to do so. I underestimated how broken he was.
In the end, I think this setup is just inherently town sided. Too much power, with it being a semi-smalltown game. I think the reason I won can be attributed to good early kills (Wisdom, Antihero) and a lot of luck (SDB). I mean, skill was obviously a factor, but a lot of luck.
On the whole, I enjoyed the game, but you have to understand how frustating it is to be handcuffed because the game just has so much power in it, and I'm sitting here with no power at all. :/
Yes my Lord, but questions are dangerous, for they have answers.
13 heads and counting now, plurality is adaptive. If our experience might help you,
click here
.
If you wish to
speak to one of us
, we are Niamh, Rhiannon, Rhea, Aisling, Saoirse, Selene, Aoife, Fírinne, Aurélie, Lyra, Airna, Fiadh and Laoise.
Soar on wings of retribution and set the world ablaze
Would have helped me a lot!
