Micro 741: Reverse Mafia (mafia win)

[callforjudgement]

It was a while back now, but I'd better not forget to say good job to GL too; both scum completely fooled me this game, and I kind-of got manipulated into pushing their lynches.

@

Mod

: Could you release the dead thread and (if they're willing) the scum thread? (I don't expect much content in either, for different reasons in each case, but am still curious as to what if anything was said.)

[pisskop]

No dead thread.
Scum thread: viewtopic.php?f=90&t=73221

[CheekyTeeky]

Aw thanks guys I was trying to hide my panic coming in already scum read. Took a lot of wiggling lol. Many thanks to the mods <3 very fun game and yeah Not_Mafia was the 3rd scum buddy lol.

[callforjudgement]

Basically the structure of this game is equivalent to ranking all 8 players by scumminess, where town wins if there is either 1 scum amongst the 2 most scummy, or 2 scum amongst the 4 most scummy. I think under the assumption of random lynching that might give exactly 50% win chance for either side, which is pretty neat.

I didn't answer this at the time because it would have distracted from the actual scumhunting, but yes, it's an exact 50:50 if players lynch randomly.

Traditionally, that's way too high for a Nightless (a typical Nightless setup is balanced with about a 20-30% town win rate for random lynching; town historically lynch noticeably better than random in a Nightless setup), but the reverse lynch mechanics here make townbloccing much harder (because you have to lynch inside the bloc and dissolve it, or outside and the bloc doesn't give a huge advantage), so I decided to play it safe and go for the 50:50 to start. Throughout this game, I was thinking that it might be a bit high, but that's because I overestimated how well town was doing. (This is a common problem in perceiving the balance of a setup!) I now think it isn't far off; it might be a bit townsided but if it is, going to 7:2 will probably fix it. Continuing to run the game at 6:2 should be safe for the near future, though, unless a serious balance problem comes to light.

[callforjudgement]

Subject: Micro 741: Reverse Mafia - Scum Pit

Ok I might be pushing the whole IDC if I'm voted thing a little hard, but I think it's had some good influence. I'm worried others aren't going to be active enough for me to be able to talk myself out of the bottom 2 completely. Fingers crossed ^^

This is my first scum game so would love feedback at the end of this.

Well, I know you know that the rest of us are impressed with your play :-)

One thing you did very well here was spotting a path to victory and sticking to it. I was certainly aware of the "push a weak town read on Dunker and hope it doesn't work out" strategy as being a potential strategy for scum even at the time, and nothing you did (and probably nothing you could do) would convince me that your slot was town (#168 was, while probably necessary for scum to win because the GL lynch wouldn't have happened otherwise, a hard post to recover the slot from), but a strategy like that was definitely your best chance to win because a) not doing anything would probably have doomed you, and b) everything you did was something that could easily plausibly have come from a townie. So in the end, you managed to bring yourself up into third place, and that's all that really mattered.

I guess this came down to working out what the scenarios were under which a player could be scum. Everything that happened was consistent with you as scum, and my internal scum!Cheeky scenario was very close to what it seemed actually happened; but the assumptions needed for you to be scum (i.e. that you intentionally locked a townread on me, that you intentionally sacrificed the opportunity to push players like Mario as scum who you quite possibly could have convinced me on, and that you intentionally tried to push cases in the hope that people wouldn't believe you) were so much more complex than the assumptions needed for ASP/NM to be scum (i.e. that the slot was hoping to lurk through the whole game under the radar and not give themself away, and that TheBrie had simply made an error in judgement by voting GL) that the simpler option seemed more probable and that's what we were guarding against.

In retrospect, #379 was probably a mistake, but one that ended up not hurting you; reading through your posts knowing that you're scum, it's the one that most stands out (although it didn't seem that different from what other players were doing, and so it only had a minor effect on my reads and one that ended up not mattering). When replacing in as town, I take notice of how my slot's generally perceived, but only as it's related to how open I need to be with claims and the like (if I'm replacing in at L-1 I'm much more likely to claim than if I'm replacing in at L-6); apart from that I'm mostly looking for scum rather than trying to argue that I'm town, because making a case on yourself is rarely effective. #379 isn't how I'd expect a townie to react upon replacing in; they'd be more concerned with helping to sort the nullscum players than they would with the game history and how things had got there. (I think you mentioned in the scum PT that you were panicking at that moment? I guess that came off in the post a bit, and that supports a scum read because town would have much less reason to panic just then.)

Overall, though, you did an excellent job, and this is basically just advice to help you improve and become even better; you pretty much blew me away with the competence of your scumplay as it was.

[CheekyTeeky]

Noted, I really appreciate the feedback CFJ, and the weaknesses you pointed out. I was amazed how you read into my scum play perfectly but still thought I was town. I think being new really helped you guys to underestimate me, and I know l wouldn't have gotten away with it otherwise. Thanks again I hope to be flawless in my next scum game.

[TheBrie]

Brilliant Cheeky!
There's no way I could have pulled that off if if I'd had the time to play. I begun the tactic of not pushing other scum reads, but I would have gotten frustrated and tired. And I didn't really say what I was doing in the Scum thread, so CheekyTeeky figured it out on her own.

There's one thing everyone missed. Dunker who have been nearly conf town after GL's flip. With a GL/Dunker team there would have been no reason not to self hammer. At the time we thought it could have been to avoid implicating Carcalilly if there was a Carca/Dunker scum team. And then you all forgot about it.

[RadiantCowbells]

Well played Cheeky/TheBrie/GL!

[callforjudgement]

There's one thing everyone missed. Dunker who have been nearly conf town after GL's flip. With a GL/Dunker team there would have been no reason not to self hammer. At the time we thought it could have been to avoid implicating Carcalilly if there was a Carca/Dunker scum team. And then you all forgot about it.

Dunker genuinely never had the opportunity to self-hammer. He was at L-2 for about half an hour (which mistakenly showed as L-1 due to an incorrect votecount, but I'd sure be double-checking that if I were scum).

[TheBrie]

Oh. So you are smart after all.

On my replace out, it wasn't exactly tactical, but wasn't entirely non tactical. Even when I had to replace out of my second newbie game because I was going on holiday, I thought of the possible benefit of a fresh set of eyes looking at the game. For this game I may not have replaced out if I had been town.

And you're not going to find many examples of me as group scum. This is only my third scum game. I was lynched first day in the first game, and won the second one (with RC).

[Dunkerdoodles]

well played GL and cheeky
the fact we lost after we basically confirmed brie as scum really sucks tho. if we had just stuck to our plan of leaving me/brie we would've won. oh well well played everyone!

[serrapaladin]

For this game I may not have replaced out if I had been town.

You may want to avoid going around saying things like this.

[GuiltyLion]

great job Brie and Cheeky! You both did an amazing job playing the long game and avoiding the pitfalls that would have kept serra/CFJ scumreading you. I was honestly quite surprised at how quickly consensus originally seemed to center around "scum was on the wagon, Mario/ASP are town" and thought we were going to lose for a while. Cheeky for a relative newbie your play was especially good, totally agree with CFJ and I was super impressed with your style and tone. You probably would have tricked town!me as well.

Mario I gotta say I hope to never draw scum against you again, you are pretty terrifying with how quickly you nailed both of us. And CFJ I want to be town with you some time

[callforjudgement]

I knew I'd played with you before, but I'd forgotten how that game went. In retrospect, I really should have looked it up to get more of an idea about how you play. Given that you've tricked me as scum twice now, I'll have to be more cautious about townreading you in the future ;-)

I normally only use meta for discounting scumtells, though (i.e. "this is normally scummy but player X does it all the time, so it's not scummy coming from them"). So I don't normally think to check it on people I think are town.

[TheBrie]

For this game I may not have replaced out if I had been town.

You may want to avoid going around saying things like this.

Oh probably not, but I don't think I'l be playing again. Not for a long time at least.

In fact I might as well go and expose another of ym secrets. My tendency towards truthfulness means I have never "I am not scum." in any of my scum games. Not to my knowledge at least. But it's a useless tell now. If I do keep playing that will probably change.

[Aristophanes]

Hey now, you're a rock star, get the show, on get paid