Micro 741: Reverse Mafia (mafia win)

[CheekyTeeky]

Not_Mafia are you still there? We're waiting for the masterpiece you promised us in 439. :/

Pedit timing...

[Not_Mafia]

I slept in

[callforjudgement]

For two whole days?

Please start contributing usefully.

[Not_Mafia]

And then I worked

[CheekyTeeky]

-_-' ok so should we get serra cleared now? I don't think we're going to get what we expected from NM.

[callforjudgement]

I'm OK with it.

VOTE: serrapaladin

L-1. Please do not hammer. I'll unvote if serra requests it (and I recommend that he does).

[Not_Mafia]

Give me 2 days

[callforjudgement]

No. We can't reasonably hold up the game for a whole 4 days for one person, especially when they've broken a promise once.

Stalling out the game tends to sap town motivation and leave people forgetting their reads. That doesn't seem conducive to town's win chanecs.

If you want to make a case, do it before serra gets online. Even a quick/short one will do for now; you can make a fuller case later.

[serrapaladin]

sup

[callforjudgement]

@

serrapaladin

: You're at L-1. Please acknowledge this (ideally without hammering, if you want to participate in the rest of the game.)

[serrapaladin]

sup

[CheekyTeeky]

Cool Serra is conf. town so I'm 100% sure there is scum in dunkers/NM and we win

[callforjudgement]

UNVOTE:

[callforjudgement]

So the game's now going to come down to finding one townie out of Cheeky/NM/Dunker.

@

serrapaladin

: What's your current read on Cheeky's slot? Out of the unsorted players, she's the player I most

want

to be town.

My own thoughts (updated since Cheeky replaced in), which I've mostly kept quiet about because passive scumhunting seemed to be working and I didn't want to disturb that:

First of all, it's clear that Cheeky committed pretty much as soon as she'd read enough of the game to provide content to trying to push NM/Dunker as the last two players. As town, this would presumably just be natural a consequence of her reads, and isn't anything particularly worth focusing on. As scum, though, it's a high-risk move to decide on which players to push that quickly; most scum players would hedge and try to see who they had the best chance of taking to lywi. Doing a giant PBPA just to push a nulltown player as town is a pretty crazily dedicated thing to do if you're actually scum; it's a lot of effort to go to, merely to produce a minor amount of evidence in support your choice of a high-risk strategy. I don't quite think that this is definitive – I've gone the high-risk route as scum before now purely because I thought players who meta'd me would assume that I wouldn't, and when I've had a lot of free time I've been known to put this level of effort into games – but it's pretty strong evidence. (Note that #407 was, whilst my honest opinion, dropped in at that moment as potential bait for a hypothetical scum Cheeky to take; she didn't.)

Meanwhile, #440 is even more telling, in a way. Cheeky's making a (fairly weak) case for Dunker as town. In order for her to do that as scum, she'd have to know that her own case didn't work and push it anyway, purely so that she'd look townier as a result (and hoping that she'd be called on it so that her own argument didn't lose her the game). This is still something that could be faked by a sufficiently determined and skilled scum player, as it's all entirely based on Cheeky's actions, but actually pulling something like that off would be impressive enough that I'm not sure I'd even mind losing to it. Again, this all makes much more sense as town, where Cheeky would have an actual interest in sorting the game and can win even if she personally isn't lynched.

[Dunkerdoodles]

on the other side, if cheeky was scum she knew she had to commit hard to have a chance. Brie was being hard scumread so for her to get townread she had to try hard. I wouldn't use that part as an argument for cheeky being town. if anything it points to her being scum more then town.
i agree with the second half tho

[callforjudgement]

@

Dunkerdoodles

: How do you assess the probability of Cheeky as scum, relative to the probability of NM as scum?

[Dunkerdoodles]

cheeky's more towny, NM has done literally nothing, but i still think cheeky's the scum.
my ideal 2 left would be cheeky and NM but i know thats probably not happening
i wouldn't really want NM to get a win by doing nothing, if cheeky is indeed scum she's atleast earned the win
same with cfj, even though serra (and me) are still paranoid i don't know if we can afford to leave him

[callforjudgement]

I guess the analogous question goes to Cheeky too (also NM in theory but the odds of him actually answering are low).

@

CheekyTeeky

: How do you assess the probability of Dunker as scum, relative to the probability of NM as scum?

(@

Not_Mafia

: How do you assess the probability of Cheeky as scum, relative to the probability of Dunker as scum?)


I'll post an analysis of the responses afterwards, but it's probably best to get in all the answers before explaining why I asked and what I expected to see.

[CheekyTeeky]

@CheekyTeeky: How do you assess the probability of Dunker as scum, relative to the probability of NM as scum?

How indeed. It is hard to assess the probability of someone being scum relative to someone I had a slight scum lean on and who is now either too busy to participate properly or doesn't care enough to help us town read him. In particular Dunkers last few comments feel kinda like townie objectivity, where if he was scum I'd expect him to refute any evidence that I might be town. In a way he did that but he also agreed with one point that likely shows I am indeed town. When I get to my pc I can point out specific points to support/refute a scumdunkers possibility. In short atm NM < dunkers town and honestly I don't see that changing.

[CheekyTeeky]

OK I had a quick re-look and I think it is certainly possible that Dunkers is scum. Overall his ISO is very strange, he is confused about the set-up and the playstyle implications of it for too long, not to mention the scum-slip in 72 he hard townreads GL, CFJ and Serra together and even suggests leaving these 3 until the end, which makes me think that if he is the buddy, then it would make sense for Dunkers to be lynched first and hopefully GL later down the line who he's pushing as obv. town. The GL flip is enough for him to reconsider his CFJ read but not his Serra read. It then looks like town tunneling on Serra who is also suspicious of CFJ and my slot. It would make a lot of sense for scum to tunnel someone who pushes good targets later on. What bothers me is that he doesn't give any reasons at all for his reads, although we've seen that town does do that (MM4), and again that just makes things harder for town and easier for scum. He sheep's Serra's read on my slot which looks like nothing more than a gut read on someone too busy to be engaged in the game properly. He agrees to leave my slot to the bottom two and then starts some weird pleading to be lynched so that "town can win" with still several people left. He also prods serra to see if his suspicion for CFJ still exists and still pushes on me being scum with nothing to really go on. I really don't have enough to compare NM to Dunkers. Because Dunker's actions most of the game would make sense from scum I am inclined to change my mind and say he is scummier still than NM's no contribution.

[serrapaladin]

@serrapaladin: What's your current read on Cheeky's slot? Out of the unsorted players, she's the player I most want to be town.

If she's scum I'm pretty impressed by how natural she has taken over from brie. As you've pointed out, she's positioned herself in some pretty nuanced ways that aren't the obvious scum strategy. She also seems to be keen to start voting people and getting lynches (see 437) which is again non-obvious as scum, as it'll just lead to increased chances of her being left. Banking on gaining towncred and then being the last one to be lynched would be a pretty ballsy strategy. With the tide (okay, mostly me) starting to turn towards brie-town before the replacement, I do actually think just towning it up independent of strategy considerations is broadly the right play in her position, which is partly why I wanted to know if she may be more experienced than her join date suggests. Shame she doesn't have any scumgames played, but without evidence of a strong scum-game I want to call her town here.

@Dunker: why, besides my suspicion, do you think that cfj might be scum?

I struggle with NM. Scum!NM knows that he's going to lose himself and GL the game and that by continuing to provide any content as we're lynching people he will be one of the two left. Town!NM will 'only' be 1 of 2 people left so if town had better reads it wouldn't have mattered that he wasn't doing anything. His play is kind of more excusable as town. Not that it actually is excusable.

I'm quite worried it won't win us the game, but there's roughly 0 chance I want to leave anyone but dunker and nm.

[callforjudgement]

OK, so the way I see things, #466 is pretty much the scummiest possible answer to my question.

In this setup, if a town player's being viewed as scummy, they have a large incentive to contrast the remaining players; if they end up nonlynched, then in order to win, they have to correctly identify the scum in order to have them as the other nonlynched player. So having multiple scumreads and not trying to distinguish them isn't really going to help them win the game; determining which of the remaining players is scum is the hard part. (And #466 casts suspicion on three players, while being very noncommital on Cheeky versus NM; for a scum dunker, this would be by far the most natural tactic because he'd need us to conclude that two of the three are scum.)

Cheeky's #468 / #469 is a much more townish response; she doesn't necessarily know who the scum is (and it's standard for townies to not understand the entire gamestate; the whole point of the game of Mafia is that townies don't know the whole story), but realises it's important to find out, and attempts to do so (and even changes her mind from one post to the next). Either Cheeky is one of the best actors I've ever met on this site, or she's forgotten she's scum (intentionally forgetting your alignment is hard to do, but if you can do it, it's a viable strategy when you're the last scum left because at least it means you're likely to react realistically as a townie), or (most likely) she's town. She's at least a lot townier than Dunker is.

I suspect NM is actually probably town (the D1 lynch results are pretty telling), but because he's making this impossible to determine, and there are reasons to be suspicious of ASP's play, I'd put the slot as more likely scum than Dunker (but as Mario was saying earlier, it's probably just Dunker who's scum and all this agonizing over the details will turn out not to matter). NM, unfortunately, almost always plays much like this, but in my experience with him as town he often does something that reveals his thought processes. He hasn't this game, and appears to have been intentionally stalling with respect to serra's alignment, so what I know about NM-reading would lean towards scum, but there's not enough information there to have anything more than a minor lean. As such, we pretty much just have to compare the slot to others, and right now it's clearly scummier than Cheeky and townier than Dunker.

I'm not certain this is correct – it's hard to be – but I think it's the best chance of a town win:
VOTE: CheekyTeeky
L-2.

[serrapaladin]

Want me to L-1 her?

@cheeky: do you plan on self-hammering?

[callforjudgement]

Want me to L-1 her?

@cheeky: do you plan on self-hammering?

I have no objection, if you agree with me that this is a good idea. If you disagree, though, I'd rather hear your counterargument rather than pressuring you into doing it.

[CheekyTeeky]

If we're ready to start lynching I can? Otherwise you can L1 test me, it depends if you guys need more time.