Reviewing Royalty

[Hectic]

2 Betrayers
4 Assassins
7 VTs

Betrayers + Assassins are the scumteam. They share a PT in which they can converse in at all times.
Scum are informed that they lose if any of them are launched during the first day. They are told that the 4 assassins will flip and leave the game after 2 launches during the first day.

Start of game, everyone is informed that all town are vanilla.

Everyone is told that they have two launches during this phase. If they fail to launch, plurality will decide. Each launch will have a 8 day deadline, and will flip.

If any betrayers or assassins are launched, scum instantly lose.

After the second launch and flip, the 4 assassins all flip. The players are informed of the setup and of all the things scum were informed of at the start.

Then, with 7 players, everyone is informed that the game will continue, with standard day and night phases (day first). White flag applies to the remaining 2 Betrayers.

[Hectic]

Sorry if this is a little jumbled/unclear. I typed it up on mobile.

The idea is that there'll be tonnes of associations to examine after the assassins flip. Lovers mafia (6p nightless, mafia are suicidal lovers) is 60% EV in theory, but more like 35% in practice. 7p lovers mafia with a nightkill is even more scumsided. I

'm hoping all the theatre scum have to do during the first 2 launches provides enough information to town that makes it fairly balanced.

Assassins can't just claim masons or stupid PRs, because town is confirmed to be vanilla in power.

[Hectic]

And obviously, scum should never get one of them launched in the first phase, considering the numbers will be 6-7 and then 6-6, but if they try to distance on Betrayers, it will get real risky if it gathers too much traction from other town, and then they have to suddenly shift off.

There's a lot of opportunities for shenanigans.

[Hectic]

This is slightly bad timing, I'm gonna have to call it a night. Hopefully talk to you about it later!

[Ircher]

Okay, so I couldn't find the EV for 7-2 white flag, but for 6-3, it's about 30% town win. So at a glance, this setup looks pretty balanced to me.

Given mafia's numbers, it's very unlikely that town manages to trigger the insta-win Day 1, but it's not impossible. In some ways, town has a better chance than normal due to the high density of scum. (Obviously, when it goes to 6-6, scum are going to veto a launch if needed, so it's only that initial launch that matters.) The associations, etc. are obviously going to benefit town, and likely in a non-negligible way. On the other hand, I think I recall scum doing quite a bit better than expected by EV calculations for white flag setups.

I will get back to this later to make a final verdict, especially if I can find/calculate the EV for 7-2 white flag (which shouldn't be too hard), but at a glance, it looks fairly balanced, maybe a bit townsided.

[Ircher]

Okay, so the EV for White Flag 7-2 is 4/7 ~ 57%. (2/7 + 5/7 * 3/5) for town, which seems a bit high, but I'm not sure you can get much better without drastically changing the setup. White Flag as I said is a setup where town does worse than expected, but with the added associatives from Day 1, I think this will prove to be too much in town's favor.

[Hectic]

Yeah, you're right, I think the final 7 phase should be handled in a less townsided (by EV at least) way.

Trying to think of alternate ways.

[Hectic]

Normal day/night phases for all of these ideas:

One idea is that a random town in the remaining 5 gets an updated Named Townie role. Everyone is informed of this.
One variation is to have the two dead townies at this point

pick

the town who receives this role.

Another is to make all the town bodyguards, and give scum a factional roleblock. Town can stop their obvtown/leader dying in the night, and potentially get launchbait killed overnight.

Or there could be a mini coalition thing. Town forms a coalition of 4, if all are town, they instantly win. Otherwise, they get a launch and the game proceeds.

[Hectic]

Finally, there's the idea that there's 4 saferooms players can hide in to be protected from the nightkill. Along with the regular launch, players can HEAL each other. Once someone is hammered with HEALs, they will be safe the following night. 4 players must be HEALed like this in the first day. In this way, town can try and go for exactly the two mafia being the only ones available to be nightkilled (outside of the person they're launching), or in the worst case get rid of potential launchbait. It will be compulsive for scum to nightkill.

I quite like this idea, but the question is whether it's balanced.

[Ircher]

I will have to think about that last one some, but something that might be more fun for the assassins is for them to treestump at the end of Day 1 rather than leave the game. That way, they can still help out their two remaining buddies (and maybe have fun misleading the thread.)

[Hectic]

Good idea, with the caveat that they can't spam I think. Maybe give them a 20 post limit per day or soemthing.

[Ircher]

So, the saferoom apporach, while really cool, has a very marginal effect on the EV of the setup:

There's a (4/6) * (3/5) * (2/4) * (1/3) ~ 7% chance that town (after a mislaunch) will successfully put all town in the safehouse, and thus, force mafia to kill themselves. This translates to about a 1-3% increase in EV in town's favor. Granted now, this EV doesn't account for the factor that scum will likely have to kill a player that would've otherwise had been mislaunched anyway. Using the charisma model for EV could, but I'm not adept in those calculations, so I will stick to typical EV calculations.

One thing you could do though is combine the safehouse mechanic with white flag on day 2 only. This gives an EV of about 40%:

2/7 chance to win outright by launching a betrayer Day 2.

Let A = (4/6)*(3/5)*(2/4)*(1/3).

5/7 * (A * (1/5 + (4/5)*(1/3)) + (1-A)*(2/5)*(1/3) to win otherwise.

Thus, town has a little less than 40% chance to win. Town is further boosted by the associatives from the Day 1 launches and the info from the safehouse mechanic on Day 2, so despite being slightly less than 40%, it shouldn't be overtly scumsided.

[Hectic]

I've kind of been put off on the white flag mechanic. I don't want to punish a strong deepwolf if they happen to random with someone who's bad at playing scum. If the safehouse mechanic on its own is too scum-sided, I'd prefer to townside it in other ways, for example, force the scum to confirm a safehoused player as town overnight.

Also, don't town in a way get close to another launch due to the safehouse mechanic? If there's two scummy players that are trapped outside, 1 being scum and 1 being town, the town will die, but then they can launch the scum the next day, while in an alternate universe without the mechanic, a UTR would be nightkilled instead, and they would have to decide between the two scummy players. I think it has a pretty significant boost to EV, but it's hard to calculate it exactly, since it's charisma based and all.

How badly do you think the safe house mechanic is scumsided? I think the assassins phase is worth like 10% of EV in terms of information. So, I'm cool with running this if the safehouse 7p variant is 35%+ EV.

[Ircher]

That's fair.

Mountainous 5-2 is apparently only a 22% EV for town. Then, as I said, the safehouse mechanic also adds a raw 2% or so to the EV plus a lot of information, and that information is rather valuable. I would probably estimate the information gain at about 3-7%. So 22% + 2% + 5% = 29%. This is still on the low side, but if you were to do the forced confirm town, I think that would be enough to tip it to where you would like. (For reference, 5-2 w/ 1 Innocent has an EV of 24%, but when we factor in that the innocent occurs on the following night rather than the first, the EV should go up further.) You could also have it where the confirmed innocent only happens if mafia isn't forced to kill one of their own. I think this may be the best option as it to some extent mitigates swing.

I also think that players will be more forgiving of a scumsided setup versus a townsided one, so you could potentially run it without the confirmed innocent. I would likely add a disclaimer that the setup may be somewhat scumsided, but I think the setup would still be enjoyable in that instance.

[Hectic]

Alright! I think you're right and I'll go with the safehouse variant + scum having to confirm a safehoused player overnight.

Also, I'll have the 4 Assassins stick around as treestumps, but ask them to not spam. If they spam, I can just give them a warning and/or timeout.

You happy to give this a pass?

[Ircher]

Yeah definitely.
/pass

[Hectic]

Great, thank you as always for your help <3

I'll release this with the other PTs when the game is complete.