Commonly Asked Questions on Mafia Theory

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Post Post #177 (isolation #0) » Thu Nov 22, 2018 7:59 pm

Post by naturalbreadcrumbs »

In a Mountainous set-up, is it really possible for Town players, through only experience and skill, to raise the chances of a correct lynch above random selection? What's the consensus on this? Is Mafia a skill game or are Mafia players really only kidding themselves about the power of scumhunting to actually find scum?

This might sound a bit fatalistic but I was curious since the wiki has this whole thing about WIFOM and how scumtells change all the time and doubts that scumtells really work reliably.
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Post Post #179 (isolation #1) » Thu Nov 22, 2018 8:42 pm

Post by naturalbreadcrumbs »

What do you think is the reason for less experienced players lynching worse than random?
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Post Post #182 (isolation #2) » Fri Nov 23, 2018 5:52 pm

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I see. I guess that's why town PRs are pretty vital to the game.

Maybe I should try some Nightless games after I get enough newbie games under my belt.
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Post Post #184 (isolation #3) » Tue Nov 27, 2018 7:30 pm

Post by naturalbreadcrumbs »

What are VCA and NKA?
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Post Post #186 (isolation #4) » Wed Nov 28, 2018 1:37 pm

Post by naturalbreadcrumbs »

Oh, I see. So that would mean something like "player A accused/voted for player B, then A was nightkilled, so B must be scum"?
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Post Post #189 (isolation #5) » Thu Nov 29, 2018 6:03 pm

Post by naturalbreadcrumbs »

In post 187, callforjudgement wrote:That sort of reasoning is considered to be nightkill analysis, yes. Votecount analysis would be something like "player A has flipped scum, players B and C were normally very free with their votes but never voted for player A, that's suspicious".

Some people use this sort of analysis more than others. (For example, I normally check to see if someone's votes are consistent with their stated reasoning, but in shorter games, consistently voting town or consistently voting scum are both things that can easily happen to a townie by chance; so in short games, VCA is of limited use, and thus I don't really use it.)
But doesn't that run into WIFOM problems? If players know that people who mysteriously never voted for scum are likely to be under suspicion, doesn't that mean that they'll just adjust their play so that they vote for their scum teammate earlier in the wagon?
northsidegal wrote:
In post 183, Persivul wrote:
In post 177, naturalbreadcrumbs wrote:In a Mountainous set-up, is it really possible for Town players, through only experience and skill, to raise the chances of a correct lynch above random selection?
D1 - no.

After that, if VCA and NKA are properly applied - yes.
i fundamentally disagree with everyone who espouses the "day ones are useless" philosophy. reading people based on their play really doesn't change at all day to day, and that's not something that you can ever just ignore.
I can see why analyzing day 1 dialogue in the later days would prove to be useful, but on the first day itself, unless you get lucky and hit scum with a wagon, how would you hunt for scum? There's no inherent information distinguishing them from town, right?
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