Commonly Asked Questions on Mafia Theory

[northsidegal]

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.

[northsidegal]

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?

Do you believe that people lying and people telling the truth do both of those actions in the exact same way? If so, you would be factually incorrect.

In real life, at least, there are various traits of liars that can distinguish them from people telling the truth: that's the principle behind the polygraph (despite its dubious reliability) and police interrogations. This is perhaps a lot more noticeable in face to face mafia where the stress of continued lying gets to people in a way that might be a lot more obvious than could come across through a textual medium like a forum. That being said, in principle it's still visible through a forum – just because there aren't necessarily

objective

rules for what town do versus what scum do, that doesn't mean you can't analyze things within the context of the game: for example, if someone's thought process is consistent, if it seems like they have conviction in what they're saying, etc.

On something of a separate note (and I bring this up separately because I know that some people disagree with me), a tool that is almost always applicable regardless of the day phase would be using a player's meta. If someone posts a lot as town but doesn't post as much as scum and they're posting a lot in Day 1 of a game that you're in, well... that's something that points towards that person being town that you didn't need any flips to derive. That's obviously a very simple example, but there are much deeper things you could look at, all of which basically come back to the principle of "what's the difference between someone's townplay and their scumplay".


Trying to analyze everyone's alignment simply in terms of the information gained by flips is, in my opinion, almost certainly bound to get lose you games to scum who do things that you just don't expect: bussing, white flag gambits, nightkilling strange targets, etc.

[northsidegal]

Since this exists in all setups why shouldn't we assume it to be negligible and evaluate setups in their pure form as if all players were the same?

setups are, in one sense, evaluated as if all players were the same – that's EV. the difference between EV and actual results is the difference between the theoretical world where all players are the same and lynches are random, and reality.

[northsidegal]

Why can't we consider a middle-of-the-way scenario where players are not equal but they are not lynching randomly?

you can consider that, roughly. mathdino wrote a program that does it.

i would say that derivations from EV are caused by both. a great town can win a scumsided setup and vice versa. in the long run, if we assume that over time the number of strong towns rolled equals out with the number of strong scumteams rolled, i

think

that the results should show roughly how balanced a setup is.

i'm not an expert on game balancing really, but i'm pretty sure that's an alright definition of balance.

[northsidegal]

where are you seeing that on the wiki page? a jailkeeper's target receiving a PM is not according to normal guidelines, nor would i consider it common usage in pretty much any other setups. i also don't really see that said anywhere on the wiki page.

[northsidegal]

that's not really any sort of official page, it's just a personal project.