How do you develop charisma?

[mhsmith0]

Can you give a few examples of the posts you made where you were either developing or communicating your reads in those games? Specific examples might be better in terms of more focused advice.

[mhsmith0]

So for giggles I'll look at said game persivul mentioned (your iso is viewtopic.php?f=83&t=78386&user_select[]=31062 ) and discuss (more than just charisma type stuff fwiw)...

Spoiler:

Vote Count 1.17

Gamma Emerald (5): tris, Dunnstral, Ruby Red, Persivul, Something_Smart

(LYNCH)

Persivul (3): Flavor Leaf, Clemency, Plotinus

Not Voting (1): Gamma Emerald

With 9 players alive, it takes 5 to lynch.

Rooms and Post Restrictions

Plotinus, Flavor Leaf
Something Smart, tris
Gamma Emerald, Clemency
Persivul, Gamma Emerald, Dunnstral
Ruby Red, Clemency
Plotinus, tris
Something_Smart, Flavor Leaf

Get a Room

Not Voting (9): Persivul, Ruby Red, Gamma Emerald, Dunnstral, Something_Smart, tris, Plotinus, Flavor Leaf, Clemency

It takes 2n-1 votes to get a n player Room.

Infractions

Plotinus: 1

Mod notes:
A lynch has been achieved

Probably scum is on Gamma wagon.

Maybe my Dunn read is wrong?

I doubt that it makes any sense for any scum to be on the counterwagon, so Persivul wagon is probably all town.

So, why is Flavor the lead wagon? Does it really make any sense for scum!Flavor to not be on the town!Gamma Wagon in this setup? I think Plotinus, Clem, Flavor are all mechanically spewed town by this. VCA never lies.

This is collectively a bad read made for bad reasons. To discuss a bit more...
1) Say Persivul is town. Scum are MORE likely to be on the Persivul wagon than the Gamma wagon. It definitely depends on the player, but mislynches tend to attract villager votes at >rand rate, ESPECIALLY when the counterwagon is also town. If scum don't have to stick their necks out because town is gonna mislynch some potato, then why should you expect scum to stick their neck out? As an example, here's me in scum chat on n2 of a newbie game where I subbed in d2 where there was a super popular mislynch on the table...
Subject: Newbie 1714: Mafia Thread

Ironically, I'm actually VERY happy I was on that mislynch wagon. NOT being on that wagon is seemingly TMI.

I'd say I'm pretty good as town (NEVER mislynched outside a turbo, one time I tied at EOD but as a sub on a slot that had already gotten votes). As wolf I kinda suck (i keep getting quick lynched lol), but since I was wolf reading vandit before I got role pm I basically rolled with it. I think this game is locked if we hit the cop or jk. We're in trouble if kill is blocked though. Or if it's a vt flip (barring a row 1 scenario)

2) Say Persivul is a wolf. Why can't there be bussing (or, perhaps, weak distancing)? I might LEAN slightly town on the people who pushed/voted him, but in all cases I'd want to look more closely to be sure. Also, for competent scum like FL/Plot in a game where there's pretty low town power, I might not give any credit at all. idk clemency well enough to say if he'd bus in that situation or not, so maybe more potential non-team credit there? At any rate it'd be a minor point and not a major point, certainly not something worth hard-clearing someone off of.

PS if you want ot get better at vca try the exercise at viewtopic.php?f=5&t=73863 - I posted it a year and a half ago but I think it's pretty effective to get your head thinking in the right direction

PPS I can't speak for the players in the game (and I'm too lazy to bother reading other isos), but after this kind of open I'd be somewhat inclined to take your arguments less seriously, because they look like bad arguments.

Get a Room: Plotinus, Flavour Leaf

Hook me up, guys. The way for town to win the game is to coordinate in private in as many rooms as possible. I've moderated this setup a bunch of times and this is the best way, trust me. The more rooms there are, the harder scum has to work to be on top of the game. If you're town and a bit overwhelmed by the rooms, paradoxically, more rooms will make it better; it's a bit awkward when you're not in enough of them.

We need to lynch Persivul guys, he's scum. I waited until I was sure and went after other people who were doing scummy things because I can read him pretty well, but I've been sure since I voted him.

Point 1: Across the games that I've moderated with this setup,

70% of scum players complained in public about rooms

. Town were usually enthusiastic about them or at least neutral, though a few townies struggled to keep up if they were in fewer rooms than most people.

Point 2:

Selective listening

: When Persivul is trying to smear somebody and it turns out that his point is false, he completely ignores this information. For example, in 178-183, he ignores the clarification that Clemency's post restriction was 5 minutes away from expiring when I made that comment, so what I and Clemency understood my comment to mean was "I don't expect an answer in the next five minutes, but when you're free to talk about, please tell me..." He also continues to act like it's scummy that I'm pushing rooms when I've clarified multiple times that having modded this setup gives me insight into what the best strategy for town is. He has to do this because he knows that rooms are making it harder for him to control the game as scum.

He's not trying to find out the truth, he's just trying to push his agenda.

Point 3:

Tone

. Persivul tends to use a different tone when he's town than when he's scum.

I think Plotinus could be town for this. He’s definitely right wrt to his “enthusiasm” theory.

Doubling down on my Plotinus townread after ISOing him.

Plot was your strongest townread during the game, and this was super underdeveloped. Why should anyone sheep you on "he's town because he said something I agree with" and "I iso'd him, he's a villager". I have no particular reason to think that scum!plot is incapable of saying things that make sense (he did win "best scum" in last year's scummies fwiw) or making an iso that seems surface level villagery. So if I was in the game and reading this, I'd think you just made an overly strong read essentially based on air, and wouldn't be inclined to give much weight to it.

VOTE: Nancy
If Plotinus, Clemency, and Flavor are all town you have an 80% chance of being scum.

Are you scum here? In what world does scum!me or scum!anyone townclear 3 potential mislynches?

VOTE: Nancy
If Plotinus, Clemency, and Flavor are all town you have an 80% chance of being scum.

Are you scum here? In what world does scum!me or scum!anyone townclear 3 potential mislynches?

VOTE: Something_Smart

You’re unhappy I towncleared 3 of your mislynches, so now you’re pushing me? What possible townie thought process went into that vote? Answer: none.

SS made a bad vote on you, but you seemed happy enough to go off to the races on getting into a big fight with him. You eventually pulled out of the fight, but this sort of thing probably torched your credibility with him (maybe with others who were TR'ing him as well, but again lolreading)

How did Gamma ever get mislynched here? She was bleedingly obvtown.

This is the sort of comment that’s essentially needless and has the potential to antagonize the players in the game, all the more so given that you know that at least 2/4 of the people mislynching gamma were town.
You’re also not taking the time to evaluate the reasons why people hopped onto gamma and figure out if the lynch reasoning was fair, or even for that matter to try and see if there were particular hop-ons that looked wolfy

So, why is Flavor the lead wagon?

Because he came in with an illogical push on me - saying that Plotinus being alive indicates I'm scum.

Does it really make any sense for scum!Flavor to not be on the town!Gamma Wagon in this setup? I think Plotinus, Clem, Flavor are all mechanically spewed town by this. VCA never lies.

Please tell me you're not serious about this.

Can you link/quote me on that?

You think there was no scum on the Gamma wagon? because I’m pretty sure there was a least one.

This is kind of an interesting thing to poke at, and has potential to get somewhere useful. If Persivul thinks there’s 0 wolves on the gamma wagon, what’s his headspace about the game? He (supposedly) knows he’s town, so he knows that town was a pretty big mess d1… is he doing anything about that gamestate read? If so, what? If not, that’s something useful to push harder on.
Up to this point it seemed like you were scumreading him for being the d1 counterwagon and for toxicity; for most people, that’s not going to be very scum-indicative. You usually need to add meat to the case to get people interested in following you.

Oh, you said you’re then highest town read.

It’s probably me, then. I don’t like that, I made a comment in my room with Plot thinking you’re trying to buddy up to me even subtly before I posted after you replaced in.

That’s fine but that’s something I usually do with my stronger townreads. Your play here reminds me a lot of YGM. You also come across extremely genuine in your posts but I understand why you’d be paranoid of that, given your feelings on my predecessor.

I’m not sure why you’d think that before now though. I think mechanically speaking, you’re less likely to be scum due to VCA, eventhough I’m getting a lot of shit about that from some people.

I’m not going to bother looking for evidence of people giving you shit for your VCA to comment on those specifics, but your VCA as presented deserved to get a fair amount of criticism, and did not deserve sheeping.

And how about instead of listening to scummy plotinus in a 1 on 1 situation - where he's statistically, from your point of view, one of the most likely people to be scum, you come out here and play with the whole thread?

Do you see the scum motivation in Plotinus swooping in, stopping your other neighborhood from forming, and talking to you in private where he can manipulate you without other people seeing what he's doing and

hiding information from you

What information is he hiding from me?

!INFRACTION! - You cannot talk to or about Plotinus right now
Please be careful that referring to people you cannot talk about in third person also breaks your post restriction

You’re right, gambler’s fallacy was the wrong term.

I’m just saying even if something has a 1% chance, there’s always the chance that could have been the one picked. It’s a raffle, and some people bought more tickets.

If you are completely off put, vote for the person with the higher chance statistically of being scum, sure. I’m town with the slot that had the highest chances, though, so I don’t necessarily agree with that path.

@Nancy - I was playing with the mindset there was 1 scum off the wagon for the purpose of being off of it, which is why I was pushing for Clemency as scum.

Yeah, if scum is offwagon, then I townread you and Plotinus over Clemency.

I think for today though, I prefer to lynch the very likely scum who wad ONwagon, since I’m far more certain that at least one scum was onwagon than off rn.

What do you make of both SS and Persivul having very similar reactions to my VCA read?

@Dunn, I’d like your thoughts on this as well. Thanks.

!INFRACTION! - You cannot talk to or about Plotinus right now

You’re right, gambler’s fallacy was the wrong term.

I’m just saying even if something has a 1% chance, there’s always the chance that could have been the one picked. It’s a raffle, and some people bought more tickets.

If you are completely off put, vote for the person with the higher chance statistically of being scum, sure. I’m town with the slot that had the highest chances, though, so I don’t necessarily agree with that path.

@Nancy - I was playing with the mindset there was 1 scum off the wagon for the purpose of being off of it, which is why I was pushing for Clemency as scum.

Yeah, if scum is offwagon, then I townread you and Plotinus over Clemency.

I think for today though, I prefer to lynch the very likely scum who wad ONwagon, since I’m far more certain that at least one scum was onwagon than off rn.

What do you make of both SS and Persivul having very similar reactions to my VCA read?

@Dunn, I’d like your thoughts on this as well. Thanks.

Note that plurality lynch is in effect, but it would have roleblocked our power role. Those off wagon people, do they still look so towny?
Reread the relevant sections

I have posted in my room with Clemency and have not gotten any response as of yet.

Okay, I’m thinking that Flavor is right about you, so if/probably scum was onwagon, it’s not you.

Flavor, you, Plotinus are my top 3 towns rn.

!INFRACTION! - You cannot talk to or about Plotinus right now

Since this is your third infraction, you have lost room voting priviledges

I can’t speak to whether this was relevant at all, but this sort of sequence probably loses you credibility among your fellow players.

Nancy
Dunn
Flavor

SS
Clemency
Persivul

This is late d2, and your reads are a bit > rand, but not heavily so. Were town to lynch in your preferred order, it would lose (unless you were able to redirect a kill).
Additionally: skimming your ISO it’s pretty hard to see why you scumread clemency beyond an implied POE given your stated townreads.

Probably one other point which I think is worth highlighting and bringing outside the spoiler: d2 you were thinking town on dunn and plot, and d3 you were still town on plot, and null at worst on dunn (i think?) So based on your headspace, there was a very serious chance dunn would incorrectly vote plot in lylo to end the game. Given that, what work were you doing to interact with dunn's read on plot? Not just "here's why I think plot is town" (as noted before, that was super underdeveloped), but "here's why dunn says he thinks plot is a wolf, and here's why that's wrong".

There are some people who can yell a lot and basically say "I'm right I'm right I'm right" and expect people to sheep them (this works even better if you can pull it off as scum ), but that's not particularly functional charisma imo. It sounds like what you really need is
1) A more solid basis for your reads
2) Better expression of the basis of your reads
3) Willingness to interact with people (particularly if you can do it in a non hostile manner)

One example (feel free to take it or leave it)

Spoiler:

scum team is azure (who i was incorrectly townreading), Phighter (d2 lynch, mysteriouslad [aka wgeurts] subbed out for him d2), and spider. mmmbop subbed in for ljtrigirl d2 as well.

(d2 vote count)
Phighter (6) yellow, azure, royal ape, pisskop, mmmbop, spider
royal ape (3) mhsmith0, phighter, titus
spider (1) soah
not voting (1) secondhand revenant
Phi flipped scum roleblocker, n2 soah was shot flipped vt

(when I get started, vc is pisskop, yellow, titus [ALL TOWN] voting me, and everyone else not voting)

One of the things I do from time to time is chart interactions. And to clarify, by interactions I mean instances where one player is talking TO a different player. It's easy to talk ABOUT another player as a wolf (even a buddy), but it's fairly common for wolves to avoid talking to each other in thread, in part because it's hard to have in-thread conversations that don't seem forced or awkward or suspicious (since, of course, wolves have no actual questions for each other for the most part).

(REDACTED b/c ms doesn't like multi-spoilers)

Interactions Conclusions:
1) SR and Titus seem to be very clear given the scale of their interactions. I also didn't see anything in the back and forth between SR and ML/Phighter that seemed staged, ditto Titus and ML/Phighter. It seemed a natural process of SR getting suspicious, and it's a similar story for Titus thinking he's town (quality of the read aside).

2) There isn't the same scale for Azure, but I didn't think that the back and forth between them was staged at all. I'm pretty comfortable thinking he's clear as well at this point.

3) Notable on the other side is spider, whose first interaction with the Phighter/ML slot came almost immediately before he hammered. Spider's general absence makes it harder to know for sure, but an afk buddy might explain a few things about the game state (I'll get back to this a bit later).

Like compare wgeurts asking about the tell to investigate, versus those who just outright attack with no questions.
wgeurts is scumhunting trying to figure out whether I'm blowing hard.
Thor, who has the most experience with the players who I drew my play from, has remained utterly silent.

Theoretically this looks bad for titus, but she hung with that town read pretty hard, even in a spot where the tide was turning and bussing or just going neutral on the read would have been really easy. Compare this to mini 1782
http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.ph ... er_sort=Go
where Titus bussed Huntress early D3 on a roleblocker guilty (see 1576 and quick turnaround at 1582), and "gave up" on scum-buddy #2 Heur when he was doomed (see 1875). I don't have extensive meta on how often Titus busses, but I don't get the feeling that wolf!titus would hard-stick with a buddy under heavy fire who was likely doomed all that often. Like, at least 80% of the time I bet she abandons ship there if she's a wolf, maybe even well before that point.

{MysteriousLad}
{soah}
{UpsideDownChuck}
{titus}
{thor}
{yellow}
{Second Rev, Azure, Royal Ape, ljtrigirl, spider}
{smith}

After having reviewed yellow I can confidentely say I disagree fully with Smith's reasons for his read on that slot. If anything yellow's reactions to the bad push are slightly more inclined to come from town.

If ML was a goon I'd be more suspicious of Titus positioning here, but given that he was an RB, I'd guess that he just actively chose to dump actual townies at the top of his list. Not conclusive but suggestive.

Yellow has made it overwhelmingly clear that she never voted Titus as a genuine vote, but to demonstrate the sites voting mechanics.
Do you disagree?
I find it a little hard to believe you're unaware of this, neither do I understand why you persist.

I've got nowhere better to vote, half of the players are still without content and the rest are town reads to some degree. Please explain yourself smith.
VOTE: mhsmith0
Your push and read completely false and much of your reasoning doesn't add up either.

Pretty flagrant chainsawing for yellow there. The question is whether it was WK'ing a buddy or just pocketing, or whether there was some other strategic goal in mind. I don't think it's immediately obvious from the sequence, though other stuff makes yellow look relatively better I think.

I'd lynch any of Azure, Titus, or soah today, I think.

I'd guess she was 0 for 3 in her pop in. Also a pretty wishy-washy way to describe it.

I'm not really seeing the obv!town from yellow, but maybe I'm just being a dumbass. Is it as soah described or more than that?

[MENTION=1161]Yellow[/MENTION]: were you aware that your vote on Titus wasn't counted when you made it? If so why didn't you just tell me when I first asked you about it?

Yellow misunderstood a line of arguing from me that would be difficult to sincerely misunderstand as a wolf.

As soah mentioned, yellow has been active in engaged among a playerlist that would likely be intimidating to new scum.

Yellow has changed votes from smith to titus in a spot where she didn't really need to as wolf (this assumes you and Titus are both town, but I think that's a decent assumption at least in your case). I'm of the opinion that changing course is tough to do naturally as a wolf, moreso than just coming up with a case.

Presuming Titus is in fact town (which seems likely - beyond her play lining up with her town meta in general, 1-shot watcher is a pretty ballsy fake claim to make in that spot while not being under pressure), this is a reasonable point in yellow's favor as well.

This concerns me. You've clearly formed an opinion, so why not act on it?

I'd like to expound on this point. You've spent a lot of time and energy trying chip at SR. See, when mhsmith0 tried that with me, at least he kept his vote on me (and still has it there). This measure of conviction is another reason I am willing to table my read on him for the time being.
Your exchange with SR, on the other hand, appears like you're trying to rekindle the wagon on SR. All well and good, but for the fact that you aren't voting. It leaves the impression that you want to put his neck on the line without risking yours.

This was a notable sequence from Yellow addressed to ML on day 1. That she didn't vote him for it is a negative, but pointing it out is still a plus.

Seconded.

Bit late, thirded.

I'm pretty certain there is evil within ML, soah and titus. Even if LJ is evil - this is just such an easy thing to jump on. But especially if she is good.

Post ML/Phi flip, this becomes a better point.

Oh, and it looks like there's a vote againat me already. Yep, this is the Champs game all over again. Except this time, instead of letting it go like I did before, which placed a wolf firmly in my definite town read spectrum, I'll keep my suspicions.

I'm not entirely comfortable with the fact Azure comes in, decides to scan the thread, and comments on nothing besides the fact he's already been voted. Then he adds some weird non-relevant comment to the fact he had been voted.
I doubt he had read the entire thread either as he claims due to the fact he failed to realise the number of votes on him, which would have been apparent otherwise.

Yeah, ok. I definitely feel ok with Mysterious Lad enough for D1, maybe D2.

Lazy town read on the slot.

VOTE: Azure

Why?

..............
Are you serious?

That post officially puts mhsmith on my "willing to lynch" list for D1.

Lazy "willing to lynch" reason. Worse now that it comes after ML's red flip.

Thor wagon villagery af, which actually makes me a teensy bit nervous I'd expect a wolf to bus in this spot and try and get deep wolf positioning, though that could be wildly premature (or that could be Titus).

Wagon was SR, yellow, UDC, soah, Titus at that point

If RA is telling the truth about not having seen mhsmith0's vote on him when he voted mhsmith, then his response to that question is still really over defensive in a wolfy way. If he's lying then he's just a wolf.

Remains a good point

Gun to my head, would vote ml.
Smith still needs rope.

[MENTION=496]Titus[/MENTION]: What changed from this point to EOD2 when you were strong town on phighter?

I just read the whole thread.
I'm ready to lock-clear SR and Yellow, and I feel reasonably good about smith and Titus as well.
Azure is effectively null, but seems unlikely to be partnered with many of the players in the game.
That leaves Ape, Phighter, pisskop, lj, and Spider. I'm cautiously optimistic that the wolves are contained in this group.

This is largely where I'm at, with Phighter now flipped red. I'd put pisskop as null-town, ditto azure, with the last wolves likely inside RA, mmmBop, spider.

has there been a contradictionto my voting?
dont do that dumb thing people do where they latch onto active players because they lose sight

You're right. The activity in this game is really low. It's hard to solve when nothing new is happening.
It probably wouldn't hurt to lynch a non-active, which at this point gives us a pool of Royal Ape, ljtrigirl, and Spider to choose from.
VOTE: Royal Ape

Ya, haven't left yet. I had to at least see who was voting me and why.
It's certainly possible that evil is in the low/non-voters - but "it probably wouldn't hurt to lynch a non-active" - it actually does hurt. Use your vote to pressure people that can react to votes - voting into a void gives you nothing. Use seer views and vig shots on the nothingness - but voting there is just boring and leads to even less posting because there is no dialog going on.
VOTE: Yellow

[MENTION=208]Royal Ape[/MENTION]: Can you remind me what was driving your yellow vote here? It seems like this was a vote whip to get her to do something other than "lynch a non-active"; was there more to it or not? I'd asked this at http://www.mafiauniverse.com/forums/thr ... post537270, I don't recall seeing a response. Please and thank you.

Do you think bop is wrong?
Why do you think he disagrees with you?

I do.
Because he has a different opinion, is all.

His take on it was (if I might be allowed to try to read between the lines a bit) that your interpretation of my post was so ridiculous that it couldn't plausibly be an honest assessment on your part.
He's probably a villager for that, right? He'd really be putting himself out on a limb to make that type of an attack to push a mislynch?

What?
Are you for real?
That's not a reason to clear someone soah.
Like at all.
Right now because I am a bit slanky I'm an easy ass mislynch. MmmBop doesn't need an excuse to vote me now -- he can just say I wasn't being up to par when I flip town.
What's plissoken's problem, soah?

Not sure how this makes mmmBop look. One of those things that I want to think through more.

Azure's Phighter case:
http://www.mafiauniverse.com/forums/thr ... post538892
this doesn't seem like bussing to me. it's true that people sometimes put more into their bussing cases, but this is a LOT of effort to throw into that case, and it doens't ring false to me at all

People, regardless of alignment, are too busy playing the "gotcha" game and not communicating. Too focused on "proving" they are right rather than scumhunting or townhunting.
[MENTION=745]Phighter[/MENTION] [MENTION=208]Royal Ape[/MENTION] [MENTION=1173]pisskop[/MENTION], y'all should claim.

PR hunting.
VOTE: Titus

I'm skeptical that this was a vote on a buddy. OTOH, it's for such a flagrantly stupid and lazy reason I won't consider it disqualifying. I'm still skeptical though.

VOTE: Royal Ape
Bite me.

Note that this was his 2nd choice of a counter wagon compared to titus. Possible distancing/bussing vote, but I think it's not strongly conclusive on RA.

Piss: scum
Bop: town
Soah: town
Azure: null
Spider: scum
Royal Ape: scum
Secondhand: null
Yellow: null
Mhsmith: town
Titus: scum

Generically, it's likely there's a buddy in scum and a buddy in null or town. "Scum" buddy likelier to be Spider or RA IMO, don't think it's pisskop or titus. Bop seems the unsupported town read here.

...
Second
My reads are
Pisskop/SR/mhsmith scum

I'm guessing zero wolves in this list btw

What the hell is Spider's deal?

probably should have been replaced N1, definitely needs to be replaced N2.

Thoughts on CFDing onto it?

... some time later...

VOTE: Spider

Wtf is this?

Super weird response when Phighter had stated a "scum read" on Spider not one hour before.

we have an explicit VT claim from Royal Ape, who's been shamelessly useless basically all game long, whose EOD1 was sketchy, and whose disinterest in the game appears to be wolf-indicative by meta. Why are people voting elsewhere?

THIS

Conceivable theater sheep, conceivable attempt to get a villager counter-wagon.

A wagon not on you that can hit scum. You should vote it.

Yeah wagon that surfaces outta midair fifteen minutes before eod
Naw

Yeah and guess what, it's the best way to lynch scum.
Are you townreading Spider? Yes or no.
You being stubborn is effectively saying pick between two townreads to lynch and I don't want to do that.

I have a hard time reading this as a theater conversation between wolf bros in crunch time. That said, the meat of the push (let's CFD late) doens't look great given day one's:

So my townreads could get lynched if I don't choose.
Did either claim?

Well you could try and drive a late counter-wagon. Nearly 2 hours left, that's time if people stick around.

Not good for game health. Thor or Azure should flip so people can get a good idea as to Gamestate.

If Titus is a wolf (which I don't believe to be the case), then her buddy is probably just RA. Definitely not my first pick, but the idea isn't crazy.

I'd still rather kill Royal, but if it's Phighter then I hope he flips red. If he does I'll re-read ML/Phighter for interactions, if he flips green I'll be having words with his wagon on D3.

why dont you think its possible for v/v wagons.

Insipid question at eod. If a villager, Phighter was a PR (based on softing), and had the potential to be useful. RA chose to do nothing most of the game, and outed as a VT, and was pretty clearly a possible wolf. Thinking RA was the optimal lynch is something far different from dismissing the possibility that it was v/v.

VCA notes:

1) Day one was a pretty blah day by and large in terms of wagons, with no one getting over 4 votes until very late in the day. I think this largely suggests disinterested wolves, probably because villagers were all of the wagons of note.

2) I'm somewhat skeptical that Royal Ape dumps his vote onto Azure to tie up with Thor, with ML as his buddy being #3. Wolves occasionally bunch, but with Thor being a villager with villagers on that wagon and harder pushes on Thor than Azure, it's a weird push to make there. In the event that LJT (now mmmBop) is a wolf, then it'd be very strange for RA to hop on that wagon in that spot and bunch up for seemingly no good reason at all.

3) Spider's Thor vote was pretty lazy, http://www.mafiauniverse.com/forums/thr ... post523719, for what was essentially the nail in Thor's coffin. Also, in the event that spider is a wolf, http://www.mafiauniverse.com/forums/thr ... post523727 seems likely to have spewed Azure/RA town.

4) Day two had a really interesting sequence where Phighter went up to 3 votes, then Royal Ape went up to 4 votes as the air went out of the Phighter wagon, with Yellow and Titus hopping aboard my push. Normally I'd suggest that there's always a wolf inside {RA, Yellow, Titus}, but there is a very serious possibility that Phighter's two buddies were afk, and that it simply happened naturally. But in a world where mmmBop (not yet subbed in) and Spider (afk for almost the whole day) were not the duo exactly, mechanically that set becomes much more suspicious.

5) EOD2 had basically the entire board against Phighter, with Titus and myself the only holdouts. Given the extreme momentum against Phighter I'd say direct bussing was overwhelmingly likely there from at least one and likelier two players. If Phighter had flipped green SR's "on but not REALLY on" bit might be suspicious but in a red flip I'd be surprised to see him be off when it's so much easier and more tempting to just be directly on wagon.



Overall I'd say that SR, Yellow, Titus, Azure, and pisskop are all pretty clear, with the last two wolves likely inside {Royal Ape, spider, mmmBop} (all possible bussers). Most likely it's just spider and mmmBop. Of the two I'd say spider is a bit likelier so
VOTE: spider

PS http://www.mafiauniverse.com/forums/thr ... post541053 and http://www.mafiauniverse.com/forums/thr ... post541174 are very strangely thought out for someone who supposedly hadn't been around for the whole day. In fairness, http://www.mafiauniverse.com/forums/thr ... post540687 implies that there had been some level of reading before actively posting, but it still seems like something that had been pre-meditated and possibly discussed collectively with wolf bros before coming on to share. Stuff like:

"evolution of the reads is always believable",
"but his reads have been consistent and isn't afraid to push strongly"
"A bit lower than the other two due to some inconsistencies in posts I'd like to work out in real time"
"and although I can sympathize with his problems about the game being slower than he's used to"
"I don't think she shows much depth in her reads, which I find easily replicable as scum - she hasn't shown breadth which imo is harder to fake than depth of pushes"

pings as likely not just a function of a quick skim before showing up at EOD.

I was wrong. Nothing more to say. I was just flat out wrong.

Probly gonna vote you if you can't justify it in some way. I disliked that you ignored me asking about you thinking me and ML might be w/w yesterday.

I don't recall what you're talking about. I believe I asked for direction to anything I missed. You never directed me. There's zero reason not to answer anything.

Phighter and ML just felt really town from the get go being the only ones who actually wanted to vote scum.

Right now, I'm curious why Phighter DID NOT want to vote Spider given it was realistically his best chance at survival and he did everything but that and claim.

The bit about why she was town-reading phighter sounds consistent with my recollection of her posts previously (probably worth verifying at some point but that's my recollection). I don't think that Titus fakes conf!bias like this as a wolf (or at least I don't remember seeing it from her in the few games I've seen).

(the aftermath)

holy dingledongers.
.
should spoiler the quotes or something. cant be assed to read that on a phone, bbl

Okay, mhsmith0, you win. If that wasn't town, then it was the most effort I've ever seen a wolf put into fake cases (myself excluded, of course).

[UNV]mhsmith0[/UNV]

Can you please explain your Spider vote more succinctly?

Relatively succinct version of the spider case:

1) There are a lot of people who seem villagery and spider isn't one of them

2) I don't think that Royal Ape fits with Phighter the same way spider and bop do (and I'm quite skeptical that the team is RA / Phigher / mmmBop exactly)

3) Phighter was probably bussed by at least one wolf and probably two, and spider's hammer post was pretty easy for a buddy to make

4) Spider's EOD stuff seemed weirdly well informed for someone who supposedly hadn't been around the whole day (this particular point is weaker - it's conceivable he showed up before EOD, spent a while reading, and then popped in; as with the post on Royal Ape's D1 pop-in, it's suggestive, not damning or conclusive on its own).

It would be a strange time to bus. Presuming 10v3, and seeing a rb lynch in the books, one more wolf lynch (especially if a pr like ninja) nearly seals it, presuming town has some useful powers left over (reasonable game balance practically demands it, especially given the standard MU open format is a full cop with n0 peek and no scum PRs). Not impossible, true, but unlikely.

Id say my performance this game is highly unusual compared to my typical wolf game. The ms game I won as wolf (there's only one) was newbie 1714, my iOS was http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.ph ... er_sort=Go. In that game, I subbed on d2, and post #30 was where I hammered beeboy in d3 to end it. My next 70 posts were all post game; over the span of two day phases (though they were both short) I made very few posts, and even fewer of substance. It was a similar thing in star fox (the only other time I've won as wolf outside a turbo); I was lurky and low-content there as well. Udc made the comment that when I post a lot as a wolf I tend to be wolfy, and I think he's correct (certainly in fruit salad that worked out very poorly for me).

As a wolf, I tend to be highly non-confident, nervous, hesitant etc. It's one thing to say "people can manipulate their meta" it's another entirely to be good at it, or to believe you're good at it. I don't think I'm good at imitating my town game, and experience has shown that when I try to do so, it goes badly. I tend to be aggressive as town, and I tend to be passive as a wolf, and (outside of turbos where it's REALLY obvious), towns tend to be bad at telling the difference. Is it possible I intentionally went counter to my normal wolf meta in this game (and did a sufficiently convincing job of it to snow udc, Thor, AND soah, all of whom are very good), or that I've just been getting a shit-load of coaching in wolf chat? Sure. But Occam's razor suggests that it's pretty unlikely, and that Im just town.

Wrt what you've done, it's reasonably consistent with what bussing might look like in that scenario. Am I sure you were bussing there? Of course not. But you look like a likelier busser in that spot than soah (duh), pisskop, Sr, or azure, and I'd throw yellow into there as well. So either at least one non-ph wolf was off wagon (and since Sr was essentially on wagon, that means Titus exactly), or it was RA/spider exactly (plausible) or you're the next most likely suspect. I don't really think that's an unreasonable basis of suspicion. That said, my vote is currently on spider, and if spider flips red, and especially if red pr, then I'm really not all that worried about what happens next.

I agree that scum is very likely to hammer a partner. I know old meta suggested the 3rd person on the wagon was the scum, but at least from personal experience, I tend to hold out to the very last second. I don't want to accidentally jump on a partner too early, and allow others to feel encouraged to lynch. If anything, I prefer an "intent to hammer" (in a majority situation) with a stall of some sort, hoping they'll wriggle out of it somehow (while looking all stern about their apparent scumminess).

I haven't been able to be around for either of our EOD's so far. It's like a different game then. I re-read yesterday's end, I think you're both right.

Something else has occurred to me too.

POSTING REQUIREMENT:
You must post at least fifteen (15) times per Day Phase. I reserve the right to sub you without warning or notice. I will send a prod PM if you haven't posted in over 48 hours of day phase time.

I don't know about here, but on MS, we're told when someone's been prodded. He's earned at least four prods at this point. That is, unless he has been active in this game's

other thread

.

VOTE: Spider

I like that example because it's a case where I'd played pretty poorly for a while, but was able to express clearly and effectively who I thought was a wolf, and my points were good enough to drag people onto the wagon I preferred, and I did it despite having gotten into lengthy fights with royal ape and yellow (both town) and having titus (also town) spending most of the game tunnelling on me. Is that the only way to do it? No, but it's an example of coming up with reasonably good reasons for reads AND (just as importantly) expressing them reasonably clearly and effectively.

It's not the only way to do it, but I think that it's a decent example of a useful approach. Obv you don't need to wall the same way I did there, but if you spend more time working on creating substantive bases for reads, you'll be better able to explain them, AND you'll be better able to ask useful and interesting questions of other people that will help you to develop better reads on THEM.

Just my $0.02 tho, feel free to take it or leave it

[mhsmith0]

oh and i'll break out the vca exercise link - I do think it's a helpful exercise in that type of analysis fwiw (the one acidphoenix presented on that thread was decent too imo)
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=73863

[mhsmith0]

What specifically is confusing you there, I can reword it.

How do you persuade without cases?

Cynical answer: be in a game with a lot of sheepy players and leverage your rep

Not sure what ank answer will be, but my advice would instead be to work on your cases and work on communicating clearly before trying to sidestep the work of making cases and actually explaining why someone is scum (or, for that matter, why someone is town). Your reads and read bases, as presented, in that game mainly shouldn't have been sheeped. That you were correct about persivul being a wolf I don't think changes the answer. just my $0.02 though *shrugs*

I'll also say that if you agree that site townplay is a consistent problem, and maybe even to the point where you'd agree with:

Persuasion for scum is nothing more than getting town to believe you are town. Some might argue and say the job of scum is to get town to lynch each other. This ignores the cardinal rule of scum-play: Town is dumb and they will find their own mis-lynches without you guiding them.

better and clearer communication is a good way to be part of the solution.

[mhsmith0]

I can't speak to how right she is typically, so can't really judge on that basis. In her persivul game, her reads were very slightly > rand, and I think there was a real issue with the underlying basis of the reads. To the extent that the *real* reason is gut/intuition/etc, that may be fine (in which case the real question is how to honestly communicate that it's really intuition and that the details/explanations behind it will inherently be unreliable), but the substantive stuff communicated was (even if you unpack a lack of clarity) mainly stuff that wouldn't have been convincing even if communicated better.

I also think there's generically useful stuff like "if you think a fight it town/town, what can you do to try and break it up" that gets outside of "making cases" but is still pretty helpful in terms of making the environment healthier (and, for bonus points, is ALSO potentially healthier for getting people to listen to you more by proving yourself to be a productive thread presence).

[mhsmith0]

@mhsmith0,

I think mechanics - not being able to talk about whomever you had a room with, really hurt, so if you could find a game of mine to critique without those specific mechanics, it would be more helpful. I suggest either/both Starcraft Mafia, 1 and 2. Thanks.

My 30 second advice re the starcraft games is to post less. In both you (including your hydra buddy, and idk who posted more) were the #1 poster, and it's easy for the good points you want to make to be drowned out in the noise. I cannot speak for the people in the game, but I don't think it's tremendously unusual to substantially ignore whoever is the #1 poster in the game, particularly if there's a substantial amount of posts that aren't actively useful (it's 30 seconds, so I can't say what % of posts were actively useful, but at any rate, a posting rate of >20 per day is on the high side, and in particular was on the high side compared to the other players in the game).

I also think that large themes seem to be particularly poor examples of town play in general, and thread bloat is almost certainly a big part of that story. IMO the standard that is required to have people care about what you have to say is even higher in those sorts of games, given that there's just such a massive amount of noise that goes up against the actual signal of useful info. I'd probably tend not to overweigh those kinds of setups too much in terms of how people engage you, though if there are particular pushes you made or things you said that you thought deserved more care and attention I'd be happy to look into them. Just much harder to try and sift from a >500 post iso and figure out what things in particular you feel like you should have gotten more traction on.

[mhsmith0]

OK so I looked a bit more into the starcraft 2 game...

1) Post less. Seriously. Your hydra was the #1 poster for the entire game thread even with dying n1. If you're exhausting most of the other players, even if you’re making good points, there's very good odds no one will care at all about your reads.

2) If you die n1, no one's gonna go back and reread you later on. This is ESPECIALLY true if your iso is far too big to easily pick out the useful stuff. This is something you won't have a lot of control over, so I wouldn't worry overly much about it, just know that it's a thing that happens. If you want to be read after you're nk'd though, maybe on d2/3 put effort into reading the iso's of dead townies and creating an environment of looking back and caring what dead villagers had to say? idk if it'd actually work tho *shrugs*

3) If you hammer a townie d1 and die that night, you’re particularly unlikely to be listened to. Even more so if your hammer vote casts shade on some other townie. Otoh looking around the hammer vote timing, varsoon’s shitty ass fake claim introduced a lot of noise into the game state, none of which actually helped town (there’s probably a good lesson here about not fake claiming as town btw). It’s harder to go back and reread and pick up useful stuff if townie-generated bullshit is messing with the thread state.

4) At one point, you had quite good reads (scum pool of 4 people, 2 of which were scum), but by the end of the day, you were voting villagers (PF for a while, then hammered a townie), said to kill mew (a townie), and then in your hammer vote said to kill varsoon (also a townie) given the upcoming town flip. By the end of the game, town had listened to you (whether intentionally or not) in lynching PF (town) and jjh (wolf), and ignored your wishes in not lynching mew (town), varsoon (town), and pintu (wolf). Overall, I think you’re correct in that your influence was low, but I’m not sold that you had the kind of god-tier reads that would merit any kind of blind sheeping.

5) Just skimming your ISO, even knowing that you had a scumread on jjh, it took me a substantial amount of time/effort for me to figure out *why* you had said scumread. More below...

Spoiler:

You were asked about mew and explained that, but looking through your iso from viewtopic.php?f=3&t=78296&user_select%5B%5D=32204, and I don’t see much. You disliked nico’s opening (but I don’t think you really explained what was suspicious about it), made an offhand note about ignoring a question

Nico's got a very old habit of signing up for games and ghosting and I'm worried it's resurfacing here, so I'd say it's NAI or even lean-scum.
:/

Based on that quote she made and conveniently ignoring my question, makes it closer to a scumlean for me.

And I didn’t see much else. You backed off of that case when she quoted that she had only wanted to be a replacement, invalidating (some? All of?) your original suspicion basis

I clearly said '/in to replace' in the sign-up thread.......

/in to replace

UNVOTE:

I don’t know what Nico is but I unvoted her because she clearly refuted, my main reason for initially scumreading her.
Therefore, she is a big fat null for me, atm.
~Nancy until further notce. Ari won’t be able to do much posting until next week.

And looking through page 2 of your iso, I don’t really see much that justifies the jjh push.

I feel more confident where my vote is currently as jjh has done nothing to couner my scumlean on Nico.

Isn’t nothing, but it isn’t much.
You eventually gave out

1195
In Labrynth, town!Nico doubled and tripled down that she was a “flip-based” player and didn’t vote on D1 and then she puts a naked vote on Stw, before replacing out. What has jjh done here that is townie?
Scum!Nico also placed on RVS vote on RR, due to some game-related vendetta, never moved it and then replaced out. Plus there was the whole AtE about her being upset about being “shanghaid” into the game. Perhaps, her Baa bah blacksheep thing was even a possible scumclaim? She actually crumbs as scum, seriously.
jjh’s entrance didn’t exactly give me townie vibes either.

but it took a while to get there, and it’s pretty solidly buried in the middle-late part of your iso.

I think for me, where I’m largely at is

1) Your reads aren’t substantially better than rand (your reads in that particular game were decently > rand, but that’s also the game you’re citing as being a particularly good reads game so I wouldn’t think it’s necessarily representative), so blindly sheeping your reads just b/c they’re your reads seems unwise for generic townie x

2) Your reads tend to be unexplained, and buried amongst a giant mound of overposting (this may be a hydra specific thing though, suk2 didn't feature the same disproportionate overposting compared to the rest of the board - alternatively, your personal preferred amount of posting per day may be greater than the ms standard, this is something you could speak to better than I could *shrugs*). This makes it very difficult for people to understand your headspace, and the more effort it takes for someone to even understand what it is you’re thinking (and especially why you’re thinking it), the easier it is for them to just not care about what you have to say

3) The bases of your reads, when explained, seem hit and miss (I’m leaning more on the Pesivul game [particularly the vca silliness] than the starcraft game here, but even in the starcraft game, there was a reasonable case on jjh slot but it wasn’t the sort of thing that’s any kind of lockscum case that, on its merits alone, should drive heavy sheeping [as an aside, if I'm a villager reading that, I feel like my reaction would be along the lines of "yeah I don't mind him dying and could potentially compromise there" as opposed to "kill kill kill"). It’s pretty unclear whether you’re relying more heavily on gut/intuition (in which case maybe be clearer about that) or whether you’re relying on what seem like a relatively mediocre set of tells (in which case I’d advise you to work on creating a better list of tells).

4) I think there are specific things you can do to make it likelier people will listen to you (avoid spamming up the thread; be clearer on your reasons, even if/when they’re fuzzier stuff like gut/intuition; intervene when you think there are unproductive town/town fights and work to understand what’s driving those fights to effectively break them up), but I think you can probably profit by taking a step back and realizing that your reads aren’t as good as you think they are. I can now think of 3 of your town games I’ve observed (sukilimas 2 on MU, the persivul game here, starcraft 2 here), and if I presume that this largely represents the range of your reads quality (suk2 obviously the poorer one here), overall it seems in the ballpark of =rand reads, maybe a touch above. Note that I haven’t taken the time to look at the quality of your TOWN reads (focusing on your scum reads / voting range) so it’s possible your town reads are where your strength lies, in which case maybe what you need to be doing is (IF that’s true) doing more work on getting people to correctly town read each other and creating better POEs to solve the game with.

[mhsmith0]

Mafia is easy just ask yourself

Who would RadiantCowbells be voting in this situation

Then you vote

that person

RadiantCowbells

I fixed your typos

[mhsmith0]

More seriously, I think the list of people who fit “sheep player x just because they state their reads” is insanely low, and I don’t think any of them have ever asked for that treatment, and they’re all basically “you should lynch them d3 if they’re still alive without wolf pelts” people anyway

[mhsmith0]

cases are actually detrimental in a lot of ways because you allow scum to match their play to be consistent with what you are arguing against while muddying the case at the same time

this.

fwiw i disagree with this point, particularly when it comes to discussing actions a player has already taken

This player did x, y, z and they looked like scum actions/posts because ""
This player's interactions with a flipped wolf looked like they were teammates
This player's treatment of the wagon on a now dead wolf was suspicious because ""
This player's actions around the wagon of a now dead villager was suspicious because ""
This player has consistently played like their scum meta as seen with "", "", "", or they have consistently done "" that is substantially different than what they'd do as town
etc

I find those to all be productive uses of time. Just my $0.02 tho.

[mhsmith0]

I dunno, I feel like the key is to present the case and then do more with engaging other people about your case than engaging your target directly. If all you're doing is sniping at someone back and forth, then yah you can get into that sort of situation pretty easily i'd bet. But if you're engaging more broadly, I think it can be productive. But that's at least somewhat a playstyle and what works best for waht player sort of thing *shrugs*

[mhsmith0]

Having studied this issue at length I believe that the most important things in developing charisma are having a cute avatar and occasionally using catchphrases.