How do you develop charisma?

[Ankamius]

You need to be able to read people and the gamestate as a whole in order to have genuine charisma in a mafia game.

When you are already trusted and have proven yourself to be competent, the forceful approach will do fine; it's the most straightforward approach but you need that extra boom for it to work or otherwise it will just derail the game into town on town arguing, which favors scum.

If you are considered scummy, there isn't a whole lot you can do other than try to push the gamestate in a way that will cause scum to do scummy things. Push on people wagoning you, try to reach out to people you are townreading, etc. Do whatever you need to in order to build more awkward situations for your scumreads to handle badly, since then you can potentially get the heat off of you and onto them instead.

If town is disorganized, you need to be the glue. Get your townreads to townread each other. Your scumreads DO NOT MATTER in this situation, since you will never be able to get them lynched without support. Build town rapport and then hopefully the scum that were riding the discord will be much easier to catch for having done so.

Etc. Etc.

You can't just do one thing and expect it to work every game, and you can't rely on read strength to carry you through your town games. Some games will be utterly impossible without a very subtle specific approach, you just have to figure out what approach that is.

[Ankamius]

Mastina basically said what I wanted to say but a lot better than the mess I posted instead

[Ankamius]

Persivul, I get my lynches without cases.

[Ankamius]

I literally got a scum lynched once by responding to a case of scum not killing conftown without leaving a trace in a game where conftown were dropping like flies by essentially just saying IDGAF lynch them anyway.

Yeah I had a case on them before that, but the specific point I pointed out contradicted it entirely.

You don't necessarily need cases to lynch scum. If people aren't already going to listen to you, making cases is a complete waste of time and you need to use more subtle methods.

EDIT: Actually I will just put this here, 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. Just making people aware that your scumread is playing a specific way that is scummy is a lot more likely to get people to independently realize where you are coming from, which is a lot stronger since now they understand the thought process behind the case rather than just the case itself.

[Ankamius]

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

[Ankamius]

Essentially show that what your scumread is doing as a whole furthers a scum agenda. Follow their thought processes and see what patterns pop up over and over again. See if they look like they're working up to something yet are trying to hide it.

The way I do it is by pushing scum to follow that same thought process but to be more obvious about it so that it's easier for people to pick up on it. That really just takes asking yourself how you can set up a situation where scum would either have to follow along to keep their plan alive or to have to replan on the fly because of you calling it out.

An easier way is to probably figure out the best way to get people to approach the game entirely differently. You can do that a lot of different ways depending on the situation, but one of the most effective ways to shake up the game is to challenge the overall town's most sheeped scumread, especially one you already disagree with.

[Ankamius]

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*

One thing I will say is that it's easier to get lynches through casing if you are good at communicating your thoughts through words effectively.

Nancy is one of those people that has a very hard time with that from my experience, which is why she usually doesn't get sheeped or even taken seriously despite being right.

That requires sidestepping I think, because even fixing that problem directly would require a major mindset shift either way since her brain is wired in a way to be less skilled at it than other people. Even with a lot of effort, I still think the result would be below what would be enough to make it worth that effort.

[Ankamius]

I can't help much with those since like 95% of my gameplay is more intuitive than rational

[Ankamius]

The most charismatic speakers are fantastic listeners

[Ankamius]

I can't hear what ur saying Ankamius, are you saying that Hitler was right? Because that is fucking gross and you should be ashamed.

Get the paste out of your ears and pay attention you butt smacker

[Ankamius]

Btw not being able to sell your reads and becoming known for having good reads is the worst case scenario

It means you end up dying for no reason a lot

[Ankamius]

Oh god yeah that's actually worse

[Ankamius]

Wisdom doesn't case

[Ankamius]

Wisdom doesn't case

Wisdom has a quiet charisma, I’d say. His presence is felt even when he only does a couple one liners.

yeah he's a quiet type of forceful

[Ankamius]

--> as a follow up to this last point, I think it's always a powerful move to identify a townie with good reads, and amplify their reads in the places you agree - more powerful than trying to bring your own readslist to the forefront of the conversation.

100% this

I'd argue this is the single best way to get people to trust you or at least be a lot more hesitant to discount what you have to say entirely when they otherwise might

[Ankamius]

tl;dr

work on listening skills since that helps you understand people

and understanding people is how you figure out how you can convince them

:P

[Ankamius]

My experience with the direct approach with scum is that they just pull me into a useless 1v1 that by design will never be resolved directly, which makes everyone else lose interest in paying attention to the case. And if you don't humor them, they press the issue and you look like you don't have an answer to their rebuttals.

[Ankamius]

Is the argument against cases “you give something the scum can argue against”?

Because that’s total BS

That's pretty much it yes lol

Give scum an inch and they will take a lot more than an inch

Plus if you don't get that lynch immediately, they have the advantage of knowing the pitfalls to avoid so that people continue not suspecting them.

It really is a lot more trouble than it's worth

[Ankamius]

Explaining townreads is a lot more effective because scum can't really argue against them directly if they don't already have a good angle of attack on them

[Ankamius]

Idk what to tell you Bulletnlynchproof

Every single strong town game I've ever played was strong because I was able to shield mislynch bait until people eventually compromised or realized that my scumreads were scum

And scum couldn't do jack shit about it

Meanwhile, every time I attack my scumreads directly, it never ever works. Scum have a lot more leeway to counter you when you attack them directly. Scum look a lot more silly and suspicious countering a claim that their mislynch target is town.

[Ankamius]

That’s like saying “I know this is true but I won’t prove it because I don’t want you to be able to argue against it”
You can’t say you know something is true without showing it in the first place. I’m not sure why the flaw in the reasoning is not visible to the people using it.

Plus, I only see it as fair to present my reasonings and in fact as the proper way to play Mafia, and I’m annoyed at players who play otherwise due to that locigal fallacy or whatever

Because you don't need to specifically make the point itself to prove it.

If you can show that everyone who isn't scum is town, then who's left that can be scum lol

[Ankamius]

Actually I am pretty certain that most of the town wins I've seen that weren't complete flukes were because town was finding each other as town more than people just having correct scumreads.

[Ankamius]

Then there you go, Nancy

Try that strategy out, show people why people can't be scum

[Ankamius]

Actually I am pretty certain that most of the town wins I've seen that weren't complete flukes were because town was finding each other as town more than people just having correct scumreads.

I think making solid townblocks, makes it difficult for scum to push. Like that’s how I knew TPFKAP was scum in Labrynth. He kept spamming useless alrarmist WIFOM to interfere with town solving.

Just saying, this exact subtype of reasoning is why I was tunneling Shoshin so hard up until I died.

[Ankamius]

if you force town to think enough, they'll eventually reach that conclusion on their own

it takes more time and effort as your scumreads are more and more townread, but it's a lot easier to convince people that their townreads might be scum when they realize that their scumreads aren't actually scummy; they have a good basis for thinking that they aren't in the right mindset to solve the game and therefore are more likely to be willing to work with people that are more likely to be correct.

if you just convince people that their townreads are wrong, then they just hit a point where they think everyone can be scum and just shut down. that's obviously not very productive in a game where town has to come together to lynch scum.

[Ankamius]

I think that the problem isn't casing itself

it's how you case

the best case is one where you go for some key points that scum can hardly defend themselves against. That way you're not only not letting them defend themselves properly, but convincing other people that they're scum.

I've learned by experience that making long cases or even medium sized ones doesn't work. Scum will find the weakest arguments and only focus on them, and it'll be so much arguing that people will stop paying attention to what's being argued/discussed. It needs to be a bit short and a lot reasonable/convincing.

I don't think the solution is to simply not explain your scum read though, if you do that you're not only having worse odds of lynching your target, but you're as well making other townies have a harder time reading you.

Good and original scum reads are harder ti fake than town reads. I've hardly see someone make a perceptive/very original scum read and end up flipping scum. They're more likely town by my experience.

Also if you don't explain your scum read and you're wrong (what is very likely to happen) you'll be stuck there when you could argue it out and see what people bring to the table.

and also, it's considerably important to see how the rest of players react to the accusations/case, it's likely AI.

I think we have a miscommunication here somewhere?

you're essentially agreeing with me, but I'm not saying to avoid going into your reads; I just believe that going into more than a basic overview of your scumreads is unnecessary and detrimental, while going into your townreads is a lot more effective both short term and long term.

[Ankamius]

Actually I am pretty certain that most of the town wins I've seen that weren't complete flukes were because town was finding each other as town more than people just having correct scumreads.

Can vouch for that.

Finding town > finding scum, 100% of the time.

Find town, defend town, and scum run out of options.

its a lot easier to find scum when you have a bunch of lock townreads

I am much better and more accurate at making townreads but in almost every damn game I’m in, someone will scumread me for not having any strong scumreads on D1. *shrug*

scumreads don't matter d1

[Ankamius]

they do if you can lynch scum d1

meh

I'm still of the stubborn opinion that the only scum lynch that truly matters is the last one