[Setup] 9 and 2 [Edited]

[northsidegal]

first, i agree with awoo. i'm a big believer in "assume good faith" and even i find it hard to believe that you made this thread for any purpose other than to comment on how bad you think this site is.

second, mountainous setups have been won before. i personally participated in and won a variant of mountainous, the only difference being the inclusion of neighborhoods. i suspect that how much you are willing to accept this as a true victory comes down to how closely you hold any feelings of superiority.

[northsidegal]

All my point was is that Town SHOULD play WAY above EV. That is all.

town does play significantly above EV in certain setups—for example, nightless and other setups that in some way disrupt the mafia factional kill. town plays significantly below EV in other setups, the reasons for which are somewhat more nebulous.

i'm interested to hear why you believe town "should" play way above EV, in general and for this setup specifically. i put "should" in quotes there because i believe the way that we use the word with regards to setups differs: if i were to say "town should play above EV in nightless", i would be using "should" to indicate likely probability. it seems to me, however, that in this context you are using "should" more in the sense of "ought to", perhaps with some connotation of duty or obligation. it's possible i'm interpreting you incorrectly, but that's the way that i'm reading what you're saying.

regardless, my primary interest is, to repeat myself, hearing why you believe town "should" play way above EV, in general and for this setup specifically. this is something i was actually just considering earlier – if you consider an equally skilled town and scumteam, where does the expectation that town should be the ones to perform better arise from? my guess is that it lies on the assumption that finding scum is easier than deceiving people as scum. i could be wrong in that guess, but if i weren't i would wonder whether or not that assumption is true.

[northsidegal]

i'm often told it's scummy to answer other's questions for them, but i think you may have misinterpreted what isis was trying to say there.

personally, i interpreted it more as a comment on the nature of scumteams and their role in games rather than any sort of comment specifically about mafiascum.

[northsidegal]

like i said, i'm a believer of "assume good faith".

interested to hear your thoughts on 16.

[northsidegal]

humans are also good at lying, and deliberately deceiving and misleading people - especially when it is their task to do so, and in a non-face to face setting. thus, couldn't i similarly say that we should expect town to do worse than ev?

[northsidegal]

Lies are fallacious arguments.

there are very few things about mafia theory or just about mafia in general that i feel comfortable calling 100% wrong with confidence. this is one of them.

if you think that everyone who makes fallacious arguments is scum, if you think that you can catch scum by only analyzing who makes bad arguments, or if you think scum needs to lie and/or make fallacious arguments to win, i expect that you will lose a great deal many games.

[northsidegal]

oh, and here's a lie that isn't a fallacious argument for you – i just flipped a coin and it landed heads.

my point here, as i believe that isis' point was with the baseball analogy, is that you seem to consistently ignore the idea that scum has any affect on the game at all. "humans are good problem solvers, so they should be able to solve the problem of who mafia is" is a reductionist view of the game. mafia isn't a riddle, puzzle or logic problem, it's a social game, and figuring out

people

is something that nobody is perfect at.

[northsidegal]

Look, REALLY my point was NEVER one site is better than the other.

My point WAS that MU probably (AFAIK) has a Town winrate better than MS. And that is taking things site wide and not just looking at mountainous.

I could quote you in this thread saying how bad this site is, but I'm too much of a fan of apophasis. At the very least, I'm certain you can see how it might be easy to think that that's the point you're making.

Is it empirically true that MU has a higher town winrate? Also, town winrate across what types of games? Thingyman's analysis (which I very much appreciated) doesn't seem to strongly point towards one site over the other when it comes to open setups. From memory of looking at MU's database-tracked winrates for their normal games, it was roughly 50/50. This is comparable to MS's 53% town winrate for mini normals in 2019 (of course, I'm not sure how comparable setups are between sites, but that's kind of the point, isn't it?).

Also, if your point is simply to bring up greater town winrates on MU, I might ask if there's any deeper point or insight you were attempting to get at. I think it's natural to assume that someone making that sort of statement would be using it to further some other point rather than just making mention of it, but I could be wrong about that.

[northsidegal]

personally, i really like the name "mountainous".

it's not an adjective you see used elsewhere very often.