Open 104 - The New C9 - Game Over

[ScottHoward]

ok, im outty

[The Fonz]

Fonz, in response to this:

During my read, Zazie struck me as scummy. I needed a random vote, so I voted Zazie. Fair?

You said:

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!
Alarm bells!
Was your vote because Zazie struck you as scummy, or was it random? The two are not compatible.

Fine. I would have made the same comment, exept, I already did, like 11 pages ago. A few minutes after walle made his thread entry post. Remember “by voting omg, hes indicated that he has knowledge of the thread contents and what has been going on, but that would contradict his vote for zazier.”? Surely you will agree that both your comment and mine made basically the same point?

Not really. I don't find random voting, despite having read the thread, that much of a scumtell. What I do find scummy is giving contradictory descriptions of the basis for his vote. Since he changed to voting someone else in the same post,

So, I made my comment relatively immediately, based on the post striking me as odd, a gut feel, a read, whatever you want to call it. You make essentially the same observation, but only after 11 pages, and after walle had to actually type the words to contradict himself. I saw the contradiction right away.

There is no essential contradiction in what he wrote. The random vote never even stood. It's easy enough to miss a replacement in a 23-page thread. He later said he hadn't read before page 23. Which made sense. As I said, I was getting incredibly annoyed and frustrated by about page four.

What strikes me as unusual (and might be scummy) is claiming that his random vote was based on having read the thread and found Zazie scummy. Which is a contradiction. My not finding it suspicious was predicated on the notion that he'd simply missed ZazieR being replaced. It's easy to miss in 23 pages. However, he then:

As I have stated already, I'm treating page 23 as page 1.

My vote for ZazieR was semi-random-stage, I actually based it entirely on ONE post he made around page 10

I saw the 'treating page 23 as page 1' bit. Due to the fact that I was busy trying to avoid throwing my monitor out of the window in anger and frustration at a certain poster I missed the later contradiction. (No, this is not a joke. Anger management could be going better).

Does this at all help you understand that people can find scum in ways that you think aren’t possible? That yes, 2p2ers are more aggressive (on average) and may have “unorthodox” techniques, but perhaps they are in fact valid techniques, and dare I say, more effective?

No, really, you're all amazing gut hunting superheroes. In all seriousness, can you please link me those games you told me about, where scum 'gave themselves away' with their first posts? I certainly don't think you're more aggressive, on average, btw. You are, obviously- then again, atakdog in particular seems overly passive. What I objected to was some of you voting MS players for fairly standard behaviours, then getting abusive when they objected to it. If your gut has given you a read on Wall-E, we'll see how good that is. I'll continue to look for logical inconsistencies and blendishness.

As far as walles comments go, if I find the time, I might reply. He asked me to quote where he said something, I quoted it, and he calls me drunk. I dont know if I can justify arguing with somebody im almost certain is scum.

I need to look at your interactions in detail. My initial impression is that there are some dodgy bits on both sides. Some of what you say is valid. Not all. The same is true of Wall-E.

[matrix]

a) TOWN SHOULD (basically) NEVER LIE ABOUT THEIR ROLES, and b) Claiming mason DOES make you more likely to get NKed. Hugely so.

why??

If you are actually a cop, you should never claim town. That's because if you subsequently claim cop, no-one will believe you, and infact they will lynch you for lying about your role.

So how would a Cop/Doctor w/e go about looking like a Townie to avoid drawing attention to themselves and thus not get NKed?

Having Vanillas get NKed by the Scum is *very* good for the Town, for hopefully obvious reasons.

Yes we should hunt down peoples logical inconsistencies and stuff , but to lynch a player who later claims cop after previously claiming "Vanilla" strikes me as head bogglingly bad, you'd surely just lynch a n other candidate and lynch the potential fake the following day if they haven't been whacked during the night

If your gut has given you a read on Wall-E, we'll see how good that is. I'll continue to look for logical inconsistencies and blendishness.

If you haven't already I'd recommend reading a book called "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell.

I can see what people are driving at with wanting to lynch Wall-E - I get the feeling though Wall-E would be better lynched on a later game day and not on day 1. If he continues to post this much he will slipup somewhereand spew us some innocents, or further incriminate himself should he be Scum, and looks like a useful Scum hunter should he be a Townie.

[The Fonz]

a) TOWN SHOULD (basically) NEVER LIE ABOUT THEIR ROLES, and b) Claiming mason DOES make you more likely to get NKed. Hugely so.

why??

I'll answer the second part first, if i may.

Masons are confirmed innocents. They can't be lynched. In order to win, the scum need to get rid of players they can't lynch, and keep around town players that might. The SK, in particular, does not have to worry about cops. So (s)he has killing the masons as a high priority.

As for why town should never lie... basically, we find it best for town players not to reveal ANY information about their role. Then, when a player claims, you are able to assume they are either truthful, or scum. If a player is allowed to change his claim, that benefits scum. They can claim townie early, then claim doc when they realise there isn't a real one.

Or, let's say there's a tracker in the game. There isn't in this one, obviously. But if you're a tracker, then if someone is claiming vanilla, then they are telling you that they have no night action. If they then follow you and find you targetting someone, they'll have caught you in a lie, and assume you are scum.

The bottom line is that if the town, who don't need to lie about their roles, do so, then it is easier for the scum, who do, to get away with it. It is easier to catch scum lying when they are the only ones doing it.

If you are actually a cop, you should never claim town. That's because if you subsequently claim cop, no-one will believe you, and infact they will lynch you for lying about your role.

So how would a Cop/Doctor w/e go about looking like a Townie to avoid drawing attention to themselves and thus not get NKed?

Your position is inherently contradictory. If it were common for cops and docs to claim vanilla, then the claim would be worthless. It wouldn't protect from NKs at all. (Unfortunately, the best topics in Mafia Discussion on this were lost in the crash). You avoid being nightkilled by playing normally, just like you would if you were a townie. If you do anything different, that's a giveaway.

Having Vanillas get NKed by the Scum is *very* good for the Town, for hopefully obvious reasons.

Agreed....

Yes we should hunt down peoples logical inconsistencies and stuff , but to lynch a player who later claims cop after previously claiming "Vanilla" strikes me as head bogglingly bad, you'd surely just lynch a n other candidate and lynch the potential fake the following day if they haven't been whacked during the night

The idea of this game is that scum are trying to mislead the town. If scum are the only ones deliberately misleading people, it's easier to catch them doing it. Therefore, town should (with very few, very specific exceptions) always be truthful.

BUT: Bear in mind part of this is the meta, which means a genuine cop here never WOULD claim townie prior to claiming cop. So if a player changes their claim, you can assume they are scum. This is very useful to town.

If you're playing in a less evolved meta, one where people in general either haven't figured this out, or haven't succeeded in implementing it, then it can be fairly common to fake claim townie. I've encountered players coming to this site from one where it was usual to make your first post in every game, /in as vanilla townie. (Once we figured out this was just the convention on the site he was used to, we didn't lynch him). But here, we've learnt through literally thousands of games of experience that the most town-favouring way of handling claims is that a) no-one should claim unless facing imminent lynch and b) no-one lies. (Incidentally, your claim seemed a lot less premature to me after reading a 2p2 game, since it seems like there, someone getting halfway to lynch is likely to be dead within a day. We roll differently here; it's rarely the first to be wagoned who actually dies).

I can see what people are driving at with wanting to lynch Wall-E - I get the feeling though Wall-E would be better lynched on a later game day and not on day 1. If he continues to post this much he will slipup somewhereand spew us some innocents, or further incriminate himself should he be Scum, and looks like a useful Scum hunter should he be a Townie.

This is a good point.

[ScottHoward]

Not really. I don't find random voting, despite having read the thread, that much of a scumtell.

me either

What I do find scummy is giving contradictory descriptions of the basis for his vote. Since he changed to voting someone else in the same post

agreed. which is exactly what i pointed out, except you needed him to actually say it, whereas i realized it without his further help.

[The Fonz]

But the contradiction wasn't actually there until later...?

[ScottHoward]

There is no essential contradiction in what he wrote

. The random vote never even stood. It's easy enough to miss a replacement in a 23-page thread. He later said he hadn't read before page 23. Which made sense. As I said, I was getting incredibly annoyed and frustrated by about page four.

yeah, there is, and you are acknowledging now that there is, but you wont acknowledge you are making the same point i already did.
i found it contradictory that he made a random vote for zazier, but then changed it to omg. the random vote alone is fine, it indicated he didnt read the thread. whatever. but then in the same post he votes omg, which indicated he did in fact read the thread. thats the contradiction. now, however many pages later, he admits he read the thread, which triggers your alarm bells.
you are making the same point i did.

[ScottHoward]

fonz, i didnt realize you were here.
serious question:
if we are about to lynch somebody, and they claim vanilla town to save their life.
what happens(typically)?

[The Fonz]

What I do find scummy is giving contradictory descriptions of the basis for his vote. Since he changed to voting someone else in the same post

Now, you see, I actually hit send before I finished the sentence. What I was trying to say was... 'since he actually voted someone else in the same post, it doesn't matter anyway.' What it reads like is 'Because he voted for someone else, the basis of his vote was contradictory.' I

don't

believe that. I believe that the subsequent OMG vote made the ZazieR vote a nonissue- were it not for his later giving contradictory explanations for it.

[The Fonz]

fonz, i didnt realize you were here.
serious question:
if we are about to lynch somebody, and they claim vanilla town to save their life.
what happens(typically)?

They get lynched. A vanilla townie claim should not change anyone's views. (This does not, however, mean a vanilla townie who is going to be lynched should lie).

[ScottHoward]

fonz, i didnt realize you were here.
serious question:
if we are about to lynch somebody, and they claim vanilla town to save their life.
what happens(typically)?

They get lynched. A vanilla townie claim should not change anyone's views. (This does not, however, mean a vanilla townie who is going to be lynched should lie).

my head is asploading

[The Fonz]

Why?

[ScottHoward]

What I do find scummy is giving contradictory descriptions of the basis for his vote. Since he changed to voting someone else in the same post

Now, you see, I actually hit send before I finished the sentence. What I was trying to say was... 'since he actually voted someone else in the same post, it doesn't matter anyway.' What it reads like is 'Because he voted for someone else, the basis of his vote was contradictory.' I

don't

believe that. I believe that the subsequent OMG vote made the ZazieR vote a nonissue- were it not for his later giving contradictory explanations for it.

fonz, the contradiction was there whether he later tripped up or not. you just didnt see it until he did trip.
him changing in the same post does not eliminate the contradiction, it CREATES IT. if it was a random vote due to not having read the thread, why change it? once he changes it to omg, he indicates knowledge of the thread, which contradicts his zazier vote.
you are saying that him acknowledging that he read the thread and found a scummy zazier post was the reason behind his rand vote, and thus his contradiction. im saying that his switch to omg already indicated he read it.

[The Fonz]

I'm saying there is no contradiction in the notion that he read the thread, and missed that ZazieR was replaced. It's one post, in 28 pages. You say if it was a random vote due to not reading the thread, why change it?

Well, it's a not uncommon occurrence for a player joining a thread which has gone for some time to start with a random vote, and then change votes as he goes along, in the course of a single post. This often means that the player votes for players who have died or been replaced. I could find an example if you wanted. (Btw, those 2p2 games...?)

What matters is where the vote ends up. The contradiction I saw was NOT whether or not he read the thread- it was saying there was a scumminess reason for something he had called a random vote. He did then contradict himself by claiming not to be reading '23 pages worth of players from another site bashing ms' and that he based his vote on 'something on page 10' but that's a different contradiction. Nothing to do with the original post.

[ScottHoward]

Why?

cause the whole lal thing here appears to be based on a ridiculous premise. (no offense)
im sensing that you guys think mafia is a solvable game

[The Fonz]

What do you think the premise is? (And, yeah, lynch all liars is very controversial within the mafiascum community. There is general consensus that lying is at the very least a scumtell, though).

In terms of being solvable, no, it never will be. That's the nature of the meta. Any tactic that becomes effective, scum will adapt to avoid. But the collective experience of literally thousands of games suggests that the current meta re: roleclaims is the most effective one.

Also, posting to note that oEJo just posted onsite.

[ScottHoward]

I'm saying there is no contradiction in the notion that he read the thread, and missed that ZazieR was replaced. It's one post, in 28 pages. You say if it was a random vote due to not reading the thread, why change it?

Well, it's a not uncommon occurrence for a player joining a thread which has gone for some time to start with a

random vote, and then change votes as he goes along, in the course of a single post.

This often means that the player votes for players who have died or been replaced. I could find an example if you wanted. (Btw, those 2p2 games...?)

you have people here who havent read the thread who show up, start typing an entry post and in that post make multiple random votes? for real? and this happens a commonly?

[ScottHoward]

the premise that this game is solvable

[ScottHoward]

i linked games in post 973

[The Fonz]

I'm saying there is no contradiction in the notion that he read the thread, and missed that ZazieR was replaced. It's one post, in 28 pages. You say if it was a random vote due to not reading the thread, why change it?

Well, it's a not uncommon occurrence for a player joining a thread which has gone for some time to start with a

random vote, and then change votes as he goes along, in the course of a single post.

This often means that the player votes for players who have died or been replaced. I could find an example if you wanted. (Btw, those 2p2 games...?)

you have people here who havent read the thread who show up, start typing an entry post and in that post make multiple random votes? for real? and this happens a commonly?

Yeah, they respond to things as they read, as if they're happening in real time. So they see something scummy, they'll vote it, if something happens later in the thread, they'll change their vote as they go along... not multiple random votes, that would be stupid. Particularly when people replace in, it really isn't that rare. My first post in this thread is of that ilk, only i only vote once.

Thanks for the links btw.

the premise that this game is solvable

There is no such premise. That doesn't mean that certain actions aren't almost always good, or bad.

You might be interested in looking at a couple of Mafia Discussion threads on the subject:

http://www.mafiascum.net/forum/viewtopi ... torder=asc
http://www.mafiascum.net/forum/viewtopi ... torder=asc

The (very rare) effective "lying as townie" gambit that works, works because scum don't expect town to lie. If scum did, then they wouldn't work. And if you're trying a gambit like that, you should do so understanding that if you get caught lying without nailing a scum first or something, you'll probably get lynched. So that kind of gambit isn't necessarally incompatable with LAL.

[ScottHoward]

blah, regardless we have ended up in the same place.

[The Fonz]

Not really. You think he's scum; I think there's a case to answer. He's certainly not a terrible lynch. Btw, I will get back to analysing your little to-and-fro when i finish the allnighter i'm currently pulling to get my final assignment written tonight.

[matrix]

I don't want to drag this out much further, so this will be the last post from me this game on this subject, I did want to answer a couple of points briefly

Masons are confirmed innocents. They can't be lynched.

no. Noone is confirmed as anything with a 100% confidence interval until they are dead.

A high risk ploy might be for the Mafia in a game where there is a chance of Masons to have two goons claim to be mason buddies. If there is no competing claim how will the town know? If the other power roles that the Scum are hunting for do not die they are not about to waste valuable NK's taking out confirmed innocents when a live Cop could potentially blow the entire game for them.

We can say that it's very probable that x and y are Masons - but it's not confirmed 100% until their role is revealed upon death by the moderator.

As for why town should never lie... basically, we find it best for town players not to reveal ANY information about their role. Then, when a player claims, you are able to assume they are either truthful, or scum. If a player is allowed to change his claim, that benefits scum. They can claim townie early, then claim doc when they realise there isn't a real one.

I can see how this might benefit the Town actually given how Rand() effects the gameshere. Most WW I Play you are 1 of three roles, here you can be one of several and noone but the mod knows what roles even exist.

If it were common for cops and docs to claim vanilla, then the claim would be worthless. It wouldn't protect from NKs at all. You avoid being nightkilled by playing normally, just like you would if you were a townie. If you do anything different, that's a giveaway.

agreed. Tho "playing normally" for me involves refering to myself as vanilla - on 2p2 people claim vanilla all the time so the "claim" isn't really regarded as one is accepted as playing normally so it blends in. Tho several players in this game have given slightly more subtle references as to their plain Town role, some of which Scott highlighted as soft claims, which seems to be playing normally here. I guess it all depends on where the arbitrary line is drawn

The idea of this game is that scum are trying to mislead the town. If scum are the only ones deliberately misleading people, it's easier to catch them doing it. Therefore, town should (with very few, very specific exceptions) always be truthful.

Don't quite agree. The Power roles are trying to mislead the scum (particularly the Cop) and at one and the same time impart useful information to the Town in the event of their untimely death. The Townies are trying to mislead the Scum into making them think they are Power roles so that they get NKed and "take one for the team" - The game is about deception and manipulation in part for all players not just the Mafia.

If you're playing in a less evolved meta, one where people in general either haven't figured this out, or haven't succeeded in implementing it, then it can be fairly common to fake claim townie.

Subtle dig at other sites noted

The meta here has evolved to suit the game conditions as Rand() plays a much bigger part - I wouldn't say it was better just different.

Thanks for the links - we can take up this discussion after the game or in a more suitable thread somewhere else if you like.

[The Fonz]

In quick response:

1) No seriously, two goons claiming mason day one in a game where a) it's a large game b) there's definitely a serial killer and c) there might be an actual mason pair is so utterly suicidal that you'd treat masons claiming in that circumstance to be confirmed. In the last 'New C9' StrangerCoug claimed vig, and there were three kills the previous night including the SK, so he was basically confirmed. You can't 100% confirm, but you can as close as makes no difference.

2) Cop, Townie, Goon, right? Yeah, I can see how that leads to a different meta.

3) I can see that, which is why I became less suspicious of you after reading a 2p2 game. Here, lying as town just doesn't happen.

4) Please show me these 'soft claims.' I've asked before, and i haven't personally seen any evidence of anyone else hinting a specific town role.

5) The town aren't really trying to mislead the scum. Sure, they're trying to make sure the scum don't get any information unless it absolutely has to be in the open- but if you mislead a scum, for example, you will likely mislead a doctor, which is bad.

6) It wasn't a dig. And if it had been, it wasn't that subtle. We have 100+ games going on at once here. The meta evolves pretty darn fast.

[Wall-E]

Unvote: Vote: The Fonz

is putting on quite a show.