Surreptitious: The Game of Spies

[BTD6_maker]

I first thought this game was highly scum-sided, but because of the town PRs I think I have a strategy that may have a decent winning chance for Town. (There are a lot of possible cases but I will give the gist). This game looks suited to someone logical and analytical.

The Neapolitan claims Day 1. We do not lynch in the Neapolitan group until we have to. Instead, we pick another group and lynch from here. Then the Friendly Neighbour will reveal that they are confTown to the Neapolitan, who targets someone in the group that contains neither themselves nor the lynched person. Assuming a Town was lynched on Day 1, two groups have five members and one has three. The Neapolitan can tell Town in which group the Friendly Neighbour is. If in the group with 3 members, the Neapolitan reveals who they are and we lynch there. If not, we lynch from the other group with 5 members.

I need to work on what happens after there. There are a huge number of possibilities, many of which are unlikely.

[BTD6_maker]

I first thought this game was highly scum-sided, but because of the town PRs I think I have a strategy that may have a decent winning chance for Town. (There are a lot of possible cases but I will give the gist). This game looks suited to someone logical and analytical.

The Neapolitan claims Day 1. We do not lynch in the Neapolitan group until we have to. Instead, we pick another group and lynch from here. Then the Friendly Neighbour will reveal that they are confTown to the Neapolitan, who targets someone in the group that contains neither themselves nor the lynched person. Assuming a Town was lynched on Day 1, two groups have five members and one has three. The Neapolitan can tell Town in which group the Friendly Neighbour is. If in the group with 3 members, the Neapolitan reveals who they are and we lynch there. If not, we lynch from the other group with 5 members.

I need to work on what happens after there. There are a huge number of possibilities, many of which are unlikely.

I need to consider Mafia PRs.

In this plan, Follower isn't helpful. Of course Mafia know who the Neapolitan is. They do not need to check them to see that they are performing a Neapolitan investigation. Then there is the Rolestopper. Their best option is probably to target the confTown Neapolitan to stop the Friendly Neighbour. Fortunately this means that the Neapolitan's investigation is guaranteed to work.

On second thoughts, the Neapolitan should target the group of 3. We are not lynching there immediately but this will be the critical group at the moment. A mislynch there will end the game. Thus we need more information from there.

[BTD6_maker]

Anyway, I am not a Neapolitan.

(By the way, a long time ago LQ asked me to look at the game. I didn't have much time to do it but I formulated numbers for the Mountainous (which is extremely scum-sided) and worked on basic strategy. This strategy should work).

[BTD6_maker]

Okay. How about we all claim our roles???

Not all roles. Just the Neighbouriser.

Also, we should treat the selection of a group as the lynch of a person, essentially, and basically decidce who to lynch before we pick their group. If they claim PR, we go to the remaining group. This should make it less likely that Mafia are able to kill a known PR.

[BTD6_maker]

Okay. How about we all claim our roles???

Not all roles. Just the Neighbouriser.

Also, we should treat the selection of a group as the lynch of a person, essentially, and basically decidce who to lynch before we pick their group. If they claim PR, we go to the remaining group. This should make it less likely that Mafia are able to kill a known PR.

Mate, make up your mind. You wanted the Neapolitan to claim earlier, not the Neighborizer. Now why would the neighborizer claim? I mean, what benefit do we gain from knowing them? Do we lynch in their group or not?? Lay out the plan if you want an evaluation.

Sorry. I meant Neapolitan.

[BTD6_maker]

Besides, there is no Neighbouriser in this game.

[BTD6_maker]

Why was Group C hammered?

Neapolitan, if you are not in Group C, please claim now.

[BTD6_maker]

We made a mistake in picking a group before the Neapolitan claim, but even if the Neapolitan is in Group C it is at least possible to limit the damage done.

Neapolitan, if you are in Group C then do not claim today. Target someone else in Group C. You should claim immediately tomorrow.

[BTD6_maker]

The Watcher is targeting Momo tonight. If Momo dies we have found scum. If Momo is role stopped they live. Momo will target someone from C as a Guilty is nearly confscum.

We made a mistake but we can still try to fix it.

[BTD6_maker]

Snarky is scum!!!!!!!!

He agrees because he does not want to be investigated. Why else would you agree. I was expecting Ram to agree but we have caught scum.

and you saying i'm tryharding...

I set up bait for scum. Snarky decided to bite.

if you can't understand why checking in our group is bad idea, you are beyond help

You may as well try to explain it if you think it's bad. You don't let a PR do a bad move under your watch and just call them "beyond help".

i'm not planning stay and watch, i just wait hammer at this point

considering someone gets killed from out group, it's 1/3 chance to check person that will be nk'ed tonight

There is a 1/3 chance that the checked person will be killed. If not, the scum is practically guaranteed. The only way scum is not guaranteed is if the Universal Backup is in Group C. If Momo finds a VT that survives, scum is caught. If not, there is a 1/2 chance of Momo finding scum a priori (more if we count Traitor) and a 1/12 chance that the Universal Backup was found (assuming they are alive and unclaimed). Thus the chances are approximately 6/7 that scum is found and we are lynching the non-VT found.

Obviously, if scum is lynched, Momo is best targeting some other group.

[BTD6_maker]

If we mislynch, there is one possibility in which using Neapolitan outside C can be useful. If we mislynch in C again, we lose. However, if we lynch scum in another group on our first try, C gets two new members which are pretty much confTown (excluding Traitor, but we don't need to lynch Traitor until all other Mafia are dead). We can then afford a mislynch in C. Indeed, there will only be two in C that can possibly be lynched. (2 are from another group, one is Momo, and 2 are originally C).

So targeting outside C is potentially helpful, in order to pad out C with members to give us mislynches there.

[BTD6_maker]

This is why picking Group C before the Neapolitan claim was a terrible idea.

The Universal Backup should claim immediately. We will not pick any group until they do so. We have already made a massive mistake; we cannot afford another.

[BTD6_maker]

The way to work towards winning is for the Universal Backup to claim. Before that, we will not pick a group.

Of course, I am not Universal Backup.

[BTD6_maker]

If the Universal Backup claims, we are not lynching in that group until we need to. The Neapolitan will be immune to kills for as long as possible.

We made this mistake yesterday. We will not make it today.

[BTD6_maker]

The Neapolitan UB is probably not in this group. Anyway, they should definitely bias their target either towards A or C or their own group. (Basically, if they are not B, they should try to avoid B). They should do this with a high probability (which helps to stop Rolestoppers from stopping it). It appears as though the Watcher is near-useless until the Rolestopper dies. If we kill one scum now, we can then lynch in Group C and have good chances of catching another scum and ultimately winning.

If we lynch scum today, the Neapolitan should probably target C. We are probably going to get a confTown (either VT or not VT, in which case claims will make a confTown) and we have a mislynch so we can lynch scum from there.

If we lynch scum first time in C, we have 9 in B. This gives us three mislynches and we only need one confTown to win. Otherwise we have 8 in B and two mislynches but we still have good chances.

If we mislynch today, the Neapolitan biases their target towards C to get a confTown. Regardless, we lynch in B. If we lynch scum, we get a mislynch in both A and C and we have good chances. If not, we are in 3 LyLos and we need to hope that with enough confTowns we can lynch scum three times, and then a Traitor (if they are not dead yet).

[BTD6_maker]

I have been rather busy recently.

Anyway, I have seen the Almost50 wagon and the one thing I noticed was the relative lack of good reasons for joining it. Like A50 said, no one has stated an actual case for this wagon. I read A50 as someone who is trying to solve the game and is engaged in it.

Obviously, HEAL: Woodboys
HEAL: A50
Slysly is a very mild scumread, but Lil Uzi Vert looks worse at the moment.
HURT: LUV

Also, it is highly likely that if A50 is Town then Mafia in B is voting. Thus I am inclined to HEAL: Randomidget provided A50 flips Town.

[BTD6_maker]

Mod, I will be V/LA until the 14th of April. I will still try to post, though.

[BTD6_maker]

My wagon seems like it is just a policy lynch. This is always a bad idea. If you are lynching me for a policy lynch, you are lynching someone other than the most likely scum flip. As such, policy lynches are always anti-Town.

The Almost wagon isn't so good either. Again, I don't see all that much reasoning behind it. I would vote LUV if I had the capability to do so but I obviously do not.

[BTD6_maker]

Transcend is basically claiming UB Neapolitan. Of course, there is a Watcher in yesterday's B (today's A).

Now, we should all massclaim UB or not UB before any decision for a group is made. Assuming no counterclaims, we vote B and lynch one of the three possible Mafia. If we lynch Mafia, Transcend targets another random possible-Mafia in A (that is, not myself or Lil Uzi Vert).

Otherwise, if we lynch Town in B, Transcend targets in B. If Transcend gets an innocent, the Mafia in B has been found. If Transcend gets a guilty, we know that someone in B is either the Traitor or Mafia.

We can then get the Watcher to claim and then divulge Transcend's Guilty. There will likely be a counterclaim. From there, the plan is dependent on lynching Mafia instead of the Watcher, but if we mislynch the Watcher we have a confscum in A.

Town should follow these instructions to win. Do not vote A.

[BTD6_maker]

BTD

I think instead of this, you should stop trying to come up with plays like that and instead try scumhunting. I have no idea what your reads are other than that A50 was probably town. Stop being useless.

[size=huge]NOBODY FUCKING CLAIM[/size]

Trying to figure out the best strategy here is highly pro-Town. I am certainly not being useless. Also, claiming Watcher now isn't necessary, but we need to know whether Transcend is truthful.

Everyone claim whether or not you are the UB Neapolitan.

I am not UB.

[BTD6_maker]

Wait

For

T

T

T

T

And

Sesq

To

Claim

I support this, and ideally it would be in size 400 and bold. We have PR claims and we need to verify that they are, in fact, accurate before proceeding. Town have made a number of mistakes in this game already by being rash and careless and we should not make another one.

[BTD6_maker]

Ignore the fact that there is no counterclaim. If I were the UB I wouldn't bother because of how shitty the claim is for town. Random, you of all people should understand that.

Woodboys I swear to fuck if you hammer.... please do not do it until I've heard from everyone.

ALISAE, NERO CAIN, AND THE OTHER FUCKER IN TODAY'S GROUP A THAT I FORGET - and others if the want - please answer my question

I am willing to trust Snarky for now. Throughout today they were repeatedly claiming that Transcend's claim was fake. I think that in hindsight this was a breadcrumb, suggesting that if Snarky was UB they wouldn't counterclaim, and indeed if no one else counterclaimed Snarky would be the UB. This is consistent with Snarky's tunnelling of the claimed UB, as only a real UB would know for sure that they are fake.

I am indeed VT.

Transcend knew that Random was not a VT. This is something that a UB Neapolitan could do, but it seems also likely that Transcend located the Watcher and claimed a Neapolitan Guilty on them. This is why Transcend seems scummier than Snarky.

[BTD6_maker]

Ignore the fact that there is no counterclaim. If I were the UB I wouldn't bother because of how shitty the claim is for town. Random, you of all people should understand that.

Woodboys I swear to fuck if you hammer.... please do not do it until I've heard from everyone.

ALISAE, NERO CAIN, AND THE OTHER FUCKER IN TODAY'S GROUP A THAT I FORGET - and others if the want - please answer my question

I am willing to trust Snarky for now. Throughout today they were repeatedly claiming that Transcend's claim was fake. I think that in hindsight this was a breadcrumb, suggesting that if Snarky was UB they wouldn't counterclaim, and indeed if no one else counterclaimed Snarky would be the UB. This is consistent with Snarky's tunnelling of the claimed UB, as only a real UB would know for sure that they are fake.

I am indeed VT.

Transcend knew that Random was not a VT. This is something that a UB Neapolitan could do, but it seems also likely that Transcend located the Watcher and claimed a Neapolitan Guilty on them. This is why Transcend seems scummier than Snarky.

Ah.. so your FIRST game-solving post is defending SS... hmm OK... I still stand by lynching BTD today and SS tomorrow... this just seems like complete buddying

We cannot possibly be groupscum. I am confirmed not-Mafia and even the Traitor does not know who Mafia is.

Lynching Mafia today is more important than lynching the Traitor. There is no reason at all to lynch a confirmed not-Mafia.

Also, trying to determine a strategy is game-solving.

You may be confTown, but you are bad Town.

[BTD6_maker]

Also... why would you think that tunneling would feed town the info they needed. Tunneling can ONLY come off as scummy... Im still not convinced

People have said I look town doing this, I was hoping someone would make the leap.

Think - why does someone who is town death tunnel an unccd claim?

IDK.. which is why I still think you're not town

PEDIT: Im saying your first non meta-solving was in defense of SS. And I never said you were groupscum.. I know you can't be... I still think your traitor more than i think anyone in og!b is groupscum rn though

If I were Traitor, this implies that Snarky is Mafia.

There is no way lynching me is ever better than lynching Snarky. If you think I am Traitor, you think Snarky is Mafia and so you should be voting Snarky.

Anyway, I am not saying that I scumread Snarky. Indeed, I am saying the opposite. Snarky's Neapolitan on me makes it likely that we are of the same alignment, and I know I am Town so Snarky looks more Town to me. If I look scummy to you, Snarky is more scummy to you. If you are confident that I am Traitor, you are confident that Snarky is Mafia.

[BTD6_maker]

Also... why would you think that tunneling would feed town the info they needed. Tunneling can ONLY come off as scummy... Im still not convinced

People have said I look town doing this, I was hoping someone would make the leap.

Think - why does someone who is town death tunnel an unccd claim?

IDK.. which is why I still think you're not town

PEDIT: Im saying your first non meta-solving was in defense of SS. And I never said you were groupscum.. I know you can't be... I still think your traitor more than i think anyone in og!b is groupscum rn though

If I were Traitor, this implies that Snarky is Mafia.

There is no way lynching me is ever better than lynching Snarky. If you think I am Traitor, you think Snarky is Mafia and so you should be voting Snarky.

Anyway, I am not saying that I scumread Snarky. Indeed, I am saying the opposite. Snarky's Neapolitan on me makes it likely that we are of the same alignment, and I know I am Town so Snarky looks more Town to me. If I look scummy to you, Snarky is more scummy to you. If you are confident that I am Traitor, you are confident that Snarky is Mafia.

Correct... but I can't vote Snarky rn can I?

True, and for a moment I forgot about that.

However, even if you are more confident that I am Traitor than that anyone else is Mafia, this does not mean you should vote me. Lynching someone who is less likely to be Mafia is better than lynching someone who is more likely to be Traitor, as a Mafia lynch is on the whole much better for Town than a Traitor lynch. Thus your vote should be on who you think is Mafia, not on who you think is Traitor.

[BTD6_maker]

We have a guaranteed win no matter where we lynch. If we lynch in A, we have 8 players, with Nero Cain confscum and the other scum in one of two players in A. In that case, we lynch Nero Cain to get more people in A, and then we have enough mislynches to guarantee the win. If we lynch Nero Cain in B, we will have 8 players and only 3 possible scum. We can lynch them in any order and still guarantee the win.

[BTD6_maker]

We're lynching in A today so Snarky can just get another result without getting killed since Snarky is in group B.

Technically, whether Snarky is killed or not doesn't matter. We have enough confTown to basically instantly win the game.

[BTD6_maker]

When I initially saw the setup (which was in December last year, if I remember correctly) I was convinced it was highly scumsided. After all, the Mountainous wequivalent is extremely scumsided. LQ showd it to me to see if I could evaluate it, as he had seen that I am logical and analytical from Micro 641 (I guaranteed a mechanical win in roughly half an hour, due to scum making a mistake due to bad advice). I would say that I lived up to that in this game.

Indeed, I would say that this setup is still scumsided were it not for one thing; namely, the Neapolitan. The Neapolitan is a very strong role (slightly weaker than Cop) and here if it is claimed it is effectively immortal until we are forced to lynch in its group, which gives it more than enough time to amass results. If it dies (as happened due to Town's Day 1 mistake) we still have an Universal Backup.

The Friendly Neighbour is basically an Innocent Child (although possibly slightly weaker, as it may inadvertently out itself to scum). This does not have that much impact.

Neither does the Watcher. It is fairly unreliable (it only gets Guilty when targeting the kill, and scum can easily use the Rolestopper on the kill target). It also cannot get genuine innocents other than PRs.

The Neapolitan is the only broken role here. I would suggest replacing it with a weaker investigative, perhaps a Vanilla Cop that investigates Traitor as Vanilla. This is still useful but cannot get fully confirmed guilties or innocents. This would also make the Goon effectively a Godfather for being vanilla, which gives all three scum a useful PR.

If this is too scumsided, make the Rolestopper rolestop the factional kill to make the Watcher more useful.

As an aside, I somehow managed to go through the game without voting, instead focusing on mechanics solving (mostly because I was initially called to examine the setup, which I have done in the course of the game). It helps and can be highly effective (see Micro 641, where it instantly won the game) but had the disadvantage of getting me scumread.

[BTD6_maker]

Perhaps make the VC detect Traitor as not Vanilla (although I am not completely sure), but it should still detect the Mafia Goon as vanilla. The main reason for this is indeed that a role that cannot get a conclusive result for either Town or Mafia is what we need, as a role that can get conclusive results is far too powerful. It does mean that the VC does not have an equal probability of Vanilla and non-Vanilla but this is beneficial for balance.

Vanilla Cops do not get an alignment check. You may be thinking of regular Cops. A Vanilla Cop detects whether someone is Vanilla or not, where Vanilla includes VT and Mafia Goon (and possibly Traitor) and non-Vanilla includes Town PRs and Mafia PRs.

[BTD6_maker]

You can send the setup to me by PM, if you want.

Provided it enters signups after Open 676 finishes, I can act as the backup Mod. After Open 676 I should have two games of modding experience and will be able to act as a backup Mod in any queue.