Micro 706: Restrictive Mafia (Over)

[Socrates]

Ahoy.

12/9/6

I've played with Not_Mafia, and it would probably be better to say that Lycan and Gin have seen

me

play, though I haven't really seen them play.

Prof does have a point that scum have an interest in killing the players with the most posts available to them to narrow the towns flexibility, especially as the game goes on. 8 posts might be enough for some breathing room day 1, but 5 and 3 posts are very hard limits to work with as the stakes escalate. I briefly considered lying about my restriction to surprise the scum come lylo (I like gambits, Gin and Lycan can probably attest to this), but it probably wouldn't benefit me much and I'm probably going to want to use these posts anyway.

That said, I do think all players should post their restriction. The mod said the distribution of restrictions MIGHT be randomized so we can't game that, but it will be good to know what everyone is working with and we should lock any potential liars in early.

Gin's opening was well thought out, and there's no harm in giving him some credit. The particularly pro-town mindset shown in his post is his concern about looking for associative tells, and putting some pressure on all players to talk about ALL other players is going to make the mafia's life harder, not just because of having to talk about their buddy, but it also makes it harder to be flexible about where they put their scum reads. He might just have these things on the mind because he IS scum, but if he fails to live up to his own standards it will bite him in the ass.

Edo's opening does nothing for me.

Hi. I have 8 posts today so unless the mod wants us to break the game, it's surely randomized.

Mind explaining this?

I'm on the opposite side of the spectrum and think N_M's actions are towny (as in: come from a relaxed town perspective). Surely he must be aware of the consequences his behavior would net him, considering how serious people are gonna take every single post. I doubt scum would put themselves out there like that.

Have you played with Not_Mafia before?

I'm wary of Edos' premature assessment of Gin's alignment. I've seen scum start off with strats, allowing them to safely ride on the early towncred almost as often as town so I wouldn't say this is AI.
However, let's go with it ftm. I'll try to sort Edos, Umlaut and ZZZX.

8-1=7

Yeah, this is where my vote is starting.

VOTE: Antihuman

@Not_Mafia: feel like sharing your restriction?

Umlaut's vote is policy, and I will be watching to see if he is actually trying to sort NM or just wants the policy.

Neither Umlaut nor Antihuman are scum with NM.

I'd like everyone to say in their next post with whom they have experience playing,

so that we don't have to waste posts asking around for meta reads.

nah

Why not?

I want Anti, Lycan, and NM sorted.

Am I forgetting anything?

Oh yes:

PSA: Reserve your last post for a vote. You will note be able to move your vote anymore after making it.

[Socrates]

Lurking is going to be an issue in this game, and the fact that individual posts are necessarily going to be longer than normal makes it so that drafting up a post will take more time, which is going to exasperate the problem, at least for me.

ZZZX hasn't contributed much, but I don't yet see a direct scum angle that he would be working toward other than trying to burn posts as an excuse to hang back.

ZZZX: Are you an alt? Because this is my fourth game back after a 6 year hiatus, before your account was even registered. You might be thinking of Aristophanes.

Socrates, read Hamm.

This was in the ZZZX spoiler, but I'm assuming that was just an accident.

As I said, I can see where Hamm is coming from about when it comes to scum manipulating the player pool to push out the ones with the most words, even though I don't think it's the right approach. Other than that, her statements about other players were mostly safe, with nothing that truly raises an eyebrow, but it's no sin to, upon consideration, find oneself agreeing with the consensus. My read on her slot will be heavily predicated upon how she handles her next few posts, but I won't specify yet what I'm looking for because it would render the opportunity wasted.

---

First thing I'd like to say is to quickly discuss the thing I was talking about in the Anti part. I wished Socrates remembered Zefiend in DBZA as he started out talking about the dragon ball mechanics in the opening post and Music Box later rode the town cred to the end game.

As for his assessment of me, I think it was an overall fair assessment of me. What it does for me is make me think he doesn't know my alignment. He's waiting for further play to make judgements about me.

Well, lets be clear here: I never at any point townread Zefiend in that game, and in fact he was one of the three players I had issues with due to the way he handled the beginning of that game. There are key differences in his behavior and yours, though: his big numbers post was around 3 pages into the game, and there were plenty of things that were going on for him to be able to comment on, yet didn't, while yours was the first game-post of this entire game.

Secondly, his strategy talk was exclusively about hypotheticals for the night game and had nothing to do with the day game. Whereas yours was about how to handle the day game and I've already talked about how I sense a pro-town angle to your approach. Third, Zefiend himself admitted that he was really just stalling when I brought up the possibility. I am of course going to be watching to see whether you proceed to coast.

I do want explanation on why you voted Anti.
Add to that why Anti and umlaut are not with NM.

This is another way that this game's structure is probably going to cramp my style even though I tend to be a low volume poster. I like to poke, see the reactions to my poke, and then elaborate. I wanted to see Anti respond himself so I could see where his insecurities lay, but it's been a day and the lurking pressure of this game makes it hard for me factor timing into the equation.

Anti's townread on NM felt shallow and overly premature in a way that seemed to clash with the way he talked down Edo's quick townread on you (and I remind you that he townread him before NM made post 12, the source of your own read on NM.) It read to me like the words of scum who saw low-hanging fruit and is choosing to back off and let the town fall on it all on their own. And talking down your post is fine, but he did it in a very easy, generalized way that is not necessarily alignment indicative either way, regardless of how you feel about it personally.

He wouldn't town-read his potentially lynch-bait partner so quickly, and Umlaut would not come out of the gate seriously pushing a policy lynch on his partner. If they were buddies, I would expect him to voice the idea, but not put his money where his mouth was.

---

It occurs to me to note that Lycan voted ZZZX with an demand that he post, yet said nothing of the sort about me. In the back pocket that observation goes.

I will be sure to remind Edo to come back to that. Otherwise my only issue is him keeping his vote on NM purely for lack of reason to move it elsewhere. I share Gin's concern about NM being a 'safe' place for scum to park their vote early, but I can't deny that I will be watching NM with a close eye myself. I actually think his presence is a positive influence on this game, because he has already been a catalyst for discussion.

[Socrates]

Prodded. Okay, I need to stress out less about wasting my posts, and apologies to Gin, but I don't want to write an essay on every single post, and I'm not sure it's even necessarily healthy to try.

Besides, I have the high post count.

Prof's strategy here is fine in a vacuum, but she should know that when push comes to shove, (say, at deadline) I'm going to be watching her very closely. Her take on anti's answer about the randomization is close to mine, in that I find it baffling. He says not to TR Gin for strategy talk up front, but doesn't think scum would share their restriction? I mean, if anything its the other way around, scum would want to give the impression that they have nothing to hide and don't want to be the weird kid that stands out. You know, like how Lycan threatened Prof.

I was watching to see if she would wilt at the threat, but she didn't, but rather refined her own individual approach, suggesting that this is something she actually cares about and is not using it as a rhetorical platform. *my initial statement still stands, though.

I said I didn't see a scum angle to zzzx's start, but there is

most definitely

a pro-scum angle to voting NM the way he did, and his reasoning smells fishy. I'll talk about this more in the morning.

I liked Gin's push on Lycan, but I need to reread to remind myself why.

Three players have all said they follow my reasoning and that never happens.

I'll post again in the morning.

--

YO UMLAUT, WHERE YOU AT?

[Socrates]

Wagon inertia is going to be enormous in this game. Because we have finite capacity to post, players are disincentivized to burn a post just to get off of a bad wagon, and with 4 days left and 5 or less posts left to make, consolidation of votes is a serious topic that needs to be discussed early and often.

By pushing the NM wagon at the point you did, you have drastically increased the odds of him being lynched through sheer inertia. People are soon going to be forced to go "it's either Not_Mafia or Not_Lynch". Further, it gives your scumbuddy a juicy window to wagon someone

else

with weak reasoning on the premise of consolidation, because townies are going to have to do that too.

And then I look at your argument itself, and it's meta-argument that could be easily pulled out of nothing at all, and I further note that you are soft angling to move onto Edo, and I wonder if he is your REAL target for today's lynch, using the pressure of the NM wagon to force people to look at him as an alternative.

For example, I'm looking at the vote count right now and a full page has passed and only one person has even indicated that they might follow me onto Anti, so even if my attention hypothetically hadn't shifted from him onto you, I would be real close to having to pull back and consider if it would even be possible for me to organize a lynch on him this day phase without investing literally all of my energy into stumping in favor of what is frankly a weak read.*

*especially if he is in fact scum and I got active resistance from their buddy.

Luckily, this dilemma is resolved by you being a much stronger scumread than Anti, such that I

am

willing to stump for this.

VOTE: XXXZ

Everyone who doesn't justify why they

aren't

voting XXXZ in their next post will hear sharp words from me.

[Socrates]

That came... faster than I anticipated.

L-1, folks.

[Socrates]

My heart sank when I saw Umlaut alive today, because Not_Mafia has 5 posts today to convince anyone that he's town, and anyone even half-paying attention would know that Umlaut wasn't going to vote for anyone but.

ZZZX grandstanding and playing on us being familiar with each other is scum ZZZX, lynch Edo tomorrow

So you thought Edos was ZZZX's partner and now that he flipped town you still wanna unconditionally see Edos dead?
Seems like a setup, especially that Lycan was in a weak position and the only reason to kill him over more prolific players was to make Edos look bad.
This also could mean there's scum between widely townread players, in which case my gut says Socrates.

VOTE: N_M

Assume scum deliberately shoot off the wagon. Who do they kill?

[Socrates]

We need prods.

@Umlaut: It makes me paranoid that NM is going to flip town and we're being played. You read Gin as NM's buddy, but my mind actually went in the opposite direction: Gin deliberately put someone at L-1 to bait a quickhammer from a town NM.

[Socrates]

I call associatives as I see them at all points, regardless of my reads on individual slots. POE is a powerful tool, especially in a game of this size. The fewer people that make sense as scum with Not Mafia, the more sense it makes for him to be town, and if he does flip scum, I know exactly where to look instead of having to do the whole "time to re-read his slot looking for buddies!" thing. I note your reasoning on those associatives are identical to what mine was.

@umlaut: no, no, I think you're conflating my reads with yours. I'm saying his behavior makes sense as scum indirectly manipulating a player he knows to be town. I don't actually think he would enable the quickhammer for a scum!NF, because he would know not to position himself in such a weak spot thats so close with a buddy that would be doomed to go down in flames. I reserve the right to be wrong, of course, but if NM flips scum I will want to look elsewhere. Does this make sense?

As NF himself, we kinda do have to lynch him today. I can't justify a real town-read on him for all the reasons you have gone over and I myself having seen him go for the Refuge of Audacity as scum too, as much as I hate being put in this situation.

Once again Edo does nothing for me. Maybe that should be a red flag at this point. @Edo, is it time to remind you to come back to "this"?

[Socrates]

@Socrates (in response to your post 65): My issue with your associative hunting was that you did it way too early and it seemed unnatural. Can you point out games where you used associatives as town?

Well, I only have one completed town game since I came back to the site, but quickly perusing day 1 of that game:

Spoiler:

MariaR reminds me of UncertainKitten. My intuition is that Scum!Maria would only condescend to me the way she did if she knew I was on the wrong trail, so I'd be surprised if she was scum WITH Not Chara.

Similarly, I'm town-reading Alisae, but scum!him would never respond to my case on NC the way he did if it was on a scumbuddy.

Socrates what do you make of NC's latests posts?

I like that they stepped back from looking at me specifically and looked at the followers on the wagon, something I had been watching for myself and exactly what they should be doing as town. Imperium was not particularly clear on why they voted NC in the first place, and I don't believe ever specified how they felt about my own read of NC, so this interaction

*

between the two was what I was hoping to see.

I had been lingering on NC for as long as I had because I wanted to ensure they were not just waiting for me to get distracted by a shiny object and go away, and getting independent confirmation that their activity level was not unusual went a long way towards alleviating that particular concern.

My suspicion will linger, but I'm now happy to move on to my next place of interest.

*(Emphasis on my focus on interactions)

By the way, unless there is some kind of meta-history of Nacho mis-reading Majif, Scum!Majif would only want to directly play chicken with him if they were scumbuddies.

It should go without saying that ball ownership should be counterclaimed with impunity.

I doubt Zaj and Clumsy aren't* scumbuddies.

*ARE

I don't think they are both scum, to be clear.

Deadline is in 15-ish hours. I'll be around to hammer in 12. Get your last words in.

[Socrates]

VOTE: not_mafia

[Socrates]

VOTE: Gamma Emerald

[Socrates]

This game was likely scumsided from the start, but I would say this game is fine as a demonstrative experiment, which is what it felt like from the beginning: There were players who liked the low post ceiling and it did provoke people to be more thoughtful when they did post, but it necessarily forced the town into a circular lurk fest, because players are incentivized to 1) hang back and let other players speak so they don't miss anything, and 2) put off posting because the pressure to not waste a low-content post was so high.

It's probably worth noting that Umlaut was the only one who ever bumped up against their posting limit.

I'm not sure how representative this actually is, though, because so much of this game ended up revolving around Not_Mafia. I have no idea how this game plays out without their hammer on ZZZX.

I think a good middle ground for designing a more serious game would involve putting a restriction on posting, but make the restriction fairly high. The mere existence of the limit will quell off-topic/spam posting, but not make people afraid to talk seriously without having to measure up to some standard of utilizing a finite resource.