Ethics of conceding

[GuyInFreezer]

One of those game where town can mess up the autowin and lose.

[shannon]

I knew that was going to be that game

[Ümläüt]

I hadn't seen that game before it was linked here, but I'm not surprised it's Almost50.

[shannon]

To be fair my shitty play that game made it easy for him. Late in the game I was pushing a line, 'if A50 has confirmed all of us town, then he's confirmed none of us town, he's scum', but because I was so useless early on - focusing on staying alive, being obv town, sheeping, generally not showing much insight - it got me nowhere. I think this has helped me to realise something obvious, which is that staying alive is not as important as helping your faction to win!

[kraska77]

Lol best game 5ever

[kraska77]

Birthplace of so many memes

[Firebringer]

I have had games where there are way too many confirm towns for it to be even feasible to win.
Recently had one where one partner got lynched than another was going down meanwhile there would be 8 confirm town, because lynching a scum in this confirmed 4 players as town.

That meant realistically only 3 players were unconfirmed.
You can't win that at all.
Plus power roles.

[Ümläüt]

So... what did you do?

Did you play it out or throw in the towel?

[Firebringer]

I told the mod I conceded.
You can't win when 8 out of 12 players are confirmed town.

[Ümläüt]

How the hell does a game wind up with 8/12 players confirmed town

[Firebringer]

The game was designed in a way with three blocks of five players. Each had a scum in it.
Town won when they cleared each group of scum. Scum won when they take control of just one block.
In essence that made it so town could only afford one mislynch on day 1, but as soon as they correct lynch they get 4 confirmed town as these players didn't leave game but joined remaining blocks.

[callforjudgement]

I guess it's possible that's balanced (haven't thought about it in detail), but it's a good example of why excessive swing tends to be even more unsatisfying to the players than unbalanced games are. Even if it starts out balanced, it'll become unbalanced very quickly.

(How many mislynches did town have in that situation? With some versions of the setup, they'd only have had one mislynch left, and that's still winnable for scum in an 8 confirmed : 3 unconfirmed : 1 scum situation. Power roles rapidly drive the situation downhill, though.)

[Firebringer]

I guess it's possible that's balanced (haven't thought about it in detail), but it's a good example of why excessive swing tends to be even more unsatisfying to the players than unbalanced games are. Even if it starts out balanced, it'll become unbalanced very quickly.

(How many mislynches did town have in that situation? With some versions of the setup, they'd only have had one mislynch left, and that's still winnable for scum in an 8 confirmed : 3 unconfirmed : 1 scum situation. Power roles rapidly drive the situation downhill, though.)

Umm there were zero protective a in the setup so let's see....
Mislynch then kill down to 7 confirm 2 mislynch able me
Mislynch then kill again to 6 confirm 1 mislynch able me
Mislynch final time and kill that's 5 0 mislynch able and me
So I would need two more mislynched to have shot at winning.

[callforjudgement]

Ugh. That's 75% EV if it's all vanilla by my calculations, and probably more when you take power roles into account. Not a good situation for scum at all.

[LicketyQuickety]

http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=66845

Thoughts?

[callforjudgement]

If I'm reading that properly, you NK the cop (it's too dangerous to counterclaim them a second time), and go into D3 in a 4:1 with the remaining scum under fairly heavy suspicion. (It's possible I've missed something, though; I'm tired and not familiar with the game.)

I think that's winnable enough that I wouldn't want to concede, although I can see why the scum were demoralized.

[LicketyQuickety]

If I'm reading that properly, you NK the cop (it's too dangerous to counterclaim them a second time), and go into D3 in a 4:1 with the remaining scum under fairly heavy suspicion. (It's possible I've missed something, though; I'm tired and not familiar with the game.)

I think that's winnable enough that I wouldn't want to concede, although I can see why the scum were demoralized.

I am honestly surprised you read as much as you did. My Mafia partner basically outed himself which really sucked especially considering there was no reason to. I mean me, what choice did I have but CC? I tried to set it up as best I could at the beginning of D2, but I made a HUGE mistake that game by not killing the derp cleared Townie who just happened to be cop and investigated me. It was pretty bleh from then on.

[Ümläüt]

Are we telling concession stories now?

I just got out of a game recently where the last scum... didn't formally concede to the mod, but rather confessed and self-voted.

4 players: myself the uncontested jailkeeper and thus conftown, another the towniest townie who ever towned and pretty much unlynchable, and two unknowns. I proposed we lynch the first unknown, then if he flipped town I'd jail the second and we could lynch it tomorrow. At this point the first, who was already the obvious lynch candidate even without this strategy, stalled for a bit, realized there was no possible argument he could make for not lynching him, and gave in.

No one faulted him for this, including his teammate and the mod. Overall I think giving up was better than dicking around for two weeks in this case.

[Accountant]

Just had a scum concede in endgamr because he thought I was going to hammer him and wanted to end his misery(I wasn't)

[Firebringer]

but rather confessed and self-voted.

I am pretty sure players have gotten banned for confessing on here.
I didn't know you could do that at all?

[Ümläüt]

Well, several games I've seen have in the rules some variant of "Claiming scum by yourself is fine. Claiming scum with others is not."

Confessing is effectively the former.

[callforjudgement]

but rather confessed and self-voted.

I am pretty sure players have gotten banned for confessing on here.
I didn't know you could do that at all?

There are two relevant rules.

The common rule against claiming scum with a buddy doesn't apply here (because you aren't mentioning any buddy).
The site rule against playing against your win condition

does

generally apply here. However, it doesn't apply if a) you're necessarily going to lose, or b) you're necessarily going to get lynched and thus there's no reason to hide the fact that you're scum. (In case b, you can often get an advantage from ceasing to pretend to be town; among other things, it reduces the chance that you slip the identity of your buddy as there's no reason to give reads any more, it lets you offer the town a chance to leash you in a multi-faction game (they probably shouldn't accept the offer, but you might as well try), and if you're at L-1 you can sometimes ruin the town's attempt to plan by cutting the day short with a self-vote.)

[kuribo]

I guess it's possible that's balanced (haven't thought about it in detail), but it's a good example of why excessive swing tends to be even more unsatisfying to the players than unbalanced games are. Even if it starts out balanced, it'll become unbalanced very quickly.

(How many mislynches did town have in that situation? With some versions of the setup, they'd only have had one mislynch left, and that's still winnable for scum in an 8 confirmed : 3 unconfirmed : 1 scum situation. Power roles rapidly drive the situation downhill, though.)

Umm there were zero protective a in the setup so let's see....
Mislynch then kill down to 7 confirm 2 mislynch able me
Mislynch then kill again to 6 confirm 1 mislynch able me
Mislynch final time and kill that's 5 0 mislynch able and me
So I would need two more mislynched to have shot at winning.

This is a bad bad bad setup. The mod should have not asked for a concession and should have declared scum the loser under the standard "when nothing can prevent the same" wincon

[callforjudgement]

As I see it, the setup at that point was essentially equivalent to Innocent Child + 3 VT versus 1 Goon, nightless (plus power roles apparently!).

It's not mathematically unwinnable for scum, so the game won't be called at that point, but with an EV of 75%, you're not going to expect scum to win. (The power roles may have made it truly unwinnable; any result that gave away the alignment of any unconfirmed player would win things for town.)

[kuribo]

Well actually yeah.

I'd go with not killing the eight innocent children and pick people off from my own group because once it's 1:1 town:scum, scum wins anyway. (I missed the rule about scum winning if they take control of one block)

So don't kill the ICs, leave them alive to argue and vote against the questionable block. They only get one mislynch: 4-1, mislynch makes 3-1. Kill within the block, not the ICs to make it 2:1. At 2:1, a mislynch wins scum the game. Doesn't matter how many ICs there are, you only have to fool a majority