Mini 817: Chosen (Game Over!)

[Papa Zito]

Yay!

Who was excluded?

[Herodotus]

I think the point of his vote was to make me believe that I was choosing between the scum and the chosen, to convince me to self-hammer. If they had both voted each other earlier, I might have done that, but in this case it was too late. But it was a logical strategy.

About the setup:
I don't think the scum should try too hard to get the chosen lynched until the game is close to lylo. Raivann's day 1 extended vote for me was probably a mistake.
If we hadn't lynched mafia on day 1, I think they would have had a good chance of winning.
With three goons, I'd consider it unbalanced toward the scum. If a townie is lynched on day 1, day 2 will be 8-player lylo. Adding an extra townie would extend this to day 3; it's not clear how balanced that is, but it would make it relatively easy to get the chosen lynched.

[TDC]

Hm, didn't consider that. Good point.
Either way, at that point 2 of the 3 possible lynches ended in town win.

[Dry-fit]

i can't believe i had o good read in this one. well played all. dry-fit, your lack of posting on the final day seemed to implicate you a bit more.

Yeah, I think I really blew it on the last day.

I don't think the scum should try too hard to get the chosen lynched until the game is close to lylo. Raivann's day 1 extended vote for me was probably a mistake.

Yeah, trying to get you lunched day 2 and possibly even day 3 would have been suicide. I really felt kind of trapped from the beginning.

Who was excluded?

TDC, Papa Zito, MiteyMouse, and afatchic.

[MiteyMouse]

YAY!!! Great game everyone!

[hohum]

I think the point of his vote was to make me believe that I was choosing between the scum and the chosen, to convince me to self-hammer. If they had both voted each other earlier, I might have done that, but in this case it was too late. But it was a logical strategy.

About the setup:
I don't think the scum should try too hard to get the chosen lynched until the game is close to lylo. Raivann's day 1 extended vote for me was probably a mistake.
If we hadn't lynched mafia on day 1, I think they would have had a good chance of winning.
With three goons, I'd consider it unbalanced toward the scum. If a townie is lynched on day 1, day 2 will be 8-player lylo. Adding an extra townie would extend this to day 3; it's not clear how balanced that is, but it would make it relatively easy to get the chosen lynched.

What little data we have from the few setups we've run so far seems to support the opposite conclusion. In retropsect it isn't that foregone. This is a 7:2 vanilla setup with a very powerful town PR and no Mafia power roles. That makes this game very biased towards a town victory and in fact this is the closest the scum team has (and I think will ever) come to a victory.

The usual fix to balance a town PR is to add a mafia PR, but in this particular instance no mafia PR could touch the town PR. This gives the mafia more incentive to actively push for a lynch. This also means that they're less able to conceal their motives.

Based on that notion I think an 7:3 3rd good day start achieves balance. This setup needs to be harder for the town to win.

[hohum]

That's my opinion with what little setup experience I actually have. Grain of salt and all. I'd like to hear a convincing argument against running this again with a 7:3 setup. I've also prodded Cog and Ether for comments since they're the only other mods who have experience with this setup.

[MiteyMouse]

Hohum...what if you added the 3rd Scum but gave some Town power roles?

I forget the actually point value of a Townie that is immune to lynches but a 3 person Scum team is worth about 13.5 (4.5 per Scum). Now 7 Vanillas are worth 7 total. With the Scum knowing who the Chosen is, it really makes the lack of Night killing them almost nothing (that is just my oponion here) maybe an extra point or 2 for the Town. So with a 13.5 Scum team and an 8-9 point Town, it is not balanced number wise. Now, if you added a cop on the Town side (4 points) that would make it much closer. (13.5 to 12-13)

[Ether]

I was asked to comment. I'm fond of the two-chosen variant Patrick came up with, which Incognito is currently running--I'd like to see more of those. Ongoing game that I haven't been keeping up with, but a scumbag was still lynched Day 1. That's happened in all of the non-Marathon chosen games so far.

3/10 doesn't do it for me. The point of Chosen is that it's a mafia/lyncher hybrid...but if the mafia here ever managed to actually hit the chosen, it would be pretty much impossible for the town to ever recover. Even without hitting the chosen, town would lose the majority pretty quickly and get to that "selfvote if you're vanilla" point, and that's no fun. Power roles don't help, either.

For a while, I did toy with 3/13. I'm not sure how I feel about it. I like the urgency in 2/9, but of course...those haven't worked out too well for the scum.

[Incognito]

...will probably comment on the Chosen mechanic in general when my ongoing game comes to a close...

[Zorblag]

Good work town.

I'll probably hold off on thoughts about how to balance the chosen dynamic till Incognito's game is over as well though I've talked with hohum a bit about it already so I won't have anything too groundbreaking for him.

Dry-fit, that was an ugly place to have to step in. I thought you did really well but having Herodotus actually be the chosen was just really hard to work with. I love that you called my bluff and killed me night 3. I had, like Herodotus, come to the conclusion that a no kill was the ideal move for the mafia (I failed to mention that somehow while I was alive) and once I was killed I used the same reasons that he did to decide that he must be town but I was much less certain about MiteyMouse not being the chosen than I was before I got killed. I figured that I knew MiteyMouse was unlikely to follow through with my stated plan and hammer herself but perhaps others wouldn't realize that. Putting yourself in a situation where you were following a plan that would lead to your loss if everyone went along takes some guts.

Herodotus replacing in really hurt the scum a lot this game. I think that if Archon had stayed in the game there was a pretty decent chance he would have been killed day one which would have changed things tremendously. As it was, he was more of a background figure than I would have prefered given that I know he can do what he did that last day but with Nuwen and (mostly) Raivann's play on day one there was no way I was going to lynch him unless he started to look actively scummy.

Also, people really should be open to looking for alternate win methods in unusual setups. In this game I really do think that using reactions to figure out who was likely and unlikely to be the chosen did as much for us as trying to find the scum. I was never particularly looking for scum during the game as it was always easier to try to avoid the chosen which leads to victory just as well. It was a bit frustrating that people found that scummy but I suppose people often frustrate me.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Papa Zito]

Ether, did you invent this setup?

I don't know a thing about game balance so I can't comment on that. The only thing I will say is that I think the sample size is too small to really judge at this point.

Troll, now that the game is over you know I'm town and can take what I said at face value. I don't want to rehash the argument again; I just want to apologize that you got frustrated since that lessened your enjoyment of the game.

For my part I enjoyed the game a great deal and I was sad to be NKed early yet again. It was still fun to watch though. Hero for MVP.

[MeMe]

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