Newbie Data

[zoraster]

I imagine it'd be too burdensome to find out how often a cop, who survives to day 2, and has a guilty manages to get that guilty person lynched.

Without coming out as Cop? I expect the sample size is relatively small, but it'd be pretty awesome to see, I agree.

Hoopla: I hadn't considered that, mostly because I find Newbie Games to be pretty bad at applying site-meta. Not enough newbies know it, and few ICs really want to apply it with an iron fist (not sure about SEs). I'm happy to be wrong, and the sample size of games seems small enough to scan for trends (if kunkstar could link those 22).

no, not necessarily. They could come out as cop. It'd just have to be the full sample.

[kunkstar7]

I imagine it'd be too burdensome to find out how often a cop, who survives to day 2, and has a guilty manages to get that guilty person lynched.

Without coming out as Cop? I expect the sample size is relatively small, but it'd be pretty awesome to see, I agree.

Hoopla: I hadn't considered that, mostly because I find Newbie Games to be pretty bad at applying site-meta. Not enough newbies know it, and few ICs really want to apply it with an iron fist (not sure about SEs). I'm happy to be wrong, and the sample size of games seems small enough to scan for trends (if kunkstar could link those 22, plus maybe the 7 Pie E7s).

Looking up the games now, are we looking across all the setups or any in specific? (I'm not sure where you got the 22 from).

[Mr. Flay]

Those are the 22 games in which the Mafia Roleblocker was the D1 lynch in F11.

[Elmo]

Oh, wow, I had only looked at the C9 lynch numbers. That's... surprising.

o_O in what respect?

I'd be interested to see how cop deaths correlate with win rates.

You mean Cop deaths after D1? It already drops Town chances to 7.7% or so... not sure how much more you'd learn, though what Town chances are after a N1 Cop death could be interesting.

Where do you get that number from? Think it'd settle some arguments over how much power roles influence the game.

Here are some 95% binomial confidence intervals for F11 as given by this:

• [A] 2 Mafia Goons, 1 Sane Cop, 6 Townies
  
• 2 Mafia Goons, 1 Sane Doctor, 6 Townies
  
• [C] 1 Mafia Goon, 1 Mafia Roleblocker, 1 Sane Cop, 1 Sane Doctor, 5 Townies
  
• [D] 1 Mafia Goon, 1 Mafia Roleblocker, 7 Townies

[mith]

Sorry, I meant Pie E7 lynch numbers (regarding the frequency of Roleblocker lynches vs. Goon lynches).

[xRECKONERx]

We should either expand the potential role combinations for newbie games to get newbies experience with things like watcher, tracker, and the like (and to balance out that incredibly scum-sided win percentage), or make newbie games completely vanilla and have it be a basic exercise in playstyle and theory. I feel like both of these would be beneficial for different reasons:

1) More power roles give newbies a broader range of experience, and would also encourage playing multiple newbie games before jumping into mini themes or normals. As it is now, there are very few possible roles for newbies to receive, which makes them want to jump straight from newbie level to game playing level.

2) Vanilla games would take out the reliance on power roles and blind faith in claims that seems to be festering on the site and would teach actual scumhunting values. I feel like newbie games (at least, from when I joined over a year ago) teach "this is how you vote, this is a nightphase, here are some wiki tells, lol now go". I didn't get much in the way of how to scumhunt or critical thinking or anything (a lot of that is poor ICing maybe, but I can't help but think a lot of that has to do with the fact I was solely relying on cop/doc claims to narrow down the playing field).

[Mr. Flay]

We should either expand the potential role combinations for newbie games to get newbies experience with things like watcher, tracker, and the like (and to balance out that incredibly scum-sided win percentage), or make newbie games completely vanilla and have it be a basic exercise in playstyle and theory.

I'm not opposed to 1, but we can't seem to win 2:10 Vanilla Games with

experienced

players. Upping the size makes them last WAY too long (and essentially turns them into Minis), and keeping them at 2:5 or 2:7 makes them uncomfortably hard for Town to win.

I'm tentatively okay with mith's idea in post 15 to remove the 2M7T option entirely, as it puts the knowledge of the # of Power Roles in the domain of the Mafia (where it kinda belongs, to teach them how to play). We're somehow winning an average number of those, as Elmo pointed out in post 17, but it's probably through blind luck. I know there was some refutation in an old MD/SI thread for why this might not work, but I'm too lazy today to look it up.

Where do you get that number from?

o_0 Are people just not reading the first post? F11 set, Day One lynch data: of the 13 games where the Cop is the first lynch, Mafia win the game 92.31% of the time.

[zoraster]

also, one has to wonder whether it's really "fair" that 25% of people who end up with town will basically get screwed in comparison. it seems ideally that you'd have 4 possible setups that have about equal chance of a town win.

[Netopalis]

I'd also like to point out that removing the 2 mafia, 7 vanilla eliminates a powerful scum strategy. If the scum have a roleblocker, one of them is forced to claim, that person claims cop and is not counterclaimed, then the other partner knows that he can safely claim doc. Although this is a rare strategy, the elimination of it may help shift things in the town's favor.

[mith]

I'm not opposed to 1, but we can't seem to win 2:10 Vanilla Games with experienced players. Upping the size makes them last WAY too long (and essentially turns them into Minis), and keeping them at 2:5 or 2:7 makes them uncomfortably hard for Town to win.

To summarize from the Pie E7++ thread:

a. The 2:10 results are a very small sample size (and actually we do have one town win in a 2:8, even with that small sample).
b. Going to a 2:9 Vanilla would make them last about one game day longer on average - which may or may not be a terrible thing - and of course, we could take measures to reduce the day length, if game length is a big concern. [Actually, I expect just going to a Vanilla setup would reduce day length a bit on its own - no waiting on claims.]

We're somehow winning an average number of those, as Elmo pointed out in post 17, but it's probably through blind luck.

Well... yeah, on a large scale, probably so. If the newbies are doing about what the EV would predict, then they're doing as well as they would by lynching randomly,

by definition

. A phrase like "through blind luck" has the connatation of doing something really unlikely, though, and that's not the case here. It's not unlikely that the "sample mean" is close to the EV - it's the default assumption.

(On a game-by-game basis, I expect that skill does play an important role in the results - it's just that skill appears to be averaging out, for the most part.)

F11 set, Day One lynch data: of the 13 games where the Cop is the first lynch, Mafia win the game 92.31% of the time.

We should be careful with numbers like this. Note that if the town lynches the Cop, they could always just decide they suck and start lynching randomly the rest of the game (EV of about 30%) - and we actually don't have enough data to reject the null hypothesis of "Newbie towns win 30% of games after lynching the Cop D1". I would guess the 1/13 stat on this is partly bad luck and partly due to the fact that a town lynching a Cop D1 is a pretty awful town to begin with.

[Zachrulez]

I'm a bit concerned that eliminating the vanilla setup will emphasize focus on the prs and result in lower level play. (scum hunting in a mountainous setup is the best way to learn how to play mafia. IMO)

[kunkstar7]

Hoopla: I hadn't considered that, mostly because I find Newbie Games to be pretty bad at applying site-meta. Not enough newbies know it, and few ICs really want to apply it with an iron fist (not sure about SEs). I'm happy to be wrong, and the sample size of games seems small enough to scan for trends (if kunkstar could link those 22, plus maybe the 7 Pie E7s).

In response to this, here's the games with the Day One RB lynches:

Pie E7

527 | 530
532 | 543
548 | 549
551

F11

594 | 596
613 | 638
661 | 682
703 | 743
750 | 758
760 | 795
798 | 805
823 | 838
845 | 852
888 | 904
908 | 920

I imagine it'd be too burdensome to find out how often a cop, who survives to day 2, and has a guilty manages to get that guilty person lynched.

Without coming out as Cop? I expect the sample size is relatively small, but it'd be pretty awesome to see, I agree..

In regards to this; I'm putting together the sample set of the games where a cop lives past N1. So far there's ~324 games(not including the original setup yet), so it'll be a bit of research to find the number you are looking for, as you have to read through the games to find where a cop has a guilty. Also you have to consider if they are claiming on Day Two or waiting till a later time to claim their results.

[mith]

FWIW, I wasn't suggesting we eliminate the vanilla part of F11 - I was only suggesting that that would be an obvious way to improve the win rate, if we are concerned about it being too low.

[I'm somewhat amused (but not surprised) that the suggestion of going to a vanilla setup brought out various posts about the importance of exposing newbies to power roles, while the suggestion of eliminating the vanilla part of F11 brought support for the vanilla setup as the best way to teach scumhunting values.]

[Netopalis]

Can ANYONE please show me a newbie game that was won through follow-the-cop? Anybody? I really think that this is an imaginary problem, as I've said before.

[Mr. Flay]

*shrug* F11:C has the best tested value of any Newbie Setup we've run, 44% vs. 56%. And I still think (open) 2M7T is demoralizing and a good way to lose players/ICs. All kunkstar's data shows is that Town can manage not to do any worse than random in an environment where Mafia teams self-destruct on a fairly regular basis (most games, the IC is not going to be Mafia).

I'd be happy either eliminating F11:D or going to a straight F11:C (Pie E7++) setup.

Neto: I assume you're talking about in F11/Pie E7? It was pretty common in the original newbie setup.

[zoraster]

and we actually don't have enough data to reject the null hypothesis of "Newbie towns win 30% of games after lynching the Cop D1".

Technically, we can reject the null hypothesis, no?

[zoraster]

*shrug* F11:C has the best tested value of any Newbie Setup we've run, 44% vs. 56%. And I still think (open) 2M7T is demoralizing and a good way to lose players/ICs. All kunkstar's data shows is that Town can manage not to do any worse than random in an environment where Mafia teams self-destruct on a fairly regular basis (most games, the IC is not going to be Mafia).

I'd be happy either eliminating F11:D or going to a straight F11:C (Pie E7++) setup.

Neto: I assume you're talking about in F11/Pie E7? It was pretty common in the original newbie setup.

I agree although I'd say again that I think the ideal setup would be one that chooses between three roughly equal setups.

Right now, I think the single-biggest variable in whether you win or not is which setup you get.

[Netopalis]

*shrug* F11:C has the best tested value of any Newbie Setup we've run, 44% vs. 56%. And I still think (open) 2M7T is demoralizing and a good way to lose players/ICs. All kunkstar's data shows is that Town can manage not to do any worse than random in an environment where Mafia teams self-destruct on a fairly regular basis (most games, the IC is not going to be Mafia).

I'd be happy either eliminating F11:D or going to a straight F11:C (Pie E7++) setup.

Neto: I assume you're talking about in F11/Pie E7? It was pretty common in the original newbie setup.

I'm talking about right now. It may have been a problem with the original setup, but we no longer have the original setup. That fixed the problem. Let's stop trying to fix a fixed problem.

[Elmo]

o_0 Are people just not reading the first post? F11 set, Day One lynch data: of the 13 games where the Cop is the first lynch, Mafia win the game 92.31% of the time.

Oh, I misread your post, I thought you were saying they won that % when the cop died afterwards. :V

In general it's not likely to be similar since there's a big difference between the cop being lynched D1 and dying N1.

We're somehow winning an average number of those, as Elmo pointed out in post 17, but it's probably through blind luck.

Dunno what you mean by average. I'd say the win rate is a long way from the site average, but (engage the tautological drive!) average from what I'd expect from newbies. I think newbies are special in that it's actually harder for scum to get newbies to lynch worse than random, so I'm not surprised to see something like that... not too sure about that.

I really don't see a particularly good reason to remove F11-D. If you take that out, then it only changes the overall Mafia winrate by about 1.5%.

I mean there are a number of things to be said about balance, some stemming from the fact we don't have a practical definition of it. Shruggo.

[zoraster]

I really don't see a particularly good reason to remove F11-D. If you take that out, then it only changes the overall Mafia winrate by about 1.5%.

It improves it by about 2% if we make the assumption that people are actually making their game selections randomly. But you assume the chance that there might not be a single town role does not otherwise affect the win rate of the other games on the list, and I think it probably would help town by being able to believe at least one role claim PLUS reducing the chance of scum fakeclaiming being unopposed.

[nhammen]

Can ANYONE please show me a newbie game that was won through follow-the-cop? Anybody? I really think that this is an imaginary problem, as I've said before.

I'm talking about right now. It may have been a problem with the original setup, but we no longer have the original setup. That fixed the problem. Let's stop trying to fix a fixed problem.

I've never seen someone complain about follow the cop in F11. In fact, this thread is currently talking about how the mafia wins too much. The opposite of follow the cop.

[Netopalis]

I'm a bit concerned that eliminating the vanilla setup will emphasize focus on the prs and result in lower level play. (scum hunting in a mountainous setup is the best way to learn how to play mafia. IMO)

2) Vanilla games would take out the reliance on power roles and blind faith in claims that seems to be festering on the site and would teach actual scumhunting values.

This was also brought up in a similar thread posted recently.

[Vi]

Counterpoint: Mr. Flay's position seems to be that without power roles Towns are successful at finding scum more through blind luck than hunting. (Is that right?)

This is a statement that bothers me somewhat so I want to ask about it.

[nhammen]

I'm a bit concerned that eliminating the vanilla setup will emphasize focus on the prs and result in lower level play. (scum hunting in a mountainous setup is the best way to learn how to play mafia. IMO)

2) Vanilla games would take out the reliance on power roles and blind faith in claims that seems to be festering on the site and would teach actual scumhunting values.

This was also brought up in a similar thread posted recently.

To me follow the cop implies reliance on power roles carried to an extreme level. So I didn't see these in the same way you did. I was thinking that what they were talking about was taking claims out of the equation and focusing exclusively on connections.

Counterpoint: Mr. Flay's position seems to be that without power roles Towns are successful at finding scum more through blind luck than hunting. (Is that right?)

I can actually see this, especially in smaller games. There are not enough people to have good connections.

[Vi]

Counterpoint: Mr. Flay's position seems to be that without power roles Towns are successful at finding scum more through blind luck than hunting. (Is that right?)

I can actually see this, especially in smaller games. There are not enough people to have good connections.

Iiiii'm not sure how that logic works...