Board 8 > Valentine's Day Mafia Topic 12: All's Fair in Love and War

(+) Yeah! (+)

PeaceFrog posted...

This isn't any cfwr whatsoever, man. I'm not salty about that. Obviously I was playing very poorly and not analyzing the situations properly - look at how d1 ended!

Ok

Well just realize my "thinking I know how you would play the game" was pretty minor in how I played the game. If you want me to explain the exact thought flow I can but I'm not actually assuming I know you particularly well at all-- we hardly even interact outside of mafia-- so don't worry about that.

FYI even though I was hardly able to follow this (haven't been home for even a week yet), I would love to play in a game with this format sometime.

And yes, Lea, I'd absolutely date you.

Chaeix posted...

Im processing some incredibly complex trauma at the moment and its had me very sidetracked

I am sorry to hear this.

Please let me know if you need someone to talk to, I'm always game for that.

BlueCrystalTear posted...

FYI even though I was hardly able to follow this (haven't been home for even a week yet), I would love to play in a game with this format sometime.

And yes, Lea, I'd absolutely date you.

I am sorry to hear this.

Please let me know if you need someone to talk to, I'm always game for that.

Appreciate the offer BCT! Im lucky to have a wonderful support network of friends who Ive learned to lean on properly so after a few failed recovery attempts this one feels like its finally going to stick. If you happen to have any recommendations for interesting YouTube videos for occupying my brain that would be fun, Ive been big into learning about the cosmos and consciousness lately (related to the trauma, in my past Ive had psychosis on a lot of shrooms whoops)

PeaceFrog posted...

I think you could have reached accurate conclusions of the game state much sooner if you just... took Dumey's idea that praf jumped off a cliff for no good reason, instead of immediately hand waving it away.

Hey, I tried! But apparently I was 100% scum so my words were worthless lol

Speaking of which, actually... FD, you're scary as hell as scum. I can't believe you took the "Peaf's flip makes you look bad" angle instantly in our N1 chat. That's incredible thinking and such a bold play haha

Enchantress posted...

Unfortunately our love, like a cop, was just not in this game and so I was cooked

LMFAO

We need more Lea and FD zingers in our Mafia games Also, Lea, your hair looks so fabulous omg! Is it the lighting or does your hair have a purple-to-blue gradient to it?

Kirby321 posted...

Hey, I tried! But apparently I was 100% scum so my words were worthless lol

I think if you didn't take the "whole pile is cleared 100%" angle (which despite more correctly assessing Peaf's mentality was wrong) we could have worked together

I think everyone's eyes are just glazing over the facts of what I was arguing and declaring victory cause "Lopen was wrong about why Peaf did it" but ultimately the more important aspect of my argument was "if there were no scum at the end of day 1 one of our two scum neighbors would have pushed suspicion of the pile instead of just townclearing it" and it turns out there was scum in it so...

I mean technically FD wasn't in the pile when Peaf made his move

My theory was mostly right I just didn't account for the fact that FD hadn't broken up yet

I feel like if FD is town he doesn't break there and only did it for indirect bus cred.

I also feel like if FD is town Sultan and/or Scum 2 are both driving investigations into that final 7.

I just don't see how people can gloat to me about how wrong I was when there was literally scum in that pile. Who cares why Peaf did that it's not that relevant to the solve.

Kirby321 posted...

Speaking of which, actually... FD, you're scary as hell as scum. I can't believe you took the "Peaf's flip makes you look bad" angle instantly in our N1 chat. That's incredible thinking and such a bold play haha

I think it's what I SHOULD have thought if I were town trying to understand what Peaf just did. He did only try to date you after all

.

And as much as I appreciate the kudos, I think Sultan also did exactly what he was trying to do. Unfortunately what he was trying to do was look scummy and draw a scan on n1 or n2. It felt like we got really unlucky that Sultan ended up sleeping with the only person who was already scanned on n2, but he ended up getting a prosty clear the same night.

But then after we realized the scan wasn't going to come together, he righted the ship well enough to find dates. It might have been too little too late in a normal game, but it worked well enough for this one.

i'll be honest it's good to know that scum fd puts just as much effort as town fd does into spreadsheets

i hadn't personally witnessed it before

I was so sad when you all killed Shonen protagonist Kirby.

Right before he took off his weighted clothing and his power level increased exponentially.

Okay, 5 vs 2 on 7.

For starters I don't think there's ever an "always true" situation for dealing with 7 players in this format. So I don't think you can say it's ALWAYS better to kill 3.

You have to consider that your triple kill options are going to be limited to:

-One of the 3 pairs that paired up on 9 (excluding the 4th pair from 9 who lost a partner)
AND
-A willing sacrifice who feels strongly enough about at least one of the paired players that they will sacrifice themselves to take both out.

The "sacrifice" can never be scum, because scum will never volunteer in that spot. If the sacrifice is scum then BOTH players in the pair either have to feel strongly that their date from the night before is scum to be unwilling to pair with the sacrifice.

If BOTH of the previously-paired players are scum, that it doesn't matter if you only kill them 1 at a time, because you still hit scum and are presumed to hit the next one the following day. Especially in a situation like this game where the pair in question had an incredibly sus end of day on 9. If there was a scum/scum pair on 9 then it could only have been ulti/isquen. So with that being assumed the only way you kill 3 that day is if MZero, Dumey or JC was going to volunteer to kill them both.

Now if we run this format more times in the future then this information means future scum will want to appear to be willing to die, since that willingness seems to buy a lot of town credit.

The mistake wasn't failing to kill 3, because if a triple kill was forced then I would have just allowed myself to be paired with Sultan for the claimed purpose of preventing a triple kill and we still just win immediately going from 7 players to 4.

The mistake town made was not trying a little harder to make everyone uncomfortable about who they had to pair up with. Ulti was insistent that my being scum would put me with MZero. That was very helpful to me and allowed me to make it seem like I didn't want to pair with MZero and was only doing it because he was the only pair I would be allowed to take. But swap MZero's name with Sultan, and I probably end up paired with sultan and we'd be forced to play out a day of 5 after pairing. I probably would have responded differently and would have tried to appear only too eager to pair with Sultan to try and trigger alarm bells and get someone to veto that pairing, but let's say for the sake of argument both Ulti insisted and Dumey backed him up? Then yeah, I'm stuck with sultan and the day of 5 becomes an actual contest. Most likely with us killing Dumey and trying to convince JC that MZero and Isquen must be the scum?

But killing 3 doesn't solve anything, it ends the game UNLESS you identify a scum/scum pair from 9, and if you've done that then you might as well just kill 1 of them and try to more intelligently hedge your bets. I think JC/Dumey was a good hedge, for example. I think I would have strongly argued against either of them being allowed to pair with anyone else. It was a long shot, but there was an actual argument to be made for them as a scum pair, and if you're town in that spot then that's the pairing you want to force. I think there was probably a stronger argument to either link myself and Sultan or to link Isquen and MZero, and in either case those pairs could have been forced as well and more strongly insisted upop. And in that spot scum has to go along with it. Otherwise what happens? It's me + sultan + ulti without pairs? And we BOTH suicide? Or one of us pairs Ulti and the other dies? Much better to just agree with the town-decided pairing and save the argument for day of 5.

So to recap:

The only way you're hitting scum on 7 is if they PAIRED on 9. And if they paired on 9 there is no need to risk a triple town death by killing both at once. Just kill 1 and take that knowledge into the following day where you can kill the other safely and still be guaranteed a day of 3 if you are wrong. The chance of forcing scum to pair on 7 is above 0% so that's a hedge worth taking.

I'm fairly confident in this.

So if we kill Sultan Day 3, then assume Lopen dies next and the NKs remain the same we get

1. Mzero
2. Chaeix (JC)
3. Isquen
4. FD
5. Ulti
6. Dumey
7. Kirby

let's say Kirby and Ulti still die next and Dumey and JC get NK'd

MZero
Isquen
FD

I think I probably try to date Isquen in that final 3 tbh but I guess town FD surviving to final 3 wouldn't be that hard to believe

once the claimed powers were dead my only possible play is "scum left me alive to mislynch me"

But that's why I made a point to agree several times that I should be the presumptive night kill after Red, Corrik and Chris were gone. By saying that in the open I can use the that "scum read what I said and formed a plan to turn me into an automatic mislynch for not-dying when I was supposed to".

It might not have worked, but it would have been better than "yeah, I'm still alive so just kill me I guess?"

.

I was also fully prepared for Sultan to be lynched on the day of 7 if town had gone along with my plan on the day of 9. But Ulti and Isquen murdering Kirby EoD instead gave me the justification to say that one of them was required to be the lynch on 7.

If Isquen had just paired with Kirby like he was supposed to (or if Ulti had done it and Isquen died) then that gives us Sultan, Mzero and one of Ulti or Isquen on 7.

I really would have supported killing any one of the 3 including Sultan and making the other 2 pair up on 7.

If we say Ulti was lynched on 9 and Sultan was lynched on 7 then on 5 we have:

Mzero/Isquen/Me/JC/Kirby

After being able to take credit for my plan lynching godfather Sultan it should be no problem to get one of MZero or Isquen lynched on 5. It might be difficult to explain why Dumey was killed instead of me, but other than that I think I'd have earned enough credit for sultan's death to at least have a shot on a day of 3 players. Winning a day of 3 would still be difficult and much less likely than just finding a way to win with Sultan still alive.

Hey town, maybe dont be so angry about individual thought in a game like this.

Forceful_Dragon posted...

After being able to take credit for my plan lynching godfather Sultan it should be no problem to get one of MZero or Isquen lynched on 5. It might be difficult to explain why Dumey was killed instead of me, but other than that I think I'd have earned enough credit for sultan's death to at least have a shot on a day of 3 players. Winning a day of 3 would still be difficult and much less likely than just finding a way to win with Sultan still alive.

Honestly, I wouldn't have questioned why Dumey would have died. He was my #1 town read after Chris had been killed.

Had things panned out where I didn't die, I imagine we could have gotten Sultan, but whether we could have pinned you as the final scum is hard to say, especially if you were instrumental in Sultan's lynch.

You guys should have gotten me several times. I intentionally tried to look scummy to eat a cop scan, I honestly still don't think I have ever been cop scanned and if I did it was an early game.

I think if you insist on pairing with Sultan to prevent triple it exposes you a bit.

The key isn't triple in and of itself but pushing for it and also pushing for the person to execute it and not taking volunteers because yes obviously scum never volunteers to take part

They should have had Ulti suicide into a pair or Sultan suicide into Ulti + Isquen (since Ulti and Sultan were both under heat at the time)

If you have triple where all participants are negotiable then yes its a failing move but if town agrees "these 3 must do it" that's the key

Lopen posted...

if town agrees "these 3 must do it" that's the key

And if everyone quickly says "yes, I agree, let's go for it!" including all 3 parties involved?

And you are still limited by the pairs from the day of 9.

I think you can say there MAY be cases where blowing up is objectively better.

But I would argue our situation this game was NOT one of those cases. How can you be town, see what Ulti and Isquen did at the end of the day of 9 and conclude that they were NOT the most likely to be scum? Obviously Ulti knows he isn't, and Isquen knows he isn't, but everyone else on the outside? It's scum who spent the entire previous part of the day trying to justify their pairing, only to appear to go along with something else and pair up at the last minute anyways and murder town. The only way to stop them from winning on 5 is to kill one on 7 and there are just two many wrong answers for who could blow them up.

I genuinely think if I'm town going into that day of 7 I make very similar arguments to the ones I made in this game, I would have just spent more time on the non-ulti pairs to make sure no one seemed too comfortable with who they were being forced to pair with.

I just think insisting on having Sultan be the bomb into Ulti + Isquen would still achieve the same effect. And Sultan is the clear bomb based on existing suspicions.

And if he isn't cool with being that volunteer you generate content that way and just lynch him directly if he refuses.

The key is eliminating 3 most suspicious is always better than eliminating 1.

Literally anything was better than what town did in any case. Zero pressure at all.

I also move that Sultan needs to work on his anger, because it felt manipulative.

you're just explaining what a perfect response would have been, and not considering how unlikely it is to play out perfectly. And even if Sultan is scum for being the 3rd most suspicious, correctly pairing him with his scummate still prevents death on 5.

Town was martyr happy to the point that the most likely triple kill to occur would have been ulti/isquen with Kirby or Dumey. I still think it just came down to not doing the 2 person pair ups effectively, but I chalk that up to making it appear that I did not want to date MZero.

Maybe I'll change my mind after we have a few more games under our belt and see different scenarios on 7, but I genuinely believed everything I said about triple kills being anti-town, at in this game at least I think that was still true on 7.

htaeD posted...

I also move that Sultan needs to work on his anger, because it felt manipulative.

I have apologized for getting Angry
Had some irl stuff going on. Also part of the reason I need to take a small step back I let it effect in game stuff this game as well. If it looked manipulative I'm sorry. It wasn't ment to be.

Forceful_Dragon posted...

you're just explaining what a perfect response would have been, and not considering how unlikely it is to play out perfectly.

This is actually what you're doing not me. Because there are very few combinations that are three town bombed. I think there are losing lines. The key is to force people who are not comfortable into doing it. I said Ulti bombing into JC + Mzero was also better but yeah it's losing. Ulti into the other pair or the isolated Sultan into any pair is winning and I think if the town neutrally picks it would likely to be Sultan or Ulti as the bomb as much fun as it is to pretend Mzero would be the bomb because you want to Devil's Advocate.

So yeah I guess what I'm saying is I think if you're using bombs with only people willing to bomb yes it sucks. But if you're doing lynches with only people willing to be lynched it sucks too as we saw this game.

The main benefit to bomb is it makes it harder to fake being ok with it if you have three bodies dropping.

Really bomb or no bomb the gameplan should have always been to put the three most suspicious into the pool at the end. Constantly. That is what I was trying to do when I was alive. I was just using myself as bait because I was very confident I would not die. Which I think gave town bad habits unfortunately

tbh we probably win if we just let me blow up Chris and Sultan D3

MZero posted...

tbh we probably win if we just let me blow up Chris and Sultan D3

Was saying the same

Honestly I blame myself. Got too tunnel visioned on Kirby. Sultan did NOT take the bomb heat check well at all. I can (and do at some level) blame Ulti for being a pressure valve to stop us from lynching Sultan but I could have dragged Sultan into the end of day pool. I had the ability since he had dated me for a while

Oh well

Lopen posted...

Really bomb or no bomb the gameplan should have always been to put the three most suspicious into the pool at the end. Constantly. That is what I was trying to do when I was alive. I was just using myself as bait because I was very confident I would not die. Which I think gave town bad habits unfortunately

And if none of them dated the night before? Any combination of 2 of them could date, and anyone who is town in the pool should be trying to protect themselves rather than accept death. If all 3 are town then you're screwed either way unless one of the other pairs is scum/scum. If it's 2 town and 1 scum then each of the town might be willing to pair the scum to save themselves (which is depending on game specific reads) and if it's 1 town and 2 scum then scum will of course be forced to pair (or go for a more deliberate bus and get one of them to pair the town) but then you're still assuming everone will even come to the same conclusion on who the 3 most suspicious players are.

You are the one making a sweeping statement that bomb on 7 is always better. I'm saying I don't think even this game qualifies unless you say "yeah but we could have done the exactly most perfect thing" and that I don't think you can make that generalization across the board.

Kirby321 posted...

Hey, I tried! But apparently I was 100% scum so my words were worthless lol

Speaking of which, actually... FD, you're scary as hell as scum. I can't believe you took the "Peaf's flip makes you look bad" angle instantly in our N1 chat. That's incredible thinking and such a bold play haha

LMFAO

We need more Lea and FD zingers in our Mafia games Also, Lea, your hair looks so fabulous omg! Is it the lighting or does your hair have a purple-to-blue gradient to it?

Thankee, there's some blue/indigo in there

UltimaterializerX posted...

Thats more clothing than usual for a Lea photo lmao

Is it? Lol

Clothes are the enemy. I took off my undercarriage halfway through the wedding dinner and the top half of the dress when walking to my hotel after. Now that made for some good photos.

Forceful_Dragon posted...

unless you say "yeah but we could have done the exactly most perfect thing

It's more like

"Don't do the most ineffective thing for bomb and bomb is best"

3/7 chances to hit one scum is prettu good if you suspect a pair

At the very least it's strictly better than just lynching one person from the pair you suspect. Game TKO at 5 or KO at 3 is identical. For everything you say about "scum won't be in the bomb" there's also "scum won't be pairing at 7 and will just win at 5." The chances of scum pairing at 7 is very low.

Ironically I almost think you were so good at selling town on this stuff because you actually believed it now lol.

Forceful_Dragon posted...

And if none of them dated the night before?

Also

The answer to this if none of them dated then they're dead

My point is you take your most suspected guy, take his date partner, then take the most suspected of those left. Force them to die. If two of them pair, you kill them next day.

All you're trying to guarantee is hitting one scum. Not both.

Now I personally think the solution there almost certainly becomes

Ulti bombs either FD + Mzero or JC + Dumey
OR
Sultan bombs Isquen + Ulti

It is possible JC/Dumey/Mzero bomb Ulti but regardless the chance of losing couldn't be worse than just lynching Ulti because scum have no pressure to pair with 7 left

Why don't scum have pressure to pair?

I had a lot of pressure to pair with SPECIFICALLY mzero and if he had been my scummate it would have looked very bad for me to show an unwillingness to pair with him. I was applying pressure on Dumey and JC to pair and could cite day 1 as a reason for believing that them being scum had a justification to believe in, however unlikely.

But this is all being done on the back of Ulti and Isquen fucking over the plan from the day of 9. If they hadn't done that and Ulti just died the day before then our plan on 7 would have centered around Sultan, MZero and Isquen. Then everything is different.

Also Ulti could not bomb me and mzero, we did not date on 9 we dated on 7. The only people ulti could have blown up would have been Me and Dumey or JC and MZero.

You're not looking at how the pairings on 9 affect the day of 7 and you're just saying "3 of 7 is better than 1 of 7". The actual circumstances of the game are relevant.

you guys clearly engaged with this format much more deeply than me, some of your postgame analysis is wild

Forceful_Dragon posted...

I had a lot of pressure to pair with SPECIFICALLY mzero and if he had been my scummate it would have looked very bad for me to show an unwillingness to pair with him

Yes

If the town can name a specific scumpair and be very hardline on it there is something resembling pressure

However the odds of that happening are quite low probabilistically speaking and a lot of people showed willingness to pair with multiple people. For example Isquen put out invites to Mzero and Sultan and Sultan jumped on it-- which is exactly what scum should do to ensure they don't get paired.

It's MUCH easier to generate meaningful bomb pressure than specific pairing pressure.

Ultimately the problem is you need to name the specific pair.

Say town was half right and named you + Isquen and said you two HAVE to pair and lynch Ulti and get it wrong

Next day you and Sultan pair and town loses

However if town had just bombed you + Ulti + Isquen town gets another day.

Basically setting up a bomb with forced participants will always have more chance of hitting 1 scum and guessing the exact scumpair is super unlikely

Who is forcing me to blow up with Ulti and Isquen? I'm not just going along with it. Mzero thought i was town so I probably still get a date with him.

You're "just do the thing and blow up the right people" approach ignores the logistical issues with actually getting that accomplished. Who is going to stop mzero from pairing with me if he feels like im town? Who will stop me from dating sultan if I can somehow manage to find a convincing reason to explain why he shouldn't blow them up?

Forceful_Dragon posted...

Who is forcing me to blow up with Ulti and Isquen? I'm not just going along with it. Mzero thought i was town so I probably still get a date with him.

If you don't go along with it that makes town closer to finding scum. At that point the game becomes pressuring you and if you blow things too hard town goes with ulti detonating on you + mzero and still wins unless Sultan saves you which sets up a win the next day.

No you can't force scum to play along with the plan but them violently opposing it is way more pressure you get on just lynching one guy and it being the wrong one.

There is a much higher chance of forcing scum into an uncomfortable position with bomb at 7 than there is by just lynching who you think the scum is.

The name of the game is forcing scum out of comfort zones. That's why Sultan cracked when I said we should kill him + Chris + me. It's super hard to generate pressure in this format otherwise as you saw.

Now obviously the solution isn't always bomb because you lose tempo normally

But odds are at 7 unless town basically already knows the scumteam the game is over with 1 death being wrong or 3 being wrong. You said "well you can force scum to be paired on 7 remaining" and I feel like if you ran this format 100 times that would never happen. It's way harder to force scum to pair and then catch them than to force them into a position where they look scummy in bomb.

Chaeix posted...

you guys clearly engaged with this format much more deeply than me, some of your postgame analysis is wild

Honestly, everything FD and Lopen have been talking about has gone completely over my head lol

Kirby321 posted...

Honestly, everything FD and Lopen have been talking about has gone completely over my head lol

Kinda explains why the last few days were disastrous

Chang has probably thought the most about this format out of all of us by a lot and he agrees with my take on the strategy so I do think what I'm saying generally makes sense here I am very specifically talking about 2/7 endgame configuration strategy here not in general.

But what FD is saying is palatable. It does make me amused that he apparently actually believes that what town did was the optimal strategy though. That's why he was so good at selling it.

He was absolutely selling a strategy that loses most of the time though. Passive town loses this format every time. You have to basically force the last few paired every day or scum just wins because they have so many ways to pair that aren't pairing with each other.

Chaeix posted...

you guys clearly engaged with this format much more deeply than me, some of your postgame analysis is wild

Right? I just want to bathe in the Epsom salts of "impossible to actually eliminate scum without random chance or a power role (of which there were none)"

We're arguing opposite sides of the same coin.

My point is the pressure needs to be on forcing specific pairs, and people's response to THAT pressure will determine if they are trusting. The person being lynched that day is still the person who appears most likely to be scum, so you still expect the game not to end based on actually hitting scum on 7. Based upon the way he and Isquen played the day of 9 they SHOULD have been scum. I would not have found them to be believable at all if I didn't already know who the real scum were. They absolutely played like 2 scum who didn't have any other option but to use their date on 9 to murder someone else and then try to talk their way out of it on 7, effectively forcing town to lynch one of them on 7 or just lose outright. In that spot I would assume they are both scum, but I still wouldn't want them to be blown up. Lynching 1 of them continues the game AND allows a hedge on the remaining pairs. You swap me into that exact spot as town and I would be convinced that Ulti and Isquen were just brazenly behaving that way as scum who felt like they were running out of room.

I would have WANTED town to go along with my 4 person plan if I thought the remaining 2 scum had to be found in a 4 person block on 9.

You want all the pressure to be on the forced bomb. I want all the pressure to be on the forced pairs, and still only lynching 1 person. But in both instances we're using the pressure to go along with specific activities to read someone's response.

Lopen posted...

Anyway yeah amazing scum game from FD

fwiw

Ulti is mad at me for whatever reason so he's going to twist everything I say to be bad and has deluded himself into thinking he has any sort of clout here anymore

(Probably because I kept saying I thought he was intentionally playing scummy so people would read him wrong and he could gloat about "teh 4th alignment!!!!"-- but given how much of a stink he made about me not being able to call him town immediately right when he got in DTC I think I nailed it and that's why he's so mad)

Forceful_Dragon posted...

We're arguing opposite sides of the same coin.

My point is the pressure needs to be on forcing specific pairs

I guess what I'm saying is that it's a lot harder to hit scum pairs to pressure them with your strategy than bombs

Odds are you won't hit scum pairs with your strategy and that's why it's not very useful for pressure. With bomb odds are you will hit them or at least one of the scum because of sheer numbers getting blown up and the basis that town at least has some idea of who is playing scummy