Merchant's Daughter [Endgame]

[Dr Worm]

No, I fooled everyone

[Krazy]

It's not is it the best strategy. It"s--does this risk making the game totally unenjoyable. I didn't say it was what scum would do, I said it was one possible strategy that scum could opt for that would mean they got to eliminate 8 different players from the game before the game began--4 lynched, 2 nightkilled, 2 killed via the lover mechanics when the scum scumclaiming get lynched, in addition to wasting the ic. It's not a question of optimal scum strategy, it is a question of where is there the most potential for abuse. Particularly when last scum standing often does well due to the lack of associatives.

Like effectively this is a setup where under certain circumstances scum could turn a 17 player 3v14 mountainous with no investigatives into a 1v5 serial killer game with no investigatives. Eliminating the two other scum in the most obvious way possible means the scum get yo kill the top 6 strongest town players while sacrificing their two weakest. Ev or not it just doesn't seem fun when it is so easy to think of ways for it to be abused.

[Ankamius]

So essentially this setup is a test of town's ability to scumhunt

[Dannflor]

Moral of the story

Shoulda listened to Ank

[Firebringer]

naah just bully ank. its what I do.

[Firebringer]

dann was really fun playing with u.

[Ankamius]

Moral of the story

Shoulda listened to Ank

Eh, I kinda feel like the wrong things would've been sheeped if I was sheeped

I was correct on nearly every read that I had reasonable confidence behind (I think Krazy was the only incorrect read in that category), but the reads I was less confident in were the ones I was more vocal about in the end, and those were the incorrect ones.

[DoubtingThomas]

Good game all,

I feel like I definitely owe all of you guys more participation because I am usually a high poster. I don't believe I posted 331 times, but nonetheless, I don't think I am ever below #3 in post ranking in any game as either alignment when I try.

Kinda funny Krazy caught me in a meta that's not really true (I played really differently in the game I played against brassherald than I normally would for some reason), but still great job catching me Krazy, I rarely RARELY get lynched ever, especially as scum who would have teammates to help me out.

Everyone, imo, played really well. I know we dropped the topic, but I just want to reiterate

Nancy

You played very well and you carried us to end game, no doubt. But it's just not ethical to even mention the word "sub" because it would influence people's reading of the game in ways that it shouldn't. You've done this before and got banned, and I really hope you stop even mentioning. I know as town it's very very frustrating to be 'wrongly' scum read, but it is part of the game, and I think it brings you different challenges that changes the game up to be more fun in a way. It's just giving you an advantage that shouldn't be part of the game when you mention it, so it is good habit to just erase that word out of your vocabulary when you are playing forum mafia, imo. I don't think this should discredit the way you played very well this game and won it for us, but I want to see you grow up to be a

TRUE MAFIA PRODIGY

in the future winning without any controversy in the future.

Good luck on your next journey.

[FakeGod]

Krazy, why would scum intentionally use suboptimal strategy? Saying that scum can "abuse" this is like saying that they can partially game throw anytime they want. Yes... they can massively reduce their win chance any time they want. Why is this a problem?

Your strategy gets the top town pair killed without being able to contribute day 1. That makes the game totally unenjoyable for the pair that got killed, no? Are you okay with this because it's only 1 pair instead of 4 pairs? Because that's not a fair assessment when you can just play the day 1 out.

Scum don't get to pick which two of their players are gentlemen, so they don't get to pick which players they are sacrificing.

[Firebringer]

So I kind of want to address the thing with the mech play that everyone was upset about me for. Really frustrating for you guys to play with someone who went against the whole plan and kill your motivation for the game. I get that. Not gonna change my play at all to conform to that kind of play, never have, never will. You don't have to play with me if it kills your enjoyment of the game that much. Not gonna adjust myself to play like that when I don't think its good play. I rather play and win by outright play then going for these mechanical things. Mechanical things are interesting to talk about but I am not going to make decisions based on them. Not my thing.

[Ankamius]

we focused so much on the coin mechanic and countering it that we left the door wide open for scum to pocket town to endgame.

That is the real threat of the setup since the only pairings that matter are the most townread ones. The rest will all be eliminated before them.

[DoubtingThomas]

question about set up:

As we've seen in Dance 1 this game, dance 1 essentially can become a useless stage because people might just vote no lynch

Is this somethnig you intended? I don't ever see a world scum would yololynch using 8 coins ever so why even have coins or dance 1?

[Firebringer]

we focused so much on the coin mechanic and countering it that we left the door wide open for scum to pocket town to endgame.

That is the real threat of the setup since the only pairings that matter are the most townread ones. The rest will all be eliminated before them.

and that would be a good critique of mech play. you get so focused on irrelevant thigns that you forget to focus on scum. fite me ank.

[Ankamius]

Scum 8 coin gentleman can instalynch the most town pairing and immediately nightkill the second most town pairing.

That is absolutely huge and is well worth a single scum life if the rest of scum aren't in a terrible spot already.

[Ankamius]

we focused so much on the coin mechanic and countering it that we left the door wide open for scum to pocket town to endgame.

That is the real threat of the setup since the only pairings that matter are the most townread ones. The rest will all be eliminated before them.

and that would be a good critique of mech play. you get so focused on irrelevant thigns that you forget to focus on scum. fite me ank.

Well that's the problem

I stopped fighting the no lynch day 1 thing because I figured that trying to stop it would be more trouble than just scorched earthing the pairings that would be killed first dance first thing second dance

Then RC and I died and that path got completely forgotten as town immediately started fracturing at the start of second dance.

It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't, because just fighting the plan in of itself would've fractured town too, just earlier.

[Ankamius]

I mean... other than Vedith and Pink Ball leaving, that's essentially how it happened, but it still took 5-6 days to reach that result when it was the best play for town to eliminate them to help sort out the mess of associatives at the end of first dance.

Then it would've been a lot easier to root out the remaining scum in the remaining five pairs with 6-7 days left on the clock, which probably would have resulted in the same 4p lylo but at least there would've been a lot higher likelihood to catch Nancy along the way since she would have to out town significantly more pairings.

[FakeGod]

question about set up:

As we've seen in Dance 1 this game, dance 1 essentially can become a useless stage because people might just vote no lynch

Is this somethnig you intended? I don't ever see a world scum would yololynch using 8 coins ever so why even have coins or dance 1?

"Skip dance 1" strategy has been mentioned repeatedly in the past. I know Kagami mentioned it after losing New Year's Ball. It's a viable strategy, I suppose, although I do think playing the setup normally is better.

I gave scum a bit more flexibility by pushing the IC back to dance 2. Controlling who had the IC instead of having to burn the NK gave scum a lot more finesse in the setup.

Scum can't solo lynch even with 8 coins, since the cutoff is 9 to lynch. I don't really think the scum strategy of yolo hammering town in dance 1 is a good strategy but some people obviously disagree. Coins give incentive to people to pair up well in pre-dance, since having lots of coins obviously give a lot of advantage in dance 1.

[Ankamius]

Oh the 9 to lynch cutoff was something I actually wasn't aware of

Then yes, coins outright do not matter.

[Firebringer]

Oh the 9 to lynch cutoff was something I actually wasn't aware of

Then yes, coins outright do not matter.

Multiple people pointed that out Ank

[Ankamius]

I don't remember ever seeing it, Fire.

[Vedith]

Scum can't solo lynch even with 8 coins, since the cutoff is 9 to lynch. I don't really think the scum strategy of yolo hammering town in dance 1 is a good strategy

Exactly this.

[Firebringer]

I know I said someone would need to vote for someone else to hammer. We were arguing about whther to leave people out of the dance and SS said if we did that then Vedith could insta hammer if we did.

[Ankamius]

I was specifically referring to a 7-pairing lynch, Fire.

[Firebringer]

I don't even know what 7 pair lynching is.

[Ankamius]

Well if it's still 9 to lynch at 14p then that solves the problem that I was worried about in both iterations

I only was so loud about me having 8 coins the first time around because I thought it would be effectively forcing a town loss to have a scum partner